Ep. 938 Refreshing Your Brand Story For The US Market | wine2wine Business Forum 2021

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This episode is brought to you by Vinitally International Academy, announcing the twenty fourth of our Italian wine Ambassador courses to be held in London, Austria, and Hong Kong from the twenty seventh to the twenty ninth of July. Are you up for the challenge of this demanding force? Do you want to be the next Italian wine Ambassador? Learn more and apply now at viniti international dot com. Talian wine podcast, a wine to wine business forum twenty twenty one media partner is proud to present a series of sessions highlighting the key themes and ideas from the two day event held on October the eighteenth and nineteenth twenty twenty one. This hybrid edition of the business four was jam packed with the most informed speakers discussing some of the hottest topics in the wine industry today. For more information, please visit wine to wine dot net and tune in every Thursday at two PM central European time for more episodes recorded during this latest edition of wine to wine business forum. Good morning. How is everybody today? Date two. Thank you for waiting with us, and we're sorry for the late start, but, we hope we'll make it well worth your time. We're very excited to be here, and thank you to Stevie and the wine to wine team. I'm Michelle Erland. I am in Italian wine Ambassador, through Venitley International. I've always had a deep, deep love for Italian wine. Passed the exam back in two thousand seventeen. And I'm also a senior account executive with Colangelo and Partners Public Relations based in New York City. Hi, everybody. It's great to be here back in Verona for, the second time this year. I feel very lucky to be back again. I'm Juliana Colangelo, I'm VP for California. For calendula and partners. I also joined the Via community and passed the Tania Wine Ambassador exam in in June. So, again, very happy to be back here, and thanks again to Steven the team for having us. Calendula Partners some of you probably know us, but integrated communications agency for fine wine spirits in the US. I'm excited to be here today. So over the last twenty four hours, we've heard a lot of conversations about the new normal. That's even the hashtag of this event. Right? We've talked a lot about what consumers are looking for in their products. They consume how products are being sold through, you know, e commerce, DTC, different channels. We've talked a lot about values and emotions and marketing. So today, you know, as brand communicators and communication specialists. We wanna talk about how to talk about values when it comes to your wine brands, how to integrate value driven communications into your brand strategy. So that's what we're gonna focus on today. As Juliana mentioned, we are going to be hopefully, we're gonna be inspiring you to really look at your brand stories, who are you talking to? And more importantly, are your is your message reaching them? So today, we're gonna first look at the, changing US wine drinker. And then we're gonna do a little bit about updating your brand story to evolve and reach this, drinker. And then finally, we hope that you leave with an understanding of how to harness public perception, your notable successes, and, of course, your company's journey into a coherent story that's really gonna excite, the US consumer. Let's just start. We wanna talk a little about about the changing nature of the US consumer, and we know Robert Millen's gonna talk a lot about this later today. So we really wanna talk more about the values and again how you communicate these values into your communication strategy. But first, just at this stage, a few of the challenges we've all heard about and talked a lot about today and but how they're relevant for our presentation. So competition, there's more brands than ever before, but also competition from beer, heart seltzers, cannabis, it's really important to have a very salient and differentiated brand story. Consumers are changing. We all know that. Millennials, gen x, growing in power for consumption in the US. It's important to understand, is your brand story relevant to those consumers as the consumer demographic changes. Consolidation. Here, we mean consolidation of the media. There's fewer publications out there. A lot of mass public a lot of mass consolidation within publications So there's fewer writers to pitch, and there's more publicists. So it's important to also look at where there are channels where you can communicate your brand story that are owned by you, meaning your social media, your website, and other new forms of emerging media, like influencers and such that have been talked about over the last couple of days. So just some numbers here so that we can see the current situation of what's going on in the United States. These numbers are from Silicon Valley Bank. Every year, they do release the state of the wine industry, and this one came out for twenty twenty one. And what's very interesting to look at here is that this past year, if you look right here is the first year where the boomers actually declined in their wine consumption. And, they are predicting that within the next year, the next cohort, which is the generation x, will move up and pass the boomers as the major wine, buying group. But what's even more interesting and what we need to really pay attention to as we start building out strategies with our messaging and our communications is that within the next five years, you're gonna have another group that's going to pass over forty. So it's about thirty million people are gonna be entering a prime economic part portion of their life while twenty seven million people are gonna the boomers are gonna enter into retirement. So today, we're really gonna focus on the future and that group that's gonna come up in the next five years, the millennials as the major wine con consumers. Speaking of that group and emerging consumers, just to get a little bit more specific here, So two of the key emerging groups for wine consumption are women and younger drinkers. You'll see women are sixty percent of consumption of table wine. Women are especially important in consumption of some major brands for Italian wine. Seventy two and a half percent of consumers of Santa Margarita, pinot grigio are women, not too surprising, but, kind of interesting, as well as brands like Eclodano Domani and some of the other big brands. This is taken from impact wine survey, which mostly looks at retail data. So we'll see more big brands. Sparkling wine as well, is a category where we're seeing more consumption among women. And and as we mentioned, and there's a lot of information out there about the the rise of of the power of the younger consumer. As well. So what do these emerging categories care about and the products they consume and the wines they drink? We're gonna talk a little bit about each of these things. I also wanna emphasize, that not just younger consumers care about these things. I think a lot of people care about these things, but we're gonna speak to them in context of emerging consumers. So first transparency to start quite literally your your label and the package on your wine, younger consumers wanna feel really confident in the products they consume. They spend hours researching what they're gonna purchase. And if they don't feel like they understand what your product is, they feel less confident to purchase. So one example of recent, article from Eric Asimov in New York Times, he wrote about a company called Mary Taylor wines. She's direct importing from France. She's labeling the wines very clearly with the Appalachian and the variety right on the front of the label. So there's no confusion for the consumer about what is in the bottle. We all know that, you know, Italian wine labels, especially can be a bit confusing for the average consumer. So that's one thing around your communications to to think about. Is your package clear to to understand and, and, you inspire in confidence in this consumer. Wine making, we're far off from ingredient labeling everything, although some brands are are starting to do that and and we're seeing more brands doing ingredient labeling, but there's other things that you can communicate when it comes to your winemaking process, talking about what's going on in the vineyards, what's happening in the cellar, anything that makes you unique, in in the winemaking process. These consumers wanna understand how the products are being made. And then Mission driven, this is communicating what you stand for. The CEO of Pernod Ricard recently declared that purpose is the new digital, and she referenced a campaign that absolute vodka did, about sex responsibly, a campaign around consent, and what they saw, in terms of the results, two point five percent increased overall in sales over twelve months following that campaign. I think the the watch out with mission driven marketing is to be authentic because it's really easy to also be perceived as an authentic or, opportunistic with that. Next, convenience. We've talked a lot about these topics. So I won't linger too much here, but it's important in communication to communicate where your product can be found. Having a where to buy page on your website, communicating around where to find your product in your social media, we know there are Tide House laws that prevent wineries from explicitly calling out retailers, but there's other ways to communicate around how and where your product can be can be bought and sold. But also looking at these new platforms, delivery platforms, e commerce as forms of, of, content as well. Thinking about investing with those content platforms for within your marketing campaign and strategy. Alternatively formats, previous speakers talked a lot about pans as a way to democratize the wine industry and bring more consumers And we think that's really key as well. So single serve scans. And then finally health, we know we know that that's become a larger topic for the industry. It's also extremely important for the consumer. Non alcoholic wines, low alcoholic wines continue to rise and popularity, same for spirits and beer. Organic, sustainable. Those things also really matter for the consumer. So those are also messages to think about communicating more clearly and more frequently in your messaging. Now wine compared to these other products and other segments, especially at seltzers is a much more naturally made product. Always has been, but we don't talk about it in that way. So I think there's an opportunity here for the wine industry at large to communicate more around those Alright. So how do we know if your brand's story needs a refresh? So let's first start with what is a brand refresh, right, because we're not up here to tell you you need to change everything about your story because your story is really magical. It's authentic. It's who you are. But what we hope that you can take away from today is that a brand refresh is just some tweaks and adjustment so that your business remains competitive within its current marketplace. In this case, we're talking about the United States. Right? So while we're discussing these objectives and these, takeaways, we want you to think more of an evolution than a revolution evolving with the modern day consumer in the US. So how do you know if your brand story needs a refresh? Number one, outdated. Right? Maybe your story was very innovative innovative ten, twenty years ago. But, you know, the world has changed over those over the decade. But more importantly, I think in the last year, we're here celebrating together after a pandemic, and we have all changed so much in this past year. So you've changed as well. Maybe you have adopted, some sustainability practices. Maybe you've made changes. Maybe you have a new generation that's entering into your your your team. This also should be communicated. So every time you make a change internally within your organization, it's very important that we strategize how to, evolve our story to include this. Inconsistency. If you are playing around with different brand messages and we're not focused on one strong strategy, we know we need to do a brand story refresh to refocus ourselves. And then finally, as we're talking about today, your audience has changed. And seeing these numbers and the shift that's happening in wine drinkers in the US right now, we have to pay attention to how our brand is gonna fit into our target markets lives. So here we go, a step by step guide, to conduct a brand audit in your current messaging. And now we're gonna be very general But Juliana and I are here for the rest of the day. So if you have any questions, we'd be happy to elaborate within each step. But step one, we wanna determine the scope. Right? You want to decide, okay, we're gonna look at this specific cohort. We're gonna look at this specific, you know, the United States is very big. Maybe you want to see how Florida consumers are, reacting to your brand story or California because consumers or New York consumers. It's all gonna be different within the market. Step two, evaluate all your past and existing communications. So go out there, Google yourself, pull some, articles, go on social media, see what people are saying and see how your message is being perceived, out in the market. Step three, I love this one. Collect audience feedback. There's many ways we can do that in this digital day and age. Right? Go online, engage with your customers, see what they're saying on social media. You can also send out surveys to your stakeholders. Right? Your the people, your loyal customers that drink your wine, maybe go through the retailers in your market that are selling your product to get that authentic feedback. You can also go through your own employees within your, organization because see how their perception as of your message because if they're delivering your message, they're a very important piece of this puzzle. Step four, conduct a SWAT analysis, look internally at your strengths and your weaknesses and your brand message. And then look externally at the different opportunities and threats that that, you may have. And finally, create a communi communications plan. And, like I said, I think this is a topic for year because we could talk for two hours about creating the communications plan. But it's important that after you collect all this information, you really strategize in how you're gonna communicate your message to your target market. So the biggest challenge all wine brand brands face is staying relevant to your market. And I think many of you probably understand this, right, after everything we've been talking about. So a few takeaways from today and some final thoughts on how to stay relevant, right, starting with, spend time where your audience spells spends time, right, be out there, be in their world's, you know, be online with them, make sure that if they're getting their wine, we had we had a great e commerce, seminar yesterday. If your target market is buying wine online, guess where you need to be communicating, right, in that space. Connect in ways that your audience wants to connect. Engagement. Engagement is more important than ever before in twenty twenty one, information is not a one-sided stream. So just as much as they want to hear the story and they want to hear the history of your brand. It's important for US consumers who possibly can't come to Italy or have never been to Italy to experience, you know, the the beautiful landscape of your of your country. I mean, I'm lucky I get to come a few times a year. But I think it's just as important to engage with them so that they can see how your wine fits into their lives, how you get your wine on their dinner table. And if they can picture that, then I think the engagement really connects there. Stay aware of what your competitors are doing, but it's important not to copy them. We do this in order to really be able to look internally to see how our story is different. And how we can capitalize on our unique story in order to use that in our communication strategy. And, also, once you find that unique story, I think, you know, taking it to a deeper level. Right? Tradition, innovation, wonderful, but push it forward to really be able to differentiate your your differentiate yourself from your competitors. This is a I love this one because knowing the trends, We this whole seminar, this whole line to line segments have been about all these different conversations that are happening the entire world around Italian wine. So being aware of the trends and also current events within the marketplace, This is so that you can look internally and see. We know climate change is a big, conversation. We know diversity and inclusion. We know sustainability. So this is an opportunity to look in internally and see what are we doing within these sectors or these conversations to be able to insert our brand and insert ourselves into this conversation. Embrace cross industry innovation. So A lot of times, I know in the wine industry, we are looking within the wine industry, but we should never forget to look outside for inspiration. What are other industries doing that we can be inspired by, we can bring back into the wine industry and be the leaders within, you know, with that idea or with that story. And then purpose, align brand decisions with your purpose. So should we open the floor for questions? Or Yeah. Absolutely. We have a a couple case studies as well that I think will help illustrate how some of these things actually play out and practice, but love to first open up the floor for questions. And good morning and good evening to everybody online. Thank you for joining us. Well, thank you so much. This was a really great presentation. I really enjoyed it very much. One thing you talked about was building a communications plan. When you start to think about the many components that that have to come to life to do that, where do you start? And what are the tactics that really help you reach consumers directly? Yeah. That's a great question. I think we're thinking specifically here about the channels that your brand can own. So start with your website, start with your social media. Those are the channels you have the most control over. You can really control the message and the story. Also think about new forms of media, whether that's influencers, also traditional media, earned media. Those are a few of of the key platforms that I would say are are the most critical when it comes to communicating your your brand story, but as we mentioned, and I think there's a couple more conversations on this later today. Retail platforms can be great platforms for communication as well. So thinking about how you can now look at your retail partners as communications partners. Anything to add there, Michelle. I agree with everything Julian said. And I think that the overall idea, for what we just spoke about and going into a communications plan is really be mindful of who you're speaking to and who you're not speaking to because I believe that a bottle of Italian wine should be on everyone's table. That's what I believe. And, you know, going back to we were talking about the labels and maybe some of them not being a little too, difficult for maybe a a new wine drinker, communicating as clearly as possible and your messaging will help those people feel like they're included in this conversation. Right? And we can look at that through many different scenarios. I think another thing to think about if you're trying to attract a new consumer segment is looking for people that can represent your brand that identify with that consumer segment. There was a presentation yesterday about the Latin consumer in the US and the one point three trillion dollar purchasing power they have, and that that that's a largely untapped market for the wine industry, but that it's important to be culturally relevant and really identify and relate to that audience as well. So I'd say also, looking outside of yourself for for partners that can help you communicate to new audiences is key. Talking about, different generation that you find on the market. We often, meet Milan Sumages. Mhmm. While their their clientele is actually maybe generation X or or even older. So we find Sumages that are interesting in white extreme wines let's let's define them. Like, I would say not extreme, but natural. Mhmm. Organic or very, very unique. Okay. On the other side, maybe their clientele is much much more conservative Okay. And they expect something different. So how are you, how are you manage this discrepancy between these two generations on the market? Yeah. I think that's a that's a great point. And, and understand what you're saying completely that a lot of the gatekeepers now are of a different generation than the consumers. But I think that a lot of the the consumers, the older consumers have established references when it comes to wine often, So they might be more likely to to order straight off the list or order what they prefer as opposed to, you know, the natural or esoteric wine that the millennial Psalm is, is trying to push towards them. But if you're finding it difficult to communicate with that trade audience, I think it it's still important to look at your own story and your messaging to think, well, not just evolving it for the consumer, but evolving it to the trade because we know there are often times the gatekeepers. So, I I like this example for AltaJ, they do a campaign called race to the top or they do rock climbing, competitions among some of the ways. So thinking of maybe just fun and creative activities and ways to engage that audience, not necessarily changing your story and becoming a natural wine, but thinking of activities that will be more memorable, more citing for that audience more relatable to them. So I would recommend thinking of it in that way. How can I change my strategy as opposed to, you know, changing who I am? Yeah. Absolutely. And, actually, this is a great opportunity to show some of our case studies. Because in this day and age, you don't always have to go through that gatekeeper. Right? You actually have the ability to speak as a producer directly to the consumer. And, you know, we have a lot of e commerce platforms that are really changing what they're doing. And this is a recent case study that happened in, this past year with benchmark wine dot com benchmark wine group. Is an e commerce site. We actually have the CEO in the room in the back, and, they started actually utilizing some ways to engage with their consumers in a different way through this campaign called the Psalm Set. So this is Tanya Pitts. She is a phenomenal sommelier in San Francisco. She's in the been in the business, I think, for twenty plus years. And what they've been doing is having some one on one interviews with some liaise to talk about, you know, their aha moment in wine. They write letters to the customers to really engage and it And going back to putting wine into their lives, they talk about that first, you know, time that they were with their significant other, had this bottle of wine and and, you know, just changed their life forever. But A lot of e commerce platforms now, wide dot com, we spoke about yesterday, are giving the opportunity for producers to have a virtual tasting and get in front of the consumers directly. So I also know exactly what you mean about the esoterics with the millennial songs. We're both millennials, but, I think that there's so many different avenues of communication that you can take to reach the consumer. And another example, and just to expand on that, I think when the Salmoyais meeting the consumer in their home, they can be more tailored with the approach and actually meet the consumer where they're at. So another case study here is the separate share, which is a virtual events platform where Salmoyais are hosting virtual events with consumers, corporate settings, birthday parties, bachelor parties, at home, and tailoring the wine the wine list, to to their customer. But what's key here, the wine needs to be available on ecomm. So it also comes down to to availability, but also meeting the consumer where they're at, engaging with them in different formats. And I think like Michelle mentioned, there's more ways than ever to to communicate more directly to to the consumer also. So I have a question regarding to, like, intercultural intelligence. Like, for example, what kind of advice you will give to, like, Italian producers, when they want to communicate to the market market. So what do they need to pay attention to, what do they need to avoid? Thank you. I think one thing is is start internally and and look at your your team and think about if you have anyone on your team that represents that audience that you wanna communicate to. And before you go directly with out with a marketing campaign to a specific consumer audience, do some research and and some real introspective thinking, and, like, back to Michelle's slide about about planning and SWAT analysis, and speak to people who represent that community. So before you go out there and try to talk to them, really look internally and have some conversations with someone who represents the audience in that demographic. So I understand that for Italian winery, that might not be as easy with internally with who's on your staff, so maybe thinking about your partners around the world, maybe there's an importer you work with, or a close, you know, member of the trade, a Somoye, a friend. So look around your community and and and do some research and have some some good, you know, conversations before you think about how to approach that audience. That that's one thing. I would say to start with. And I think that's a good segue into this last case study we have. So this is an example of a purpose driven campaign, that was launched by Murphy Good in March of twenty twenty. You know, the pandemic was that still at a, you know, all time high. Employment was also, difficult and challenging for many people. So they launched this campaign called a really good job, and it actually was a campaign. They did ten years ago in two thousand and eight when the economy was at an all time low, and they decided to bring it back because they felt like the country was in a similar state of people feeling a little bit, you know, down. So This campaign provides the opportunity for people anyone to submit a video to win a job to work for Murphy Good winery for a whole year on a salary of ten thousand dollars a month with housing and unlimited wine supply. So pretty attractive offer. And they got a ton of engaging content through this campaign, and ultimately, too, was about opening, breaking down barriers and opening doors to people to enter the wine industry. So back to that earlier point about diversifying internally first before we're also looking externally. They wouldn't accept our application. So Any other questions? Yeah. There is a question from home, Andrea. Hi. You mentioned the challenge of media consolidation. How do you see new digital platforms that allow brands to tell their story directly to consumers? First of all, Chao Andre. He's, joining us from Portugal, I think. With consolidation in the media, I think, we've been speaking about that yesterday and today. And the first two case studies, I think show that Steve yesterday, right spoke about picks. So what's happening is the e commerce world and the content communication world are merging. And so we need to really be more mindful in, how we're utilizing our e commerce partners. Do we have our own e commerce site? I think that's really with the consolidation for the media. I would add to that getting Orange Media is is a lot easier when you have something different to say. I mean, this campaign garnered national press and and in today's show and NBC and CNN and Forbes and all the major publications because it was fun. It was different. It was brand specific. And it was a unique campaign. So also when you're thinking about reaching the press, you can't go out there with what's on your website. You have to create a story. So look at, you know, your brand, like, we talked about earlier, look at what's going on in the world, what people care about, and create a story out of your brand that is relevant to what people are thinking about and what people care about right now as well. So I'd say with with approaching media to thinking about those things is really key. Anything else? Any other questions? Well, thank you everyone. It was such a pleasure to see many familiar faces. And if you have any questions, we'll be around all day. So Thank you, everybody. It's good to be here. Thanks for listening to this episode of Italian wine podcast brought to you by Vineetli Academy, home of the gold standard of Italian wine education. Do you want to be the next ambassador? Apply online at benetli international dot com. 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