Free samples

Lindor promotion outside Victoria Station. If done well this sort of interaction with potential customers is the best kind of marketing. You can write about chocolate, you can illustrate it with superb photography, you can send out witty viral productions of great apes performing the repertoire of Phil Collins.

None of them comes close to the impact achieved by actually handing out free samples of the product.

Unfortunately this kind of marketing is very expensive (compared with other ways of reaching the target audience) and so it is comparatively rare.

In the background you can see the 1908 Grosvenor Hotel, built over Victoria station. Convex mansard roofs, white Suffolk stonework, heavy Florentine cornice. Victoria station is the London terminus of the Orient Express (now only goes as far as Venice).