If you show an interest in the black cherry top notes and floral rose bouquet of a 2016 Tasmanian Pinot Noir, does that make you a wine snob? Alternatively, if you pour a glass of cask wine on the back deck with some friends to have with your sausage sandwich, are you a bogan? And is there something in between Wine Snobs and Goon Bag? Yes! And it’s a huge group of Australians that sit between these two stereotypes of wine drinkers – those who know what wine they like and stick to it.
Unfortunately this large audience seem to get forgotten about by Australian wine marketers, and too often the message delivered is more focused on the product, and not the experience.There is an opportunity here, to help create a more accessible and relatable language around wine – to focus more on the “when” and “why” we like to enjoy it. Instead we are met with a sometimes snobbish and overly serious approach to wine, when we are confronted with row after row of wines in the local bottle shop. This tends to create an inaccessible and overly complex story for customers, which is at odds to a country known for its down to earth laid back nature.
Trying to figure out what to buy from the hundreds of choices can be a terrifying and confusing experience, when all you want is a nice bottle of red to go with your pizza.
The Australian wine industry is a wonderful mix of colourful and engaging characters – artisans, artists, farmers, scientists and more. Passionate and proud people who love life, full of great humour and don’t take themselves too seriously. Yet, the story told to consumers often ends up too stuffy and serious, with dark images, lofty words, highbrow explanations and a general illusion of snobbery.
When you look at the way craft beer, or even something like Coca Cola, is marketed – it is joyful, fun, and and focused on the enjoyment of the experience and nothing more complicated than that. Some of the cleverest marketing ideas in the drinks world more recently, was the VB team rebottling their well known brew, and entering it in disguised as a craft beer, in a genuine craft beer competition. After all the complex tasting was done, guess which incognito beer won? The VB.
Wine too, is about creating an experience. Sure, wine can be complex, with hundreds of styles, regions, varieties and variances. But opening a bottle and enjoying it with friends and loved ones doesn’t have to be. And neither does the way it is marketed.
All consumers need is a little bit of basic knowledge, to create confidence and awareness. If delivered in a relatable and simple engaging tone of voice, you can create a more natural connection to consumers. Some of the online retail stores are approaching their marketing this way and doing an amazing job.
Beyond the labels and branding, we need to invest in training team members in bottle shops with better knowledge. This creates a more confident and passionate conversation and overall experience with customers in store, taking the guess work away, so they walk away with a bottle that better suits what they are after.
On the Netflix show “Ugly Delicious”, acclaimed U.S. chef David Wang, goes on a quest in search of the worlds best pizza. Traveling from New York to Italy he ends up finding it in Japan. However along the way he makes the point, “Im one of the biggest snobs you’ve ever met, but I hate elitism”, revealing there are times he just wants a Dominos. Its not the best pizza in the world, but there’s a time and a place for one, all the different styles of pizza in between.
So in the end – whether you just can’t bare the thought of drinking anything less than an $80 bottle, you never spend more than $10, or like the majority you are somewhere in between – there is a time and a place for complex wine language, to educate, judge, and test, but it’s less helpful in the world of consumer marketing.
It should be about the experience.
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