Cute Pigs, Cat Pee, Drunk Frogs and the mind of the wine consumer
"I don’t have time to learn about wine. But I like wine, so I buy something that clicks with me, that evokes a feeling or a memory, then I’ve already got a good connection with it before I even open it."
Yes, this comes from that growing legion of wine drinkers who are buying the label rather than the juice inside. It’s really hard to argue with attitude, particularly as it exists among those who like wine, but don’t care about wine…most people.
But it’s also this attitude that is pushing wine marketers who want to play in the commodity market to create ever more fanciful, colorful and ultimately animal-laden labels. A nod here must to to Yellow Tail, that phenomenon out of Australia. That wine has risen to the top of the wine world and everyone seems to be shooting at it.
And why not, we’ve always known that consumers buy the label at least as often as they buy the product. To many marketers this reality drives their entire project, with product being a second thought. Then there are others (German wineries, for example) who care far more for the product than the packaging.
This very good story from Cox News Service reporter Sandra Eckstein looks at the growing trend of those who just by wine labels instead of the wine inside.
The labels you see in this post are actually some of my favorites. Some of them grace very good wine, others just average wine.
We do a good amount of packaging at Wark Communications. I can tell you first hand that we’ve had a number of requests for "different" packaging from clients of late. Yet, these request still do not outnumber clients requesting "evocative" or "elegant" or "artistic" designs. There is still the perception among many in the wine industry that the "animal labels" and "different labels" deliver a sense of low end wine.
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