What Is Performance Sampling? The Founder's Guide

Lumix named and built Performance Sampling. This page is the definition.

Two names for the old thing, and the one that moves product

Most people call it product sampling. You hand out free samples on a corner and hope someone remembers you at the shelf. A newer crowd calls it street interview ads. You stop a stranger, grab a soundbite, cut it into a Meta ad. Both are half a machine.

Product sampling has the taste and no ad. Street interview ads have the ad and no sampling operation behind it. Performance Sampling is both halves in one motion: the trial, the footage, the billboard, and the paid creative.

Street sampling is the act. Performance Sampling is the machine.

Where Performance Sampling came from

We did not invent the street interview, and we did not invent the free sample. We named and built Performance Sampling.

Lumix started as mobile billboards riding on gig delivery drivers, so we were already on the street every day before anyone thought to film on it. Brands like GoPuff, DoorDash, Instacart, David Protein, and GOAT Gummies trusted Lumix billboards on the street first.

Then we started putting product in real hands in front of those billboards. The footage of people tasting the product was supposed to be a byproduct. It started outperforming the scripted creative in the ad account. So we built the operation around it: the permits, the crew, the billboard in the shot, and the edit. As far as we can tell, Lumix is the first to combine driver-mounted mobile billboards, street sampling, and paid creative in one system.

What makes it Performance Sampling, not a street interview

Four things have to be true. Street interview shops deliver part of the first one. We deliver all four.

1. A real first trial, not a soundbite. The product is in the stranger's hands. The reaction is to the product, not to a question about it.
2. A real sampling operation behind it. Permits, food-handler certifications, certificates of insurance, product liability coverage, cold chain, cleanup, crew. This is the part nobody else wants to touch.
3. The billboard in the frame. Our driver-mounted mobile billboards are in the shot, so the ad and the out-of-home impression are the same asset.
4. Cut into paid-ready ads. Sample & Scale includes 40 street sampling videos and 20 paid-ad deliverables a month. Retail Velocity includes 60 street sampling videos and 40 paid-ad deliverables a month.

The mechanism

In Performance Sampling, the sample causes the content. Take away the taste and there is no footage. That dependency is why a filming shop cannot copy it. They can hand one product to one person on camera. They are not set up to put it in hundreds of hands a day, legally, around the stores that carry you.

It is also why the whole operation matters more than the camera. Anyone can film. Very few teams can legally and safely hand food and drink to strangers at scale, in the right neighborhoods, with media running around them.

Why now

Creative is the bottleneck. A Nielsen and Nielsen Catalina Solutions analysis of nearly 500 CPG campaigns found that creative quality accounts for 47% of the in-store sales lift from advertising, more than reach, targeting, and recency combined. The ad platforms keep automating targeting and bidding. They cannot automate having something real to show.

At the same time, buyers scroll past anything that feels scripted, and costs to acquire a customer keep climbing. Brands do not need another ad. They need something real to show: an actual first trial captured on camera.

The line that separates us

Who this is for

Consumer brands spending $25K or more a month on paid social, or any brand launching into retail and distribution. If two or three ads carry your whole account and your winners keep dying, or you want trial and creative production near new retail doors, this is built for you.

Watch how it works and apply See the ads this produces See the packages

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