Tag Archives: wine marketing

Winebits 803: Wine marketing, wine sales, ancient wine

Apollo drinking cup
The ancient Romans punished women fro drinking.

This week’s wine news: Yes, wine marketing is terrible. Plus more bad news about wine sales and another insight into ancient wine

Pay more attention: Lulie Halstead, the founder of the Wine Intelligence consultancy and a long=time pal of the blog, doesn’t pull any punches: “From what I’ve seen in more than 20 years knee-deep in the world of wine marketing, many wine businesses simply don’t ‘do’ marketing very well.” Which, as regular readers know, is one of the WC’s perpetual lamentations. Halstead covers all the bases: Winespeak, too many choices, and too much confusion. Compounding that, she writes, is that producers don’t care enough about marketing and when they do, it’s mostly about price cutting: “But we as marketers don’t help ourselves. We really don’t.” Hopefully, someone other than a cranky ex-newspaper reporter will read the piece and take heed.

Even worse news: The latest wine sales data is so bad that even the group that compiles the numbers noticed: “negative growth” may be the new normal. The survey, which measures the amount of wine wholesalers sell, found that wine fell almost seven percent in volume between April 2022 and March 2023. It was especially bad for restaurants, where one of the gauges found that it was significantly cheaper to drink at home – so consumers were staying at home. The culprit for all this? The survey hedges a bit, but does mention higher prices. Shocking news, yes?

No drinking for women? The WC has long been fascinated with any and all news about ancient wine, and this one is particularly interesting: “During the earliest periods of Rome’s history and up until the Middle Republican period, it was a socially sanctioned custom for husbands to punish their wives for drinking. Many Ancient Roman sources speak of female drinking and adultery concurrently.” I wonder: Have the neo-Prohibitionists thought of doing this?

TV wine ads: When in doubt, use sex

Maybe sex is the answer to wine’s demographic problem

Regular readers here know the abysmal state of wine advertising, which has been documented on the blog many times. Having said that, the Wine Curmudgeon wonders if this almost 40-year-old ad wouldn’t solve many of wine’s marketing problems.

In a word, sex.

This ad, for a long-gone French white of middling quality called Valbon, isn’t subtle. Which, if nothing else, is a relief given the rest of the wine ads we’ve looked at over the years. Drink this, says the woman, and your sex life will improve tremendously: “Now, I play grown-up games.”

How’s that for a message for the viewer to take away?

Also note the woman’s age – the demographic that isn’t much interested in wine any more. Seriously – change her hairstyle, make the dress a littler more current, and do we have something here to work with?

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Winecast 72: Denise Clarke and the progress — and challenges — for Drink Local

Photo od Densie Clarke
Denise Clarke

“You’re making a commitment to s special product”

Denise Clarke is one of the pioneers of the regional wine movement. She was there when we held the first Drink Local Wine conference in Dallas, worked with us for the Colorado event, and has been spreading the gospel ever since as a wine marketer and wine educator.

So who better to talk to about Drink Local, as much of the country celebrates its local wine month in October? We talked about the progress regtional wine has made, as well as the challenges that remain. Included in our discussion:

• Yes, quality continues to  improve, and those of you who haven’t tried a regional in a while should try again. Denise says she hears that a lot, and wishes wine drinkers would be more open minded.

• Hybrid grapes, which traditionally have been spurned by many winemakers and most wine drinkers, have come into their own thanks to the regional wine movement. We discussed chambourcin, which makes terrific varietal wine, but there are many others.

• Regional wine must do a better job marketing its product, focusing on what sets it apart from mainstream wine — that it’s less traditional, less formal, and more fun.

• One surprising challenge: That there are fewer wine writers interested in Drink Local — not because they aren’t interested, but that there are fewer media outlets that run regional wine writing.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 14 minutes long and takes up almost 9 megabytes. Unfortunately, the quality is not what it should be, and especially for the first minute. But bear with it..

More wine podcasts:
Winecast 71: Paul Tincknell and solving all of wine’s problems
Winecast 70: Ray DelMuro of Refresh Glass and recycling wine bottles
Winecast 69: Nick Vorpagel and the dilemma of the independent wine retailer

Count ‘em: There’s almost one wine drinking “holiday” for every week of the year

man looking at calendar
“Let’s see. When can we fit in Cranky Wine Writer Wine Day?”

Be sure not to overlook National Mulled Wine Day – as well as almost 50 others

The Wine Curmudgeon has discovered why – despite the evidence – so many people think Americans get drunk on wine very night.

That’s because there are at least 49 days, weeks, and months designated as some sort of wine drinking occasion. I write “at least” because searching for them and counting them was a bit overwhelming. As near as I can tell, there is at least one wine “holiday” every week, more or less. There’s even a Google wine calendar, just like those for religious and national holidays..

That would include National Wine Day, Idaho wine month, and sparkling wine week. Most common varietals, as well as those almost no one has ever heard of, have their day. That includes furmint and marselan.

Most of these occasions, obviously, are marketing gimmicks. They’re cheap and easy to do, don’t require purchasing expensive ads, and usually need nothing more than emailing a news release. I must have gotten a dozen or so for “National Red Wine Day” last month.

And why not? Get an influencer to post a picture to Instagram — #LanguedocDay, baby! — and you can boast to the client that their campaign was a big hit.

Full disclosure: We used this tactic for Drink Local Wine when we were getting the organization started in 2008. We “designated” the second week of October as “Drink Local Wine” week, and though the organization hasn’t been active in years, the week remains on the Google calendar. So I guess it must have worked.

Do these other things work? Who knows? But given the way wine marketing doesn’t do much these days save irritate me, it’s probably not any worse than anything else. And I did write about Furmint Day on Feb. 1, didn’t I?

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Winecast 71: Paul Tincknell and solving all of wine’s problems

Paul Tincknell
Paul Tincknell: We can’t buy ourselves out of wine’s problems.

The blog’s wine marketing guru solves wine’s generation gap and offers insight on making wine popular again

Paul Tincknell, a partner in the Napa marketing consultancy of Tincknell & Tincknell, is one of the really smart people in the wine business. And I would say that even if he wasn’t a long-time friend of the blog.

He and I have discussed wine’s problems many times — the generation gap, abstinence, premiumization, its reliance on the aging Baby Boomers, and so on and so forth. So I asked him to do this podcast to offer his perspective and his solutions, and they make very good sense.

Included in our discussion:

• Wine is not like beef or milk, where a one size fits all marketing approach — “Got Milk?” — could be effective. The industry is fragmented and splintered, and not just between big and small producers, but because of pricing. Milk and beef inhabit a narrow price range; wine’s is enormous, and high-end producers have little in common with those on the lower end.

• Wine spends very little marketing, anyway, and especially compared to beer and spirits. And no, we’re not quite sure why that is.

• Wine’s approach to its customers is wrong-headed. It sells them wine to drink for special occasions, and not wine to drink because wine is enjoyable. Paul describes this as “celebratory” vs. “cultural;” that is, no one sees wine as something to drink with dinner unless dinner is a big deal — a holiday, date night, or a dinner party. So why can’t we have a bottle of $10 supermarket wine on Wednesday night to drink with sheet pan chicken? Because the industry doesn’t encourage that. It wants us to buy a $25 or $30 bottle for a dinner that takes four hours to cook and requires expensive and hard to find ingredients.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 22 minutes long and takes up 15 megabytes. Quality is excellent. Even better, I hardly interrupted, save for one rant about too complicated recipes.

More wine podcasts:
Winecast 70: Ray DelMuro of Refresh Glass and recycling wine bottles
Winecast 69: Nick Vorpagel and the dilemma of the independent wine retailer
Winecast 68: Clara Klein and restaurant wine after the pandemic

Annie Green Springs and why nothing is ever new in the wine business

This 1970s brand foreshadowed wine coolers and hard seltzers – complete with crummy advertising

One of the things about the wine business that makes me crazy is that there is nothing new – just the same stuff repackaged in a prettier label.

Case in point: This 1974 radio ad for a brand called Annie Green Springs, which was apparently a cross between Boone’s Farm and Thunderbird — aimed at both college students and urban audiences, neither of whom wanted to drink “real” wine. So fizzy, slightly sweet, and marketing-style fruity. How do Apricot Splash, Berry Frost, and Plum Hollow sound?

In other words, hard seltzer.

The ad, save for a few pictures that offer a sort of nostalgic pleasure for anyone who remembers those times (“Groovy!”), is terrible – corny and very dated, and the jingle is so awkward that Churro, the blog’s associate editor, could probably have written a better one.

Annie Green Springs, despite an attempt to revive the brand a couple of years ago, apparently no longer exists. Small favors, anyway.

Video: What’s the Story via YouTube

More about wine advertising:
TV wine ads: Black Box targets younger consumers – but still doesn’t get it right
The history of wine advertising and reaching younger consumers
Radio wine ad: Stiller & Meara for Blue Nun

Winebits 753: Wine foil, younger consumers, drive-thru booze

man holding wine bottles
“Man, it sure would be easier if we had drive-thru liquor stores in this state.”

This week’s wine news: That annoying foil that covers the cork may be going away, plus an intelligent take on the pursuit of younger wine drinkers and the history of the alcohol drive-thru

No more foil? Dave McIntyre in the Washington Post bids a fond– and overdue – farewell to the annoying foil closure on top of wine corks. Writes Dave: “The capsule, also called the foil, is one of those anachronisms of wine, a relic of centuries-old tradition that hangs on because wine lovers like to think of themselves as part of a centuries-old tradition.” The foil, already a dinosaur, is a victim of wine’s drive for sustainability, as well as the extra cost. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention two things: First, it was wasteful decades ago, not that anyone cared, and second, screw caps don’t need foil.

• Where are the young people? Tina Caputo takes an intelligent look at wine’s seemingly endless hunt for younger wine drinker on the SevenFifty trade website. Says one observer: “I actually think it’s a super exciting time, because there’s a massive hole in the market and the old guard botched it.” Why do so many people who aren’t cranky ex-newspapermen keep sounding like the Wine Curmudgeon? Captuo’s take is sharp-eyed (if a bit long) and offers some much needed perspective. But why not? She is a fine editor, who has bought lots of stories from me about the wine business over the years.

Drive-thru booze: The first time I saw a drive-thru liquor store was in a small town in Louisiana, when I was in the newspaper business. We may have had Al Capone in Chicago, but not beer barns. Laurel Miller, writing in Punch, explains how and why they came to be, and talks about the challenges facing those that remain. “A more literal approach to the term ‘drive-thru,’ “ she writes, “these businesses required customers to actually drive through the building, where they were assisted by an employee without ever exiting their vehicle.” In Texas, reports a west Texas native, they were especially effective in allowing Baptists to buy beer without anyone seeing them do it.