What's right is wrong and what's wrong is right

Are you a scold or an inspiration? Wine communications too often scold the drinker They'd be better trying to inspire them and make people feel good about drinking wine.

I’m going to try and do that thing where I’ve been seen something, and I want to have a bit of a pop at it. But… I like the people and I don’t think they’re malicious. So I have to try and be vague about who it is so as not to offend them.

Some wine types will work it out anyway.

• Would you be more or less likely to buy shoes from someone who told you that you mostly wore them incorrectly?

• Would you be more or less likely to buy a shirt from someone who told you that you were wrong when you thought you couldn’t wear it in a particular way?

• Would you be more or less likely to buy a phone from someone who told you that phones were incredibly hard to buy and so people wasted a lot of time trying to choose what phone to buy?

My sense is that you wouldn’t. You’d go and buy something else from someone who told you that you could wear the shoes however you liked. Who didn’t particularly comment on how you wore your shirt. And said actually buying phones is pretty easy - and we’ll show you how.

I read a thing in the last week that essentially told people all these things about wine. It comes across as a form of promotional negging. If you’re undermined enough about what you don’t know, you’ll give in and buy what you’re told to.

Most people don’t know that much about wine. And they know they don’t know that much, and they don’t need to be told so by us. Most people don’t know many grape varieties. In the UK the average is about five. Although some research puts “fruity” in the top ten. They’re not sure what most technical terms mean, and they find the whole exercise of buying wine somewhat overwhelming. Usually, they’d rather be doing something else.

But they know all that. They don’t need to be told by us as a scold. But it’s a default setting by a lot of wine comms to tell people all the reasons they find wine hard to understand. Not surprisingly, they go and buy something else.

Bigger brands do it better

One of the things wine drinkers are told is that bigger brands are less good, because… well. Any number of reasons. The wine is made in “factories”. The wine isn’t “authentic”. All you’re paying for is “marketing”. And so on.

People know this. But they still buy big brands. So why do they do it? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because they don’t tell you all the reasons you’re rubbish at choosing wine. They give you confidence that you’re choosing the right one. Even if your pal who works in the business turns their nose up at it.

Maybe (just maybe) we could all - from the smallest to the largest - learn a little something from big wine brands.

How do they do it? Step-by-step

If you ask a marketer what they do, they have strong brand positioning. “A clear, con­sist­ent, and com­pel­ling message about a brand or product to its tar­get audi­ence.” Or in language we prefer… they know who it’s for, and why they should buy it.

So what does that look like?