June 28 2009
More doodlings on the back of a wine stained napkin ...
I don’t mean to pick on university professors or researchers, but I can’t help but notice that the preponderance of research that comes out, specifically wine-related research from universities, is usually pretty lame.
Yeah, I get the “publish or perish” notion, but is our academia sector now reduced to studying whether its more important for a winery to build a brand or to focus on high-quality? I suppose these two things can be mutually exclusive of each other, but on the branding front, didn’t Proctor & Gamble figure out this brand marketing thing 60 years ago?
The world is littered with “better” products that weren’t marketed well ... you have to be a savvy marketer to survive these days ... in wine or any consumer product category.
Excerpt from a Lubbock Online regarding a Texas Tech wine marketing study:
High brand awareness is more likely to lead to brand survival than high perception of wine quality, according to the study. It tracked the fates of 25 Texas wineries since 1991, when more than 900 Texas wine enthusiasts rated the quality and name recognition of the wineries’ products.
Researchers found an unmistakable trend: the more recognizable the brand, the better its rate of survival. They found no such link between quality ratings, so wine makers may be better off investing in marketing rather than expensive grapes, the study indicates.
With so many brands to consider, Texas consumers tend to put more weight in a wine’s cover than its content, the study also suggests.
“A lot of wineries put so much effort into improving the quality, but not as much attention is being paid to marketing. This study shows it needs to be done,” said its lead author, Natalia Kolyesnikova
Posted in, Vin de Napkin. Permalink | Comments (3) |
You bring up a good point—where are all the vineyard cats?
I also questioned these Texas Tech statements about branding versus quality. I have followed the Texas wine industry for over ten years and I think that I understand the context and may be able to add some context.
Texas wineries and growers are still working on quality. This will not stop. But, there are a lot of ma-and-pa Texas wineries that think, all they have to do is put the wine in the bottle and on the shelf and it will sell itself. These are the people that need some lessons in branding and marketing.
I organized a Texas wine competition in Houston for about 5-6 years that ran thru 2005. It was focused on quality. I was so frustrated about how bad the labels looked that one year I actually expanded the competition to include lables - art work and usable info.
At that time, I said to my wife that some of these wine lables looked like the winemaker’s 14 year old daughter may have done the lables. She responded by saying, “No. The 14 year old daughter now days as PC savvy and likely know Photoshop and could do better than that”.
In reality, I want to stress again, Texas wineries are working on both fronts: quality and branding.
One of the important branding issues in Texas is to have a recognizable and consistent product on the self from year to year so that it can develop a following that will build sales over time. I keep telling winemakers, due to the shortage of Texas grapes, to focus on proprietary red and white blends that can be sold as brand named wines. They may vary in varietal content from year to year, but the brand name will be consistent and be there to develop brand loyalty in the marketplace. In time, as vineyards catch-up with the number of wineries, there will be enough grapes to bring additional consistency to the product.
Sorry to be so longwinded, but this is not a simple topic that leans itself to short answers.
Russ
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Will you be at WBC09?
I’ll report to you on the caliber of research lameness at http://www.bacchuswineconference.eu/ . Lookout Dijon!
I’m going to start a study on how to teach wine 2.awesomeness:
http://drhorowitz.biz/index.php/2009/05/21/a-really-goode-semester/