The United States is soon to become the largest wine market in the world, so it would seem this is a good time to be in wine marketing. The quality of wine in the bottle has never been higher, the selection of wines has never been greater, and our per capita consumption has grown quite appreciably in the last few years. It’s the best of times. And yet…
There are enormous challenges to marketing wine—challenges not faced by marketers in other industries. Compared to other packaged goods, there’s virtually no consumer brand loyalty in wine. Consumers love the choices they’re offered and often try a different producer, different varietal or different appellation with every bottle.
This lack of brand loyalty is compounded by complete market saturation. There are more than 60,000 different wines for sale in the United States today, and no retailer can possibly stock them all. And the globalization of the wine business will only make the competition for shelf space more intense. To make matters even more complicated, we have a Byzantine distribution system in the United States that makes it very difficult for all but the very biggest brands to gain leverage.
The combination of these factors has made wine marketing one of the most challenging jobs in business today. And the solutions to these challenges are among the most creative strategies in marketing. What’s learned by marketing wine can, indeed, be successfully applied to a wide range of entrepreneurial businesses.
The first step
All too often, wineries (and other businesses) do things backward. They make the wine, and then they decide how they’re going to sell it. Long before you pick your first grapes, you should have already made a number of decisions that will affect your marketing. The most important of these combine the key elements that will create your positioning and brand.
Most wineries are founded without ever conducting the classic SWOT (strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats) marketing analysis that gives both direction and focus to marketing strategies. Owners don’t know what makes them unique, and they can’t capture that message in five words or less. Instead, they wander in the wilderness, hoping for a 95-point rating and depending on personal relationships and the sweat of salespeople to keep them in the game. That’s not good marketing—and it won’t develop your name into a legitimate brand.
What convinces the market that your brand is worth more than the competition? It’s a combination of four factors: price, product, placement and promotion. How you manage each of these will determine the perception of your brand in the marketplace. It’s not just about the quality of your wine—especially in a world where lots of wines are very, very good. When all wines are good, then marketing will determine who wins the battle for increased sales and enhanced image.
How will you know if your marketing is successful? Not by the sales of your product so much as by the sale of your brand. How much is the brand name, alone, worth? That’s the true test of your marketing success.
Label design
No marketing element better captures the challenges of the wine business than label design. When a consumer faces a wall of bottles in a wine shop or supermarket, most of the other “Ps” will fall off to the side. Products, pricing and placement will be similar; only the label (your promotion) is different.
The wine label is the ultimate expression of brand positioning. It must capture the essence of your key message—and deliver it into a space smaller than the average postcard. It must serve as a billboard for your brand by attracting the attention of customers as they stare at a wall of competing brands. It must also reassure those customers who choose your bottle that the wine is of good quality and suitable for their table.
What does a billboard do? It creates an immediate impression. When a consumer sees your label on the shelf, you only get a second or two to make a good impression. This is not a place for discreet wallflowers.
That sounds easy: Why not just make a really big, bold, bright label that can be picked out at 20 paces? The answer is, because the kind of impression consumers want from their wines isn’t loud and flashy. Most consumers think of wine as a stylish, elegant, sophisticated purchase. Your job, then, is to create a label that is big, bright, stylish, bold, elegant, loud, flashy and sophisticated.
The perfect match
In some ways, the perfect wine label is like the perfect date. Yes, there are dates that are really attractive in a loud and glamorous way, but your wine should be like the date you want to bring home to your parents. Your label must be absolutely attractive, but it also must stand for something more than just a good time.
The current trend toward more creativity with wine label design was predicted by classical marketing theory. As a category gets saturated, producers look for ways to stand out, and consumers look for new and more interesting things. Pushing the envelope becomes more than just an expression, it becomes an economic necessity.
All of this may seem quite innovative and exciting to those of us in the wine business, but compared to other beverages, wine packaging is still as conservative as it gets. To get a better idea of what’s possible, go to your local liquor store and check out the labels on liqueurs and aperitifs. The colors range from bright yellow and blue to gold and silver.
Now look at the shelves of wine.
The wine industry has a long way to go before it can call itself innovative in terms of packaging. And good marketing strategy is the first step in the right direction.
