The wine drinker is not a "consumer". She's your mum

If you use the word "consumer" you are brain-dead with ghastliness. I spurn you with my toe.

He’s your dad. Or son. Or partner. She’s your best friend. Or sister. Or cousin.

The sharp-eyed marketers will notice a riff on a famous quote from the late, great marketer David Ogilvy.

The customer is not a moron. She's your wife

Those were the days when marketers treated their (mostly female) target markets as idiots. Today too many marketers treat their (male and female) audiences as passive automata. They’re “consumers”. Because that’s what they do isn’t it? They “consume”.

Now, promise me (seriously) you’ll STOP saying “consumer”. Doing this will change you.

You’re wondering why. Surely, that’s what they are. It’s a catch all-term for people who buy and con­sume our wine. The graphic on the left is a consumer. The picture on the right is a wine drinker.

That’s the prob­lem. It’s a catch all. A gen­er­ic term for gen­er­ic be­ings who con­sume gen­er­ic­ally. You don’t sell to con­sumers… aged 28 to 35, so­cio-eco­nom­ic group ABC1. The people who en­joy your wine are shop­pers. Or di­ners. Or (10% of them) are giv­ing it away as a gift.

By avoid­ing the term “con­sumers” it makes you think about what peo­ple are do­ing when they’re en­gag­ing with your wine at a par­tic­u­lar time. They’re shop­ping. Ea­ting. Giv­ing it away. Sha­ring.

But some­times it’s true, we need a broad term. And here I’m go­ing to take a les­son from the team at Pad­dle, a mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency in London. Ac­cord­ing to Pad­dle, you don’t have con­sumers. You have an au­di­ence.

Be­cause “every­body is in the en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness now”. But not every­body knows it yet.

Here we’re not cre­at­ing a sense of a pass­ive group of “con­sumers”, but of an audi­ence wait­ing to be en­ter­tained. You and the wine brands you’re mar­ket­ing, need to cap­ture the audi­ence’s in­terest. To main­tain it. To make people laugh and pay at­ten­tion. Because if you don’t they won’t just sit there and con­sume. They’ll walk out. You have to entertain them.

In wine marketing terms this is you.

Selling to con­sumers is a pass­ive pro­cess. Mar­ket­ing to audi­ences is an act­ive pro­cess.

I have some insight here. For five years I made a TV show - The Wine Show. If we’d made a show targeted at “consumers” we’d have worked out who watches wine television programmes (almost nobody) and told them facts and shown soil types and discussed prices and “quality-price ratios”. And nobody would have watched it. What we tried to do - and I think mostly succeeded - was to entertain people. And talk about how people use wine, and how they’ve used it for thousands of years. And showed people enjoying it with their friends. We sold the programme to 110 countries and it’s been watched by around 100 million people. I live in Sweden and it’s on Swedish TV four days a week.

Mar­ket ori­ent­a­tion is some­thing that we need to work on all the time. It’s not one-and-done. It’s a con­stant pro­cess. Not least be­cause of the so-called “en­emies of orient­a­tion”.

The Enemies of Orientation

The first en­emy of ori­ent­a­tion is the struc­ture of busi­nesses. Those with the most power in an or­gan­isa­tion are those fur­thest from the con­sumer… sorry, the audience.

Those who in­ter­act with the people who buy and drink your wine the most, are often those who have the least power in an or­gan­isa­tion.

Your job as a mar­keter is to make sure that the mes­sages from the mar­ket, picked up by those closest to the cus­tom­er, are cap­tured, and broad­cast to those with struc­tur­al power who sit fur­thest away from the cus­tom­er.

A few years ago I re­mem­ber trav­el­ling across Ar­gen­tina on an overnight bus. The next day I met Jose Al­berto Zuc­cardi – one of the coun­try’s most suc­cess­ful wine makers. He ex­plained that he also reg­u­larly took the bus. I was slightly be­mused as to why.