Seed

A founding member of Seed Marketing:

Seed is a multi award winning youth creative agency working with international clients across the globe. Creating insight led youth brand strategies to connect with Gen Z audiences through live events, content and social for the world's biggest brands. 

Clients include Spotify, Amazon, Google, Apple, Red Bull, Jack Daniels, Levi's and Bumble.

Chief Executive Officer

Managing Director

Director

Account Director

Breast Cancer Care

Fab 1 Million Coordinating Manager

Freelance Event Professional

Freelance

The Coca-Cola Company

Advance Manager - Olympic Torch Relay

Outgoing Ltd

Senior Project Manager

Event Manager - Summer Break

Project Manager - Student Brand Manager Programme

Snowbombing Event Manager Assistant

Lorien

Trainee Recruitment Consultant

Joe Brailsford

Flavor.

Flavor. 
An Integrated Sampling Agency

We believe that product sampling isn't being done well enough!

Integrated Sampling curates the perfect mix of sampling techniques to deliver optimal results for every campaign.

We look after all sampling elements under one roof to drive efficiencies in... Targeting, Relevance, Measurement and ROI.

Experiential Marketing Measurement Coalition

Sitting on the board of the Experiential Marketing Measurement Coalition.
Helping to to drive effective measurement across our industry.

Board Member

Investing in a portfolio of FMCG brands with high growth potential.

Offering advisory guidance in Product Sampling, Promotional Marketing and Growth. 

Current investments include Mighty Slice, Swypes, The Biltong Factory, UNLTD, and Dr Wills.

Investor and Advisor

Experiential Consultants

Experiential + Product Sampling specialist consulting at various agencies & brands. 

Developing and delivering Experiential:
- Propositions & IP
- Strategies 
- Pitches
- Measurement Methodologies
- Talks & Training
- Projects & Campaigns

Founder + Experiential Consultant

MentorCruise

Offering advice, mentorship and guidance on starting a business, building a culture, creating a business development strategy and planning for an exit.

A founder of 2 x specialist marketing agencies, board level Non-Executive Director for start up agencies + FMCG brands, and an expert in Partnerships, Experiential Marketing + Product Sampling.

After launching my agency just before the Covid pandemic struck, I'm proud to have been able to have designed, adapted and built a business that has thrived from a 2 person team to a major player in the industry within 3 years - working with brands like General Mills, Asahi, Mars Foods + Heineken.

Mentor

Sampley.io

Board level advisory position to aid the development + growth of Sampley.
- Refining business plan
- Developing consumer and brand user experiences
- Product testing and launch strategy
- Funding strategy
- Pricing and market offering
- Scale planning financial viability
- Key supplier sourcing and selection
- Business Development strategy
- International expansion planning
- Marketing and PR strategy
- Operational business functions

Non Executive Director

DMA UK

Chair of Experiential Committee

Collider

Heading up & driving forward Consumer Experiential business for the agency
Shaping the Experiential proposition of the agency
Integrating 'Experience Focus' throughout the agency 
Leading Consumer Experiential campaigns including; 
- Experiential with Impact
- Intelligent Sampling
- Experiential at Events
- Internal Experiential 
- Integrated Experiences

Head of Experiential - Experiential Consultant

HeyHuman

Develop and implement HeyHuman experiential proposition.

Experiential lead across all accounts (including Guinness, SEALIFE and Green & Blacks).

Experiential Director - Experiential Consultant

Undercurrent Live

Develop and manage consumer roadshows, trade shows, and incentive campaigns for Samsung.

MD at Flavor | Integrated Product Sampling | NED | Founder | Business Development + SME Strategy | Mentor | Experiential Consultant

As the Managing Director of Flavor, I lead an integrated sampling agency that adds Purpose to Sampling for food, drink, personal care and household brands to engage their audience with targeted, relevant, and measurable sampling campaigns. 

With over 15 years of experience in experiential marketing, I have a passion for creating engaging content and delivering optimal results for every campaign.

I also provide strategic guidance and mentorship to growing FMCG brands, marcom agencies, and member organizations as a Non-Executive Director, Founder, and Mentor. 

I have successfully launched and led several businesses, developed experiential propositions and IP, and coached and mentored agency leaders. I have a thorough understanding of leading and running business units effectively, as well as driving innovation and growth in the experiential and sampling industry.

Richard Lloyd-Williams

Brands are measuring everything (except the moment that actually converts).

Big FMCG brands have more consumer data than ever. Purchase behaviour, social sentiment, search trends, panel data... we're drowning in insights.

Yet we're still surprised when products don't perform as expected.

Here's what I think we're missing: we've optimised for awareness and consideration, but we've underinvested in the actual experience of trying the product.

Think about your last successful launch. How much budget went into digital media versus letting people actually taste, try, and experience your product?

For most brands, it's probably 80/20 or worse.

The data should make us rethink this entirely.

Recent analysis by Andrew Lipsman found that sampling campaigns increased sales by up to 95.2% on average. The next most effective in-store tactic? Around 53%.

That's not a marginal difference. It's nearly double the impact.

Here's the irony: marketing has a reputation for thinking outside the box, yet we've boxed ourselves into what's expected. Great digital campaigns. High social media investments. All important, but all within a familiar framework.

What if thinking outside the box actually means finding better ways to let people feel, touch, and taste your product? What if we applied the same rigour we use for digital (data analysis, media efficiency, world-class creativity) to physical trial experiences?

That's what we're doing at Flavor: making the most effective marketing initiative more more insightful, effective and ultimately, changing how the industry thinks about sampling.

The question isn't whether sampling works. The data proves it does. The question is: how to shift the paradigm and invest accordingly?

Most FMCG innovation doesn’t fail because the product is bad.
 It fails because the first moment is wrong.

A lot of recent trade coverage is focused on brands pushing harder at shelf — more claims, more promo, more noise.

But here’s the problem:
Shelf is rarely a discovery moment anymore.
It’s a confirmation moment.

Shoppers arrive having already decided — via habit, TikTok, WhatsApp groups, kids, trainers, mates.

Which means sampling inside the store often shows up too late.

The brands seeing stronger trial-led growth are flipping the order:
👉 Seed trial before the shop
 👉 Create a need, craving or routine
 👉 Then let retail convert it

That could be:
 – A chilled drink after the gym
 – A kids snack at a club or class
 – A midweek meal helper arriving at home
 – A digital reminder after trial

Same product.
Same retailer.
Completely different outcome.

Sampling isn’t about being present everywhere.
It’s about being present before the decision is made.

Curious how others are thinking about pre-shop trial right now — especially with budgets under pressure.

Sampling with purpose is about defining a clear goal and identifying the key variables to get there.

Think of these variables as pieces of a puzzle: target audience, channels, messaging, product presentation, location.

But there's one piece that's frequently forgotten: moments.

Let me give you an example.

You're launching a sampling campaign to position a beer with a new audience. It's consumed mainly by males, but you believe the product would resonate with women too.

So you do the work:

- You define the target group precisely
- Your sampling agency suggests smart channels: Deliveroo and in-store activations.
- You align on messaging that speaks to the new audience
- The creative is spot-on

Everything looks right on paper.

Then the samples get delivered on a Tuesday afternoon. The beers sit in the fridge. Maybe they get tried on Thursday evening, maybe they don't. Either way, the moment has passed. The context is wrong.

Your conclusion? The product doesn't really work for women.
But what if the problem wasn't the product or the audience? What if it was timing?

Sampling isn't just about reaching people. It's about reaching them in the right moment, when they're most receptive to the experience you're creating.

A beer sampled at a festival on a Saturday afternoon or when you arrive to your holiday AirBnB tells a completely different story than the same beer sampled alone in-store during a Monday.

At Flavor. Sample with Purpose, we think about sampling as connecting all the pieces of the puzzle: audience, channel, message, and crucially, moments. 

Because in sampling, timing isn't just a variable. It's everything.

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Joe Brailsford

Richard Lloyd-Williams

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The Battle

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