November 10, 2011
When it comes to wine branding getting the attention of your consumers first is vital. The best strategy a wine brand can employ to differentiate itself amongst the competition is to invest in a professional brand identity and wine packaging design.
Here are seven strategies to better wine branding, as published in WBM November 2011.
1. Tell your story
Telling your story should be the first place you start when it comes to branding your wine. A strong story sets the foundations for your brand and creates a concept or theme to focus on. It should instantly convey the story of what a consumer can expect once they’ve opened the wine.
Asking such questions as ‘Why did you launch your brand?’ ‘What’s the significance/history behind its location?’ ‘What’s your passion?’ ‘Where are you going?’ is a great starting point to writing your special story.
Having a strong concept behind your brand enables the audience to engage, create an emotional connection to your brand and build brand loyalty.
2. Invest in a brand identity
As you know, a brand identity is more than just a wine label. A brand identity captures the essence of a brand, its story and personality. A brand identity encompasses a brand’s name, logo, colour palette, typeface, imagery, packaging and brand communications.
Upon seeing your brand name and brand identity, the consumer should understand who you and what you can provide them. It should stand out and capture their attention. And most importantly, it should reflect who you are as a winery.
3. Write a design brief
When you’re dealing with a graphic design consultancy, it’s vital to write a detailed design brief prior to starting a project.
There are three reasons for this:
- It ensures that you as a business/brand owner or manager know exactly what you want to achieve from your project.
- It ensures your design consultancy has a clear direction about what you need from your project.
- It acts as a point of reference for your designer, giving them key areas to focus on.
This means less time, therefore less money, is spent on the final result giving you more value for your investment.
Download our Graphic Design Brief.
4. Consistency is king
Inconsistency will stop a wine brand in its tracks every time. Ensure you portray a professional image to your potential and existing customers with consistent brand communications from your wine packaging right through to your corporate stationery, tasting notes, point of sale and invoices.
A style guide is a great tool to ensure consistency. It’s like an instruction manual for your brand identity. It’s a valuable tool when dealing with third-party companies and staff to ensure your brand identity is used consistently across all brand communications. For example, if your corporate colour is very distinctive then defining your corporate colour in a style guide is invaluable when working with various printers and suppliers
5. Innovative wine label and packaging design
Consumers are spoilt with choice today more than ever, so they expect the unexpected when it comes to packaging and branding. They expect to see innovative wine packaging from die cut labels to screen-printing designs directly onto bottles and pewter labels.
Wine packaging must consider the capsule to the back label, the entire package should be designed with the consumer, the wine and the brand in mind.
The rise of using QR codes on wine labels is an ideal way to engage the consumer. You can take them to your website, read tasting notes or watch a video about the wine. There are so many options available to customize the codes to reflect your branding and make it part of the design.
Screen-printing directly onto the bottle is also better for the environment, no trees are used during the process and minimal heat is used reducing your carbon footprint.
Our rebranding for Gemtree Vineyards’ 08 White Lees Shiraz used screen-printing to position the range as a premium wine brand and to create a sense of exclusivity with the consumer.
6. Leverage social media
Social media is more than just Facebook and Twitter. Social media provides wine brands the ability to interact with consumers, creating a dialog that builds long-term relationships. Once this relationship is built, these loyal wine consumers will become important brand ambassadors, creating awareness and promoting your wine brand.
Social media also offers one of the most cost-effective forms of winery advertising available – the power of word-of-mouth. From the social network sites to the ability to share a video, social media allows wine brands to reach out to multiple people through a single individual. Incorporating social media into your marketing mix is an important step to expanding your consumer base.
7. Building customer loyalty
You’ve captured the consumer’s attention, have them interested in your products and even signed them up to your mailing list. Now what? Continue a relationship with these customers; this is paramount to building a strong wine brand.
To build loyalty with your customers you must continue to engage with them. You can do this through direct marketing. From monthly e-newsletters to quarterly hard copy newsletters, direct marketing is essential in maintaining and building the consumer/brand relationship. As previously mentioned leveraging social media sites is a great way to build customer loyalty and long-term relationships.
Wine branding can be challenging at times but that’s half the fun. Think about your unique story and ways you can stand out from the crowd by making your branding different and more memorable – and why people should pay for the value you offer.
We Create Design Solutions is an Adelaide-based brand design consultancy passionate about strategy – not just pretty pictures!
If you want to work with a creative team who can work one-on-one with you to deliver highly personalised, innovative and strategic brand identity design, brand communications, graphic design, logo design and wine label design solutions, get in touch with us today.
Ready to take your brand further? We are.