Young Innovator Nominee: Adam Louras, Koa Organic Beverage

Why he’s nominated: Adam J. Louras was able to flip beverage advertising on it’s head by taking a new route. Traditionally as explains traditional in-store demo economics. “In the beverage space, we are trying to educate consumers about our product. The generally recognized method for education in the industry is through “In store Demos”. This is where a third party, often a store employee or a company employee hands out a sample of the product in the store, and then engages a consumer with a specific message. The nationwide average cost of such a demo is approximately $200 for four hours. We estimate that an average Brand Ambassador can sample and educate up to 100 people during the demo. So, the cost per consumer at a demo is about $2.”

Koa didn’t want to spend a lot of money and they wanted to see real actionable results from the marketing they did choose. They used the HYPR platform to identify 20 yoga professionals who have reached near-celebrity status in their local communities. Each “influencer” with a following ranging from 5K to 200K monthly viewers was given a sample of Koa to try. As Louras explains, “When we used the HYPR data to pare down the list of Yoga Professionals for our influencer campaign, we selected a group that had a total average cost per engagement that was close to the in-store scenario described above — just over $250.

The initiative is still ongoing, but Koa has already seen great success. They saw search traffic for their product double on Google after the launch, and they’ve had a 20% increase in month-over-month page visits. For the month of May, when this project ran, they received 3x the number of product inquiries on their website and direct sales were up 10%.

The Young Innovator Award celebrates excellence and innovation by young professionals. See the other nominees and their backgrounds and check back to learn who has won this prestigious honor from The Advertising Club of New York and Google, with support from The Drum.