What is branding?

First, branding is not advertising.  It’s not just the company name, logo or label being recognized.  It’s not facts about your winery.  Real branding evokes an emotional response when the consumer sees your label or hears your name. Porsche is high performance, luxury, and cool. Apple is imagination, design and innovation. Yellowtail is affordable, easy to drink, kangaroos!  What image, words or emotion do you want to evoke from your customer?

Recognition, branding and marketing.  You want people to know your name and for them to respond to it.  With good branding, you own a tiny bit of real estate in someone’s mind.  When they think of “X”, you want them to think of you.  One of the great marketing myths is that any publicity is good publicity, whether good or bad.  Well, not so fast.  That is only correct if you are relatively unknown.  At that point, getting any kind of buzz may be advantageous.  In a recent study by Stanford School of Business and Wharton School of Business, they report that negative publicity helps smaller brands in crowded markets by increasing product awareness.  Example: A wine described “as redolent of stinky socks” experienced increased sales of 5% after it was reviewed by a popular website.  For these brands, consumers forget their negative perceptions more quickly than their general product awareness.

On the other hand, if you are already well-established then negative publicity can be detrimental.  Example from the same research: “When a rumor circulated that McDonald’s used worm meat in its hamburgers, sales decreased by more than 25%. Coverage of musician Michael Jackson’s bizarre behavior and brushes with the law destroyed his career.”  Another recent example is BP and the oil spill.  They will forever be thought of as the oil company that cut corners, creating an environmental hazard, costing millions of dollars with many jobs lost.

“Awareness drives consideration.”  If you go to any university marketing program, you will hear this.   Awareness is a precondition for consideration.  If they don’t know you exist, they cannot consider you.  The more awareness you create, the more familiar they are and thus many more are likely to buy from you.  The question here is, who are you competing with? If you are competing with Gallo, you do need expanded awareness.  But, if you want to be the #1 winery in Post, Arkansas, then the only people that need to know your name are the people in, around and visiting Post, Arkansas.  You don’t need national or even statewide recognition for your winery to thrive.  Branding takes on a different perspective at the local and regional level.  You don’t need everyone to know your name.

So who needs to know about you for your winery to thrive?  You need people that have influence on your potential customers and visiting tourists – hotels, tour guides, tour bus companies, Chamber of Commerce, sponsors of local events, tourist information centers, bed & breakfast owners, and other local businesses.  If they know about you and are asked about a winery to visit or something to do, you are now a part of the mix.  Here you don’t need the customer to know who you were first.  One of the best ways to make a lasting impression on those who can spread the word about your winery is to take them a bottle of wine, sit down and pour it with them.  Tell them a story they will remember about the wine, the winery, or you.  Now, they have a story they can pass on their customers.  Plus, you’ve taken the time to consider them as valuable to your business and they will appreciate your effort.

Paul Wagner tells a story about doing a tasting with some Bordeaux wineries.  50 cities around the world pouring their first growth Bordeaux wines from their most recent release.  The thing about a Bordeaux, is that it has to be Bordeaux.  Thus the only thing that makes one wine unique from the other is the percentage of the varietals in the blend.  As each winemaker is pouring his wine, they are quoting the percentages of the other wines in their blend to the tasters.  The attendees were wine critics, wine buyers, sommeliers, etc.  Paul says, “Let me pour for a while.”  Someone asks what the percentages are, he instead tells a fun, interesting story about the boat on the label.  Later, he asked some tasters as they were leaving which wines they remembered.  No one remembered the names of the wines they tasted, but several mentioned “the one that had a boat on the label.”  THAT is branding!  Over 50 wines were passed, but whether they later purchased the one with the boat on the label or not, they will remember the wine because it had a story.

Now that we’ve established what a brand is – an evoked emotion, an image, a couple of words burned into the brain.  Who is your customer?  What is your brand?  What is your song, character, or story?    Five words or less should trigger your brand to your customer.  Another example is Juan Valdez.  When you think of those two words, you think Colombian coffee.  No one knew Colombia grew coffee beans before that (it is that old!).  Is the coffee better?  Do we know how the coffee was made?  Do we know the process for keeping it fresh?  No.  But we immediately think of him smiling with his mule and a sack of coffee beans on a hillside, and we think Colombian coffee.  Another: “Tastes Great Less Filling”.  We all know this right?  Miller Light.  In fact, we know it better than we do Miller!

If you already have a large market share, then you won’t need to concentrate on branding and marketing.  Everyone knows you.  However, if you are a startup winery in France, then you have a challenge.  If you create a typical French label that has the Chateau, the vineyard, the DOC – nothing is distinguishing you from the pack and it’s difficult to gain traction. No one knows you and often they don’t even know what they are buying.  The French label with just text doesn’t tell a story or make an indelible impression.  But a smart French winemaker figured this out.  In comes Fat Bastard.  Yep – it’s from France!  “A marketing phenomenon.” The winery bucked the establishment, had a great story around “fat bastard” and it worked incredibly.

I’ve given you several examples of ways to brand, from local to international.  We’ve talked about how you can get the word out to those who can impact your brand and customer base.  You understand that branding is evoking an emotion and creating a mental image using 5 words or less.  Branding is distinguishing yourself with a story among the pack and owning a little piece of someone’s memory.

Share your branding with us.  What image do you want to leave in your consumer’s mind?   What publicity worked or didn’t work for you?  What’s your story?

Premier Wine Blends provides custom solutions for your winery.
Finely crafted wine blends, consulting and
local premium bulk wine sourcing (because you’re not a Napa winery!)