Friday’s class with Terry
Wheatley got me thinking about my wine personalities. I found the Middle Sister
brand to be incredibly innovative and fun and it made me wonder why we don’t
use more human personality traits when marketing wine?
Marketing wine is faced
with many similar challenges as perfume: the marketer must convey a sensory
experience to the prospective customer, who (for the most part) cannot smell
the perfume before unwrapping the packaging and opening the bottle. And so they
appeal to human emotions, crafting stories to convey the qualities
of the woman who embodies the scent in the bottle: alluring, adventurous, tough,
mysterious, romantic, and so on.
When choosing what wine to buy, I
tend to think of the context in which I will be drinking it or what I will be
feeling/want to feel:
- Will I be sitting on the sofa on Sunday evening lamenting the end of the weekend (Cabernet Sauvignon)?
- Will I be getting ready for a night out with my girls (Sauvignon Blanc)?
- Will I be sitting at the kitchen counter doing homework (Pinot Noir)?
The article for Friday's class (Debunking Critics' Wine Words: Can One Distinguish the Smell of Asphalt from the Taste of Cherries?) would seem to support some kind of change in how wine is marketed to consumers. The author, Roman Weil, finds that:
"Wine consumers cannot match critics’ descriptions of wines with the wines themselves."
This finding calls into question the premise of marketing wine based on these descriptions (e.g. black fruits, new oak, cassis, green apple, etc.). Why use these markers if consumers can't tell them apart?
And so, rather than these smell and taste descriptors or advice to ‘Drink with
chicken/fish/beef’ on the label, I would find it much more helpful if labels
carried a ‘Drink when feeling excited/nostalgic/zen.’
This is what I'm actually solving for. Not fruity, not low in tannins, not high in vanilla.
To end, and just for fun I'll leave you with the question: what is your wine
personality?
Try this quiz.
Unsurprisingly, given that it's Sunday, I’m a Cab.
Two GSB Alumna have founded a perfume start-up based upon "moods" for what to wear- thinking of fragrance as a fashion item. It falls within your recommendations so wanted to be sure you knew of them: www.pinrose.com
ReplyDeleteThis is great! Thank you for sharing Seun. I'm a Cab too (and will be buying a cab when I next go to Trader Joe's).
ReplyDeleteI really liked the premise behind your post. When I go into a wine store / supermarket I am overwhelmed and confused by the amount of choice on offer. When I finally narrow down my choices I am even more confused by the taste descriptions on the back of the bottle. If there were descriptors like, 'drink when you're feeling excited' I would definitely take a chance on the wine (it would be more meaningful to me!).
This is so fun, Seun. I'm also a Cab, which makes we wonder if we all wanted to island hop around the Med? For me, wine is less about mood or food pairings and always about place. If I'm outside or in a sunny locale indoors, I usually pick a white. If I'm in New York and it's winter, I almost always have a Cab. I don't know if weather commonly predicts one's choice of wine, but it seems to be a factor by the test, as well.
ReplyDelete