Picking on the wine industry.  No pun intended.  Part 1.

Isn’t the Festive Season a fantastic opportunity to be extravagant and indulgent?!  Yes, it’s the perfect excuse to spend extra money on eating out, trying different gourmet products, loading up on fresh seafood, having the strangest imported beer at the party and so on.

We’re all on the hunt for something a bit special, a bit different.

It’s the time of year we try to be classier in our taste of food and beverage.  If you are a marketer in either of these industries then the Festive Season is your Holy Grail.  New eating and drinking experiences that are shared during this time of year have a much higher strike rate of developing loyal consumers.  Marketers know the importance of shared experience.

Except for the wine industry; that oddly continues to treat this time of year like any other.  For some reason the marketing of wine during the Festive Season remains completely disengaged with the average consumer, out for a spend-up and a new drinking experience. 

 

If you are wondering what happened to all your local wine sales in 2012 then please let me explain.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.   

The fact your wine made it out the bottle-o and onto the Christmas dinner table is pure chance; a game of numbers at a busy time of year.  That’s not marketing and branding; that’s forcing the hand of distribution – a costly exercise that evaporates margins.

Similarly, the fact that I stumbled across something that tasted OK is pure chance.  I guess it’s a bit of a win when that happens, but my experience is still somewhat dampened and I move on, quickly forgetting the name of the wine.

Why does the wine industry continue to communicate with me as if I have my own winery or multiple degrees in wine making and geology?  How in blazes am I supposed to understand what this means:

• Dateline-traversing persistence
• Old furniture, wax and engine oil meets raisins
• More understated effortlessness
• Coiled-up restraint, tremendous persistence
• Mouth-embracing onslaught
• A pucker of chalky phenolics
• Hauntingly ethereal
• Profound exoticism

OK.  I’m being a smart-arse and have picked out some of the wackiest descriptions I’ve seen – but this is what we are given to read on a wine label.  Seriously, who writes this stuff?  To whom is this marketing content targeted?  Not me.  Enough of the jargon, please!

But why not target me?  A consumer like me should be low-hanging fruit for the wine industry.  Absolutely.  Me and hundreds-of-thousands of other middle-class consumers in Australia.

The way the wine industry communicates its products makes me feel left out of the ‘in’ group, inexperienced, intimidated, and unknowledgeable.  The way wine is marketed in Australia seems very introverted.

It feels like everyone in the industry is talking amongst themselves and the consumer is forced to sit on the sidelines like a naughty boy for not understanding and appreciating all that goes into a bottle of wine.

Why make it so hard for yourselves and me.  I want to get to know you, but I won’t go near a product that makes me feel that insecure.  If my choice of wine is a flop at the party, well…………..I simply can’t take that risk.  I won’t.

If your product is technically superior that’s fantastic.  But don’t tell me that.  Increase the likelihood that I’ll experience that.  Here’s a hint.  99% of the time I have the chance to enjoy a wine instead of a beer or cider; I’m running on pure emotion.

Don't try and sell me on what makes us different.  Tell me how we are similar.

What I saw during the festive season was everyone going for the safety option.  No new experiences. 

 

The same old labels won again.

How did you choose your wine this Festive Season?


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