A wine is a many splendored thing

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First up, I need your help this Sunday. I’m tasting dozens of bottles of wine on my own. And I need friends to discuss them with. Even if it’s only virtually. Most important - I want to hear what YOU are enjoying, recommending, and opening..

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Now for this week’s instalment of The Wine Marketing Masterclass. And we’re going to finish up with product - the first of the famous four P’s. We looked at why “the liquid in the bottle” isn’t the only thing that matters last week. And how “products” have layers - like onions and Shreks - the week before. And this week, we’re going to look at all the things that are actually your “product”. Even if you don’t think of them that way.

I’ve just come away from a big meeting today. This was one of the main slides we ended up with:

• For most people there are too many wines. They want you to offer a limited selection.

• For most people more information is a pain. They want to know what the wine means for them.

• Yes, people are put off by snobbery. But in truth they’re actually more worried they’ll “get it wrong”.

A lot of today’s big slide comes back to what the wine “product” actually is. So let’s put that to bed.

The Wine Product is a Many Splendored Thing

In the language of marketing the bottle and its contents are “the actual product”. But what the thing - the wine - does for people… that’s the “core product”. If we learn nothing from this bit of the course, it’s that the core product is - for marketers at least - more important than the actual product.

Kodak sells film, but they don't ad­vert­ise film; they ad­vert­ise memor­ies.

That’s a cel­eb­rated quote from the mar­ket­ing writ­ing Theodore Levitt. We’ve come across him sev­er­al times in the course.

Whispering Angel sells wine, but they don’t advertise wine; they show attractive people being aspirational

That’s a quote from me. But I think it works:

The au­thor Fay Wel­don was also Head of Copy­writ­ing at the ad agency Ogilvy where she coined the slo­gan…

Vodka gets you drunk­er quick­er

On the whole people don’t buy vodka for the thing itself. They buy it for what it does.

Core product vs actual product

“Wine gets your drunk slower” is a ter­rible slo­gan. But what does wine do then? Well here are some ex­amples, that I was in­volved in, on the de­scrip­tions of wine at Pix.

Look for the third… the bot­tom… de­scrip­tion in each case. That’s a “core product” descrip­tion. This wine is for a date night. Or a bar­be­cue. Or a din­ner with friends. These can even be quite subtle. This wine is a fu­tu­re clas­sic. In other words, this is the sort of wine that peo­ple in the know, know about. Do you want to be a per­son in the know? Of course you do. So buy this.

The core product is some­thing that the drink­er cre­ates. But it can also be some­thing you in­spire. Let’s look at this example, from Chêne Bleu. Here’s a quote from their web­site:

Non mihi, non tibi, sed nobis ‘Not mine, not yours, but ours.’ We chose this motto as it expresses the in­ter­act­ive philo­sophy at the heart of our work. As with a great bottle of wine, the pleas­ure is mag­ni­fied by shar­ing. We take great pleas­ure in shar­ing Chêne Bleu wines with those who ap­pre­ci­ate them.

If you are a good marketer, you can help craft how people con­ceive of your wine. You get to have a hand in how they mani­fest that core product. What the wine means to them.

But of­ten in the wine busi­ness we ig­nore that core product in fa­vour of fo­cussing on the…

Ac­tual pro­duct

Re­mem­ber this refers to the phys­ic­al at­trib­utes of the product, like the taste, aroma, col­our, and tex­ture of the wine.

It’s what we de­scribe us­ing the Aroma Wheel.

Or the WSET Sys­tem­at­ic Ap­proach to wine tast­ing. They’re es­sen­tial. They are the actu­al product. But they’re what wine is. Not what wine does. Or means.