(  This post follows on from my previous post about the importance of branding and also appeared in Harpers last month )

One comment on my recent piece on the importance of branding was that it is all very easy to argue that one should invest in branding but it would be rather more useful, at least to those already ‘converted’, to provide some insights into how best this might be achieved

The easy response to this is that every producer needs to be treated as a separate case given aspirations and capabilities vary significantly. In addition, different consumer groups require very different approaches while, for premium wines, the regional location may also have a major influence on the brand. This all implies not only that there is a broad spectrum of reasons why producers might choose to invest in building brands , but that every brand development plan has to be ‘bespoke’ and not ‘ off the peg’.

And this is even before one gets to the implementation of any brand plan, which by its very nature must be designed to make the brand not simply appeal to the target market but stand out from the crowd in terms of how it is presented and communicated..

Having said, however, it would be fair to say that there are a number of key ‘imperatives’ or maxims that spring to mind whenever I am in brand development mode. These help me amongst other things to narrow down the options. Here are the seven that come most readily to mind

Continue reading →

The importance of branding.

(  The following appeared as an Opinion piece in Harpers last month and was followed up by some thoughts on the art of branding which I shall post in the next few days )

A recurring theme of most marketing orientated articles in Harpers is the need for wine producers to develop, and then promote effectively, their individuality: to communicate to the trade and the consumer, hopefully in an inspiring way, what makes them special and separates them from their competition.

This process can be summed up in one word, ‘branding’: a word that can still send shivers of irritation up the spine of too many in our industry. To them the word tends to smack of big corporations or of style over substance, concepts which seem at odds with the artisanal nature of the world of wine.

Few producers of course have the resources to communicate with consumers in the style of sophisticated brand led companies in other sectors, but that is to miss the point. Branding on one level is just about getting the basics right : to define and take note of the competition, to link a product to a target market, to develop a presentation that is likely to appeal to them and to link this to a communication approach that brings one’s wine to life in an exciting and relevant way to the proposed audience.

Continue reading →

The relationship between producer brands and retailer brands in the UK table wine market

Back in the early 90s at Southcorp we were having trouble getting UK supermarkets interested in our Penfolds and Lindemans brands. The Australian sector was in its infancy and therefore of relatively little importance to them. Jacob’s Creek was the go-to brand, and there were few Aussie own-labels.

At that time I was a classic brand marketer. My business school training and marketing education within the Courage Group had taught me that “proper” brand owners should focus on building their own brands – not supply own-label and certainly not countenance retailer exclusives. Both would represent a sign of weakness.

Own-label back then represented around 35% of all table wine sales in the off-trade, much as it does now, but becoming a supplier of, say, German own-label at the same time as building the Black Tower brand was not an option we considered. The strategy was very simple: invest in consumer advertising to build a franchise and make the brand a must- stock line. The supermarkets were simply one route to market; developing relationships with them was important but not to the extent that one offered them cross-category solutions.

My “road to Damascus” experience came at a meeting with Sainsbury’s, who were more committed to own-label than most. They were concerned that Jacob’s Creek was getting too important and wanted to develop an Australian range that brought it down to size. We came up with a cunning plan.. We would supply a number of own-label wines to sit under JC and a few Penfolds/Lindemans wines to sit on top: Jacob’s Creek would become Jacob’s Squeak. The result of  ‘Project Anaconda ‘ was interesting. We did extraordinarily well, but so did JC as Sainsbury’s developed a reputation as a retailer of Australian wine

. Continue reading →

NB : This is a slightly extended version of a piece which appeared recently on Harpers.co.uk. This is linked to my previous post on regional branding.

At the recent International Sparkling Wine Symposium held at Denbighs I was facilitating a session on the way forward for English fizz and made a throwaway comment that for all its  success producers should be wary of seeing Prosecco as a role model. I noted that, while it has certainly captured the imagination  of a large swathe of the wine market, I doubted that many consumers can name individual brands or are aware of the difference between DOC and DOCG Prosecco. This implies that they will tend to be drawn to the cheapest Prosecco that they find acceptable. It would be fair to say that my comment was not universally popular with  Prosecco producers in the room.

Subsequent to the conference Prosecco sales have soared to new heights with various major retailers reporting astronomic growth over Christmas. So remarkable is the success that some commentators believe that the sparkling wine sector in the UK will never be the same again: a critical mass of consumers have moved on from Champagne and won’t be looking back.

They may well be right but either way I still hold by my concern. Because the consumer is not being  given enough encouragement to trade up, returns may well be disappointingly low for too many producers and certainly not commensurate with the success of the category

Continue reading →

The implications of valuing inconsistency

My previous post ( Black Tower, Riesling and bananas ) discussed the difficulties wine marketers face given that most consumers tend to view varietals as brands.

However, as some of the comments on that post emphasised, the varietal conundrum is hardly the only complication in the field of wine branding. The focus of this post is regional or appellation branding.

The regional brand conundrum

One definition of a brand I use in the WSET Diploma Marketing Course is by Professor Philip Kotler,  “A brand is a name, term, symbol or design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller, or group of sellers, and to differentiate them from those of competitors”. The italics are mine.

I use this definition to point out that, where producers in a wine-producing region get together to protect their proposition in law and then to promote their wines, they are effectively operating as a collective brand owner. This is hardly a controversial claim. We talk widely about “Brand” Australia, Chile or New Zealand et al, and over the years have lauded the success of the bodies promoting Rioja, Cotes du Rhone and others. Generic, or regional, brand promotion is right at the heart of the wine category.

Most consumers see regions and appellations as brands. They represent names that are part of the intricate (and extraordinarily confusing ) mosaic of images, status symbols and promises of performance that make up the wine category in their minds. The role of this element of the brand mix therefore appears to be relatively straightforward.

But regional branding I view as a more complex issue than varietal branding and it is equally influential I believe in our failure to persuade enough consumers to trade up

Continue reading →

What defines a successful wine brand?

Back in the 90s I used to give an annual lecture to MW students on branding. I began each session by lining  up some 20 bottles ranging from Bordeaux chateaux through to wines such as Black Tower and Piat d’Or and asked the students which they considered to be a brand. 

It was interesting how the debate changed as the decade went on. Early on there were many who insisted that fine wines could not be brands: branding was something that was reserved for mainstream, large-volume wines that were overtly promoted or advertised. The word brand was seen by some as  inappropriate for ‘ proper’ wine. Gradually, however, the debate grew less intense and at some point I dropped the exercise because there was no longer any argument.

To me, it was always a trick question. All wines launched on to the market are brands in the sense that they have one characteristic at least which is unique and differentiates them from the competition. That is their name – and any sensible brand owner will ensure this name is legally protected. These products may subsequently succeed or fail, but they are all nominally brands.

The way brands are built will vary significantly depending on their positioning. The fact that some brands give the impression that no marketing thought has ever taken place doesn’t change their fundamental status.

Deferring to the consumer

However, unfortunately, defining a brand  gets rather more  complicated than that. In fact  the  word ‘ brand’ amongst marketing people is a  bit like the word ‘terroir’ to wine people.  Different people favour  different definitions  according to whether ( as a generalisation ) they are looking at things from the perspective of a brand owner or the consumer

Once you launch a brand, the  ‘consumerists’ argue, you effectively lose control of it. Different consumers will have different views of your brand and nobody’s view may be the same as yours. Jeremy Bullmore, a leading marketing guru, once said provocatively: “The image of a brand is subjective. No two people, however similar, hold precisely the same view of the same brand … the highest of all ambitions for many CEOs, a global brand, is therefore a contradiction in terms and an impossibility.”  Another guru, Paul Feldwick,  went even further ” A brand is simply a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer ”

Continue reading →

The following piece appeared on Harpers.co.uk last week and is complementary to my last post

A recurring theme at the recent Wine Vision Conference was that the Wine Industry needed to improve its marketing. We are too production oriented: we don’t really understand the consumer. If we have heard it once we have heard it a thousand times and I’d be surprised if anyone in the room in fact disagreed with the message.

The issue audiences usually have with such presentations is that they encapsulate the problem but offer no practical suggestions as to what to do about it.

For once, however, I’m pleased to say at least one speaker addressed this issue. Stephen Woodford, the Chairman of Lexus, emphasised the point that effective marketing was now within the reach of companies with smaller budgets to a greater extent than in the past because of the increased importance and cut through of on line media. He used the example of You Tube through which it is possible to reach large audiences for minimal cost if the campaign is both relevant to the target audience and creative.

Continue reading →

Why we need a cultural revolution in the UK wine trade

The management guru Peter Drucker once wrote, “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” This was, I remember, translated at a company conference I once attended into “the aim of the marketing department is to make the sales force redundant”. I recall this was seen to be taking sales and marketing rivalry just a little too far.

Less open to misinterpretation, Drucker also wrote “the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service sells itself”. I’m not sure anyone would argue with that. Some might feel that this represents an unattainable ideal, but actually there are many examples of where it has been achieved – some right here in our own industry.

From personal experience I know that the Percy Fox sales team did not have to work very hard to sell Domaine de la Romanée-Conti or Dow’s Vintage Port in the late 80s, and the Southcorp sales team didn’t exactly struggle to sell Penfolds premium reds a decade later. As I write, in fact, producers of English sparkling wine are allocating rather than selling.

Some might argue that these wines sell easily not because they’ve been marketed but because of their “quality”. Ah, that wonderful word! Drucker had something to say about that too. “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money … customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value.”

Continue reading →

Forecasting the future may be a useful exercise, but let’s not pretend any of us really knows what lies ahead for the wine industry in the very long term.

Donald Rumsfeld famously said in 2002: “There are known knowns; these are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – these are things we do not know we don’t know.”

I always thought the criticism he received for this was more than a little unfair and that it represented a pretty concise summary of not only one of the major risks of going to war but also, more generally, of longer term planning. Nassim Taleb, in his book The Black Swan, noted subsequently that unknown unknowns are responsible for the greatest changes in our society.

This came to mind as I read the recent report from Prowein, The International Wine Industry: Global Experts’ Vision 2034. Carried out by Wine Intelligence, the UK-based research company, this report was based on the views of wine professionals around the world as to the likely state of play in the category in twenty years’ time.

Continue reading →

Climate change, health, social media and – that old chestnut – the nature of marketing

The three days I spent at the Wine Vision conference organised by William Reed in London recently were very rewarding. One can always find fault with such events and some of the panel sessions were disappointing in terms of lack of depth, but overall there was plenty of food for thought.

Here are six of the numerous thoughts I highlighted. They cover a fairly broad spectrum and are presented in no particular order. In some cases they served to reinforce views I already held – but usually that in itself can be invaluable.

Climate change is happening

For the benefit of anyone who still doubts this, that was the theme of Miguel Torres’ presentation, a message he backed up with plenty of substance.

The effects of climate change are inevitably going to be more obvious to anyone in a category with an agricultural ethos. Interestingly, Torres was not unduly pessimistic about the process: on one level it will simply require producers to think hard about the consequences, and then laterally about the solutions. However, there is no doubt that dealing with climate change will require significant investment and resource; resource that is much needed elsewhere in such a competitive market.

In terms of lateral thinking, Torres touched on a key issue. In regions where there are very strict regulations on what can or can’t be planted, there will need to be an openness to fundamental change, and in good time. That could well be an  interesting challenge.

Continue reading →