“Change is a habit and you have to get in the habit of it. If you don’t, you will find yourself losing the ability, just as you can lose physical skills. You have to keep your mental muscle loose. You have to keep stretching it”.
Professor Arthur Cullman, marketing professor Ohio State University, as quoted in Trading Up by Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske.
Worldwide, wine packaged in bag-in-box containers has been one of the fastest growing segments of the wine market, catering to consumers who want the convenience and longer shelf life it offers.
In the U.S., box wines have been slow to catch on with a measly 6% market share, and continues to bear the stigma of being cheap and awful, or at least not particularly good. In France bag-in-box has a 9% market share, about the same as the UK. In other countries, though, innovative packages have fared much better. Reportedly, more than half the wine sold in Australia is in boxed form. Box wine market penetration is 42% in Norway, 33% in Sweeden, 25 % in Finland, and 12% in Denmark. And in South Africa more than 21% of exports and 20% of local sales are bag-in-box.
Boxed wine has some major advantages, the biggest being the ability to preserve wine for up to a month after opening. That ability comes from what’s inside the box – typically, there is a bladder-like mylar or plastic bag that deflates as you pour the wine, never allowing any air to contact the contents. This is a huge boon for “glass a day†wine drinkers, or other situations where the remnants of a bottle might spoil before the bottle is finished. No vacuum pumps or expensive argon cartridges are needed – just pour the amount you want from the box, and there’s nothing to worry about.
Tetra Paks (think Juicy Juice) and Tetra Boxes (think cardboard bottle) are also getting more visible. They don’t offer the preservation capabilities of the “bag in box†packages, but they are smaller and are intended for quick consumption.
Take a look at the SPAR Country Cellars 3 litre box designed by Stellenbosch based Haumann Smal design studio. Available as a Red, White or Rose. The grapes are harvested predominantly from vineyards in the Northern Cape where the heat really brings out the fruit flavours of the grapes. Spar has made a big push into liquor retailing with 216 Tops at Spar opened so far, and another 42 opening in 2007.
Maybe it’s time to think outside the bottle!
See also Wine Blogging Wednesday #31 – Box Wines and Non-Traditional packaging: http://www.boxwines.org/articles/wbw-31-box-wines….
By Mike Carter.
Ever had guests arrive at a wine-tasting party with bottles of white wine still at room temperature? My first thought is to stuff them into the freezer where chances are I’m going to forget about it.
Here’s the Cooper Cooler, a gadget that’s designed to chill your warm beverages, but with a twist; this one can also cool your wine bottles too! The Cooper Cooler can get your can your beer cans chilled in 60 seconds and your wine bottles in only 6 minutes.
The Cooper Cooler is very simple to use, just add water, ice cubes and turn it on. The chiller stops automatically when your drink reaches the ideal temperature. And if you’re dealing with a delicate wine, you can also choose the no-spin option. Another option can also warm cold beverages, such as your baby’s bottle of milk or formula, for example.
The Cooper Cooler comes in three versions, in white, silver and the Tailgator, which comes with a household 120V plug and a 12V car lighter plug so you can chill your bottles on the road.
Visit the Cooper Cooler site to find out more.
Thanks for the tip, www.coolest-gadgets.com
By Mike Carter.
Serious wine collectors clearly have a high tolerance for risk as, according to Sotheby’s, some 5% of the world’s most expensive wines are fakes.
There are no definite numbers on how many counterfeits are changing hands, but Serena Sutcliffe, Sotheby’s international wine director, told Decanter magazine that the number of 1945 vintage wines being sold exceeds 1945′s output.
How do you tell the difference between the real and the faux? “The vast majority of counterfeits are drunk with enormous pleasure”, said Sutcliffe. “In fact, that is one way to ferret out a fake: Very old wines are seldom drinkable; fakes tend to be consistently good.”
Source: www.chow.com
According to Brian Reich, Media Director for Cone www.coneinc.com the average website is pretty boring. He asked a group of people recently what they thought were the most exciting things happening in the new media space right now. And he got a range of answers: mobile messaging and advertising, games, social networking, video, even podcasting made the list. Nobody mentioned a website they were blown away by or something innovative that an organization, or even a media company, had done with their site. Sure, all the elements they mentioned live on or launch from a website, but they could just as easily be free-standing (and they have become destination elements for most of the people he talked with).
Apparently his little focus group is right on the money. A new study by the Web Marketing Association found that most website development is not keeping pace with consumer expectations. The results were released along with the results of the WMA’s 2006 Web Awards.
To determine the best sites the WMA examined entries from 97 different industries in seven different categories (design, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting, ease of use, and innovation). The award for Beverage Standard of Excellence went to Leo Hillinger www.leo-hillinger.com who count themselves as one of Austria’s top quality wine producers.
Leo Hillinger stands out because it’s not your usual traditional wine website. It’s modern, innovative and intuitive. It’s focused, easy to navigate, and still manages to deliver some very compelling content.
According to the WMA the best beverage sites are online extensions of the beverage’s brand. They intermingle images, activities and lifestyle themes into a valuable user experience.
Designing focused and engaging sites for the web is not that difficult. Too often we let technology drive our decision making and we forget what its like to be a web user – what information is compelling, how to help someone through the process of completing an activity on our sites, and similar.
So the jury’s out. Modern or traditional? Are wine consumers ready to innovate?
By Mike Carter.
My interest in wine packaging spans nearly a decade, and during this time I’ve rarely seen a design or concept that is so brilliant that it sets the standard. Award winning international design house Turner Duckworth has pulled the proverbial “rabbit out of the hat” with their design for Root : 1.
In the U.S. the Chilean wine category has always lacked a standout, distinctive brand.
A partnership with the Click Wine Group of Seattle, WA and Vina Ventisquero, a Chilean winery, the Root : 1 design tells the story of the original ungrafted Cabernet Sauvignon rootstock, extinct in Europe and now found only in Chile. The rich history of this rootstock is visually linked to the final glass of wine, an image of which is hidden in the vine. As you read the story the root leads you down to where it all begins, beneath the soil. A gardener’s tab creates a unique neck label and emphasizes the horticultural theme.
The bottles were screen printed in Chile by CristalerÃas de Chile, known as Cristalchile. The tag on the neck was printed litho and hand applied. The wine is targeted to consumers that don’t respond to traditional wine marketing but instead look for something that interests them, and the wine price point is from $12-13 USD.
This image does not do justice to the finished product. For a better visual perception of the concept go to the Root : 1 website: www.root1wine.com
With products like these on the shelves, Chilean viticulture must have a bright future!
By Mike Carter.
Comparing wine and the art of winemaking to female beauty is a timeless analogy.
Juno Wines take their inspiration from the Roman Goddess, wife of Jupiter. She was the protector of marriage and women and was associated with childbirth and bounty. This ties in with the imagery on the Juno Cape Maidens Range, paying homage to the work women have put into wine in the past. Tertia du Toit, the artist behind the labels says ”the aim is to create an integrated visual meeting between the predominantly male winemaking traditions and the sensual nature of the wine itself.”
This young South African company has ambitious plans to grow their brand domestically and expand their export markets. Now that’s a challenge, as brand building takes patience – and money. But Juno Wines management team are committed for the long haul and their investment in innovative packaging for the Cape Maidens range is already paying dividends with the brand growing from zero to 50,000 cases in just three years, as well as exporting to Spain, Kenya, UAE, UK, Ireland, USA, Canada and Norway.
Their website is also worth a look: www.junowines.com
By Mike Carter.
“The designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.â€
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (French writer).
For today’s consumer good is not good enough. They are saying: “If you want my business, amaze me! Knock me out! Make an emotional impression I won’t forget.”
Bottlerocket, a innovative retail wine concept in New York’s Flatiron District, aims to do just that by making shopping for wine more intuitive by presenting its inventory by theme. Customers who are looking for a bottle to accompany a take-out meal, for example, can head to the take-out display and find wine recommendations alongside local take-out menus.
Traditionalists can also browse the 365 hand picked wines selected from around the world and organised by country of origin along one wall of the store. A new generation wine shop, Bottlerocket incorporates environmentally-friendly “green” materials, provides online access to wine resources, a wine and cook book reference library, a children’s play area, and offers numerous educational opportunities for its customers.
“Think of me as a consumer advocate,” says Tom Geniesse, Bottlerocket’s enthusiastic founder. “In the course of learning about wine myself, I found shopping for wine to be frustrating. The ubiquitous and overwhelming wall of wine in every store, the inherent complexity of wine itself, the sometimes condescending sales people, the hodge-podge of numbered rating systems, confusing wine labels – I figured there had to be a better way.”
Tom says that “buying wine should be as fun as drinking it” and I think he’s is on to something here – a wine shop that’s user friendly and empowers the wine consumer, one bottle at a time.
By Mike Carter.
Packaging has power – enormous power – over what we buy. The fashions we wear express who we are. Packaging does that for products. We identify with a product because it does for us what we wish it to do. As any brand manager will tell, we buy the “brand promise” and the package carries a lot of that promise.
You are dying to break your shampoo routine, or for some reason cannot find your usual brand, how do you select an alternative? You generally pick a package that appeals to you or draws your attention. And often you do that out of necessity – you don’t have the chance to taste or try most products. The package has to do the selling right there on the spot.
Or next time you visit a country or continent for more than just a quick trend scan, go to a grocery store or a drug store. How do you choose a shampoo, a cereal, a tub of butter, when all of them look unfamiliar and boringly similar?
Ask retail anthropologist Paco Underhill (author of Why We Buy and Call of the Mall) and he’ll likely produce studies and surveys on shelf impact, shopping behaviour and consumer psychology, all showing that it does matter what the box looks like, even when we say it doesn’t.
Brand managers will get excited about the consumer/brand relationships, the brand story, the loyalty built over the years, and about brands act as symbols of trust and proof of quality. They are right, of course, and yes, our daily behaviour proves that, too.
But that’s not really what interests us. Luckily for us, it is often the quirky, the “un-brand”, the under-researched packaging that really startles and stands out.
Some of them may even be, or become, huge international successes, but that is not what impresses us either.
We are looking for the genuinely original. Packaging design that makes you take notice, gasp, think, smile, talk, buy.
By Tuija Seipell www.thecoolhunter.net
The Cool Hunter has become the reference point of choice for the latest in what’s hot tomorrow. The Cool Hunter magazine is launching mid 2007, as well as a TV show and a series of Cool Hunter books.