Want to successfully launch a new wine brand in the US during a pandemic? It’s easy. Just put a celebrity on the bottle.
Because wines by rapper Snoop Dogg and Grammy winning singer Mary J. Blige were instant hits during the Covid-19 lockdown, which started in March in the United States. Both far exceeded expectations, and their sales numbers would have pleased marketers even during the old normal.
Yet their very success demonstrated just how difficult it was to introduce new products during the lockdown, when none of the old normal market approaches were practical. The pandemic made almost all of the on-premise market irrelevant. Plus, it eliminated promotional retail and trade tastings and limited most sales calls. The new wines that thrived, say analysts, benefited from some kind of built-in advantage, whether it was celebrities or unique packaging or a loyal audience willing to buy direct to consumer. In this, a variety of canned-wine launches also did well, speaking to the power of innovative packaging.
Plenty of new releases
According to WineRelease.com, there were 537 release announcements in the US between March and August—that’s more than 1,200 wines. In other words, when the brand is ready to be launched, it’s ready to be launched, Covid-19 or not. But in-depth pre-launch research and development stood many wine marketers in good stead, despite the fact that most launches for the second and third quarters of 2020 were planned in 2019, when the coronavirus wasn’t a problem.
Such was the case for Chateau Ste. Michelle’s new H3 line, priced around $14. The Washington state giant planned to spin H3 off from its supermarket powerhouse, Columbia Crest, during late summer, but then came the lockdown. “On the marketing side, we were lucky to have completed a lot of the consumer research before the pandemic,” says Britni Kipp, a Chateau Ste. Michelle associate marketing manager. “So we were able to bring people together to understand what their desires and needs were from a brand and package perspective to make sure we were providing that.”
Preparation and pricing mattered even more than usual. Talk to marketers and producers, and the wine world is full of horror stories of high-end producers desperate to sell wine with the loss of tasting rooms and on-premise. Tim McDonald, who runs Napa wine marketing consultancy Wine Spoken Here, says $15 remains “the golden spot. It’s just like, back in the day, when $10 was the golden spot. Premiumization has failed, and it has especially failed in this environment.”
Jay Buchsbaum, vice president and director of wine education for importer Royal Wine, agreed that price was key when the company unveiled its South African J. Folk Rose cans. The 2020 vintage is priced at $15 for a 250 ml can four-pack. “Unlike many other can wines, it’s of high quality and it’s aggressively and popularly priced,” says Buchsbaum. “Our challenge will be getting the word out.”
Which is where social media comes in. “The best advice I can give would have been not to launch a new brand during the pandemic,” says wine marketer Kate Morgan-Corcoran of New York’s Creative Palate. “But if you have to, there are things you can do to leverage your advantages, and especially from your sales team, which can help you work with existing sales channels to help the new brands.”
The savviest producers discovered how to use social media to do something more than post “rosé all day” pictures on Instagram, to increase awareness and drive sales of their wines. Morgan-Corcoran says that they grasped the difference between all those Instagram beauty shots and post-modern digital marketing. Several brands, including FRE, the non-alcoholic wine from Trinchero, and Treasury Wine Estates Snoop Dog red blend were able to turn social exposure into demonstrated sales. This was especially helpful for the largest producers, which had easier access to wholesalers and retailers in gaining shelf space for launches.
“While we don’t have control over market conditions, we do have the ability to drive demand through digital marketing and influencer relationships,” says Brie Wohld, vice president, marketing, for Trinchero Familey Estates, which owns Fre. It helped when Tenley Molzahn, a contestant on the reality show Bachelor Nation served FRE in cans “at her baby shower – an experience she promoted through Instagram.”
It worked – Wohl reports that FRE’s entire wine portfolio grew 26 percent in the first 26 weeks of the pandemic. In addition, the social media views “have resulted in tremendous interest from consumers, who regularly reach out to us to find out where they can purchase our new cans offerings and existing 750 ml portfolio.”
It’s that sort of brand familiarity that helped propel Bread & Butter Sauvignon Blanc. US consumers, say analysts, have been more likely to buy brands they already know than to try something different. Which, says Jeff Ngo, senior vice president, marketing, WX Brands, contributed greatly to the success of the $14 Sauvignon Blanc, a new varietal for the brand. Bread & Butter’s growth has been more than 70 percent since it launched five years ago, and WX expects it to sell 750,000 cases as a brand this year. “Wine consumers are looking for trusted brands that deliver consistent quality and style that they can share confidently and enjoy with their home-cooked and takeout meals,” says Ngo. “They are eschewing complicated. We anticipate the wines doing well throughout the fall as consumers are gravitating to bright and lively wines, such as the Sauvignon Blanc, year-round and not simply in the summer.”
Bring on the celebrities
Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates has scored hit after hit with its Living Wine line, which use augmented reality to let its labels talk. Despite the pandemic, its $12 19 Crimes Snoop Cali Red 2019, featuring Snoop Dogg has been no exception. In the four weeks ending 6 September, says a Treasury spokeswoman, it was the second-best-selling $11-$15 red wine in the US.
“Unable to sample in-stores or do a physical launch event, we quickly pivoted to sending the wine in a creative way to Snoop’s family and friends and other influential people in the industry in the form of a physical ‘Dogg House,’ ” says Treasury’s Lily Lane. “This ‘Dogg House’ kit not only had the wine, but also had a Snoop wine stopper and other fun swag. As a result, we were able to create a buzz on social media that drove awareness and demand for the wine.”
That has also been the case for Sun Goddess by Mary J. Blige, two $20 Italian wines made by Mario Fantinel. Wine.com, the largest Internet retailer in the US, played a key role in the product launch in the spring, and is the only US retailer listed on the Sun Goddess website. The wines, sold individually and as a two-pack (without a discount), made Wine.com’s top 50 best seller list after just six weeks. For perspective, says Wine.com founder and executive vice president Michael Osborn, the retailer sells wine from more than 5,200 producers. This speaks to the power of celebrity and e-retail during the pandemic; how else to explain the success of the Sun Goddess wines – a $20 Pinot Grigio and a $20 orange rosé, which are hardly part of the $15 price point or established brands and varietals that have dominated pandemic wine sales.
What about the packaging?
One of the offshoots from the success of canned wine over the past couple of years is aluminum bottles — not a can, but a wine bottle with screwcap closure in various sizes. Chateau Ste. Michelle launched a series of $12 250-ml two-packs in the spring – Pinot Grigio, rosé, sweet white blend, and a fizzy white blend.
Grant Greig, marketing director for Chateau Ste. Michelle, says the wines have have helped the company reach “a new, younger female consumer who’s shown interest in the packaging, brand and chilled wine sipping occasions”. As such, he said, the company has seen “high engagement and rapid sales.” These consumers are a new target for Chateau Ste. Michelle, and they’re looking for what Greig termed “more out of wine experiences, and … new beverage formats and engaging packaging.” Greig goes on to say the company quickly recognized that consumers were moving online, so the “marketing focus was on chilled wine sipping occasions, which references various activities involving proper social distancing with friends. Occasions including backyard BBQ, beach outings, boating and catching up friends over wine.”
This move to online, particularly direct-to-consumer channels, explains the success of Sweet Poppy, a sparkling Muscadine made by regional wine powerhouse Duplin Winery in North Carolina. Duplin is one of the 50 biggest producers in the US and makes more than 600,000 cases annually, despite the fact that most of its wines are non-vinifera.
Duplin nearly sold out of the 4,000 cases of its $15 Sweet Poppy in the six months after the wine’s spring launch. This came despite the closure of the company’s two tasting rooms and slowing retail sales. What helped, says Duplin president Dave Fussell Jr., was that customers knew the brand and know what to expect. In this case, the Sweet Poppy – made with muscadines, vitis rotundifolia, and with 8 percent residual sugar, 10.5 percent alcohol, and a light carbonation – hit the consumer sweet spot.
What the pandemic seems to have done is speed up trends that were already in place, such as the celebrity wine and the search for new formats. But some things never change—the best way to ensure a wine’s success, pandemic or not, is lay the groundwork with research and preparation.
