Gary Vaynerchuk, watch out: after watching Judd’s Enormous Wine Show produced by Judd Finkelstein from Judd’s Hill winery, you may have some competition.
Over the course of the past several weeks I have been trying to synthesize a couple of different trends I am seeing and with Judd’s Hill move into producing occasional videos with polish, I have now found the tableau to explain – because they get it! More on that in a second, though …
The way I see it, there are three concurrently occurring trends that have a significant impact on winery marketing in today’s climate.
They are:
1) Aspirational marketing goes on life support
2) The new frugality
3) The Purpose-Idea/What is Your Why
Aspirational marketing goes on life support
Last month I read a blog post at the Wine Enthusiast Unreserved blog that really stuck with me – mostly because I vehemently disagree with the perspective.
At this post, editor Tim Moriarty explains, within the context of a sober Golden Globes competition, that glamour and escapism always has a place in society. This I agree with. There will always be an appetite for red carpet photos of movie stars dripping in fashion and jewelry. However, when that escapism is translated to the wine world, it gets my dander up because the stock-in-trade marketing tactic for wineries for decades has been a lifestyle-based approach to wine that has certainly worked with Baby-Boomers, but this approach increasingly slides into irrelevance as Generation Y and Generation X continues to mature as dominant wine segments.
In his post, Moriarity says:
Today’s readers want practical information and direction, but they also want escapism, the stuff of dreams —the term for this in our ink-stained world is aspirational. We all have a choice when, say, reading about a glam couple who have a cellar full of white Burgundies and reds of the northern Rhône in their palazzo on the Amalfi Coast: we can smile wistfully and hope, enjoying the vicarious experience of reading about it …
Suffice to say that this is a very slippery slope. Moriarity’s approach may be true for the lowest common denominator, but it is not true for the vast majority of wine enthusiasts. I’m not picking on Moriarity or Wine Enthusiast, but this blog post illustrates what I believe to be the disconnect in between wine lovers and the media that serves us.
I can cite chapter and verse on why aspirational marketing is on life-support, but the net of it is that as consumers we are clustering as affinity groups with authenticity at its core.
The New Frugality
Go ahead and Google the phrase “The New Frugality.” Every major print outlet has written a piece on this frugality entering our collective psyche and not only is it impacting our short-term consumer habits, but it may be ingraining itself for the long-term in the same way that my depression-era Grandparents spent a lifetime pinching pennies and keeping money in the refrigerator.
And, related to wine, research report after research report indicate that people are looking for value for their dollar. Buying a wine based on status-marketing isn’t so desirable anymore.
These two trends, an anti-aspirational movement and looking for value wine, by themselves, should cause a winery to rethink their brand and marketing strategy, but the other trend that I am becoming a big believer in is the Purpose-Idea.
What is Your Why?
Hugh Macleod, the marketer who has worked on Stormhoek wines, is really a proponent of the “Purpose-Idea” and turned me onto the idea that was first suggested by U.K. writer Mark Earls in his 2002 book, “Welcome to the Creative Age.”
According to Earl, a Purpose-Idea is:
Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not “mission, vision, values” territory - it’s about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it’s personal. But it’s the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.
Translated to wine marketing, this means less lifestyle artifice and more story. Help me understand why you get out of bed in the morning. Why do you make wine and what do you stand for as a company producing a product? What is your why? Less projection of image and more humanity.
This takes us back to Judd’s Hill and Judd’s Enormous Wine Show.
The first video they produced for Judd’s Enormous Wine Show is just this side of brilliant—in their words they are “Eccentric, Fun and On the Go.” You know them and you like them in a few short minutes. Check it out at this link and see if you can’t see what their “why” is and translate that to what I’ve talked about in regards to non-aspirational marketing, a value sensibility and a Purpose-Idea.
Kudos to Judd’s Hill for getting it, living it and sharing it!