When most people see marketing teams handing out product samples on the street, they see free stuff. Marketer Greg Murray sees waste.
It’s not just the product that ends up in the garbage that bothers him, but also the wasted marketing dollars. “Sampling is horribly expensive and ineffective. You can’t measure it … . Yet it’s important,” says Murray, 29.
When Murray joined Toronto-based Exact Media as brand strategy manager, North America in the spring of 2015, his job was to help disrupt the traditional sampling model. Instead of handouts on the street, Murray worked with brands at companies including Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo to pair product samples with “contextual and targeted” ecommerce purchases. An example would be matching a sample of laundry detergent with a new dress delivered to a customer who placed the order through Walmart.ca, and then providing conversion analytics to the client. It’s a large selling feature for them, says Murray.
“You take all of the negatives that sampling is associated with and make it positive,” says Murray.
With this sampling model, Murray helped Exact Media sign three major new clients, representing about $500,000 in revenue during his tenure of about a year and four months, which is pretty impressive for a startup. It also led to three times the conversion rate compared to other types of sampling such as events and in magazines.
“Greg’s success has been the ability to translate brand needs into a plan,” says David Grisim, a marketing consultant and former senior vice-president of brand strategy at Exact Media, where he was Murray’s boss.
“To me, the really great marketers — the ones that stand out — are those who can take a business challenge and identify what the ideal marketing vehicles are to use and prioritize. That is something Greg is particularly good at.”
Marketing has always been an interest of Murray’s. His dad worked in marketing at Rogers Communications, on the circulation side, and Murray recalls being intrigued by some of the conversations he would overhear at the dinner table.
Murray loves coming up with ways to influence consumers about what goods to buy.
“I love the position we’re in as CPG marketing managers to influence consumers on a mass scale…how they feed their families, treat their pain, cloth themselves and their families,” Murray says. “That’s what I’m attracted to and keeps me coming back.”
Before joining Exact Media, Murray worked in service distribution and supply management roles at PepsiCo, and then on marketing brands such as Tylenol and Nicorette at Johnson & Johnson. With Nicorette, Murray created the Canadian-based digital campaign called “The Nicorette First Week Challenge,” which is now used globally.
Murray spent just under a year and a half at Exact Media, before joining pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in September as product manager at Advil.
“I really wanted to get back to brand ownership and more specifically to consumer health care where I can help people treat their pain and get back to their days better,” Murray says of the recent career change.
When not working on relieving headaches for consumers and brands, Murray is an occasional marketing instructor at Humber College.
There are insights and anecdotes aplenty in our 30 Under 30 editorial package. To get the scoop on our finalists visit 30U30.ca and read full profiles of Canada’s next set of marketing leaders.
