The way Australians discover FMCG products has changed. A new product rarely arrives in someone’s life through one big campaign anymore. It turns up through a series of encounters: A creator using it, a friend recommending it, a review appearing in a feed, a retailer carrying it, or even people talking about it online.
Getting that wrong is expensive. NielsenIQ found in 2025 that only 17 per cent of launches achieve strong trial and strong repeat purchase. A launch that fails to build a rate of sale quickly loses the shelf space it fought for, and winning it back costs even more.
In Australia, 58 per cent of people now use social media for brand and product research, and 75 per cent of 18- to 39-year-olds have discovered brand information from a creator they follow, according to the IAB’s 2026 report.
Social Soup has spent 18 years launching FMCG products across Australia and New Zealand, with a community of more than 200,000 Australians we can activate for launch. Across those campaigns, shopper trial delivers 80 per cent average ongoing purchase intent and creator content averages 8 per cent engagement. The launches that work are run as a journey rather than a campaign: See it, want it, find it, try it, share it.
1. See it: Flood the feed
Seeding puts the product into the hands of relevant people and gives them a reason to use it, talk about it and create with it. That matters most for a new product, where consumers are often asking a simple question: Is this for people like me? One polished advertisement can only assert an answer but a hundred or so real people using the product will demonstrate a hundred different reasons to buy it, in a hundred different moments a shopper already recognises.
Volume creates the impression that a product is suddenly everywhere, and when a shopper starts wondering why they keep seeing something, awareness becomes social proof.
2. Want it: Drive virality and visibility
Wanting comes from credibility, and creators supply it in a way advertising cannot. Formats, phrases and usage occasions repeated across a hundred channels build recognition, and they train the algorithm to recognise the product as trending, which earns extra distribution.
This is where a product stops looking new and starts building category entry points a shopper can recall at shelf.
3. Find it: Make the shelf the content
We gave 100 micro creators vouchers to buy H2coco Peach in-store at Ampol and create content covering the path to purchase and first-try moment, with Ampol availability named in every piece. It was the second run of the mechanic we had already used for the brand’s Matcha launch at 7-Eleven, and 51 of those Matcha creators came back for it. The campaign delivered 142 pieces of content against a target of 90. It generated 126.6K organic views at a 7.8 per cent engagement rate, nearly double the 4 per cent target, with organic reach up 15 per cent on the first campaign.
For anyone launching into retail, this is how you manufacture a purchase moment in a channel where shoppers browse on instinct and a new SKU has weeks rather than months to prove itself.
4. Try it: Put the product in real hands
Visibility does not build a brand on its own. People still need to experience the product, and for FMCG, that means thousands of households rather than a handful of creators. It also means teaching them when, where and why to use it.
For Sorbent we built Home Truths, putting each product into a thousand households, deliberately recruited because they had already bought a competitor. Creators brought those trials to life in real kitchens and bathrooms, and every trial finished with a verified review. The result was 2900 household trials, 2158 verified reviews and 88 per cent average purchase intent.
For an established brand losing ground to a competitor, that is a way to buy switching consideration with evidence rather than with discount.
5. Share it: Let what works tell your paid media where to spend
Rather than asking paid media to create demand from scratch, use seeding and creator activity to find which creators, formats and occasions already work, then put paid weight behind those.
Launch day is where the work begins. For a new product, that momentum is what breaks a market open. For an established brand, it is what gets people talking, trying and buying again.
- Social Soup is Australia and New Zealand’s community-first influence company. To see the full FMCG launch playbook, visit the website, or connect with Social Soup.
