Where is the wine marketing?

In a world where wine is losing market share for beer, spirits and even soft drinks, we can ask ourselves: where is the marketing of wine?

I guess the answer could be easily found if we trace a parallel with the beer market. It is indeed this comparison that can show us at least some reasons for such a difference in the performance of those two beverages.

Even though there are big holdings behind many famous labels we are used to (i.e. LVMH, Diageo, Pernod Ricard), which are companies with huge year incomes, the wine industry is too fragmented.

Whilst big beer companies (i.e. Inbev, Anheuser Bush) control around 60% of the beer market share worldwide, those wine holdings have only 3% of the wine market.

Samson and Goliath sharing the same spot

I’m not saying that LVMH cannot afford supporting a music festival or a 30-seconds advertisement during prime time.

In fact, what happens is that the brands that belong to those companies are usually luxury products. Therefore, announcing during the Super Bowl is not a part of their marketing strategy.

On the other hand, the majority of wineries works with low profit margins to spend money with marketing.

But all is not lost! A phenomenon happened to the wine sector: the web. More particularly, web 2.0. Today, all important discussions on the sector take place in the web. Thanks to ‘common people’, who usually aren’t professionals of the sector, but who share the passion, the wine has a strong presence in the internet.

It is unnecessary to say that today there is a huge number of blogs, tools, mobile apps and social networks dealing with or exclusively dedicated to wine. More than any other beverage.

The presence of wine in this virtual world is so huge that this year, Izmir, Turkey, will host the 5^th European Wine Bloggers Conference. The American version of this conference will be held in August, at Portland, USA. Not only bloggers, but professionals from all the industry go to these conferences.

This shows that wine has found its own way to make marketing, in a simple, cheaper way and made for who really matters: the consumer.

It is the consumer who makes free marketing for many winemakers whether posting reviews, articles or impressions about wines or wineries.

Wine geeks rule! The industry should thank them

For those reasons, many winemakers and other professionals involved in the supply chain have noticed the strength of internet in the sector. Especially new world producers, who built nice websites and are present in the social networks.

On the other hand, many of them come up short. For instance, did you ever visit the website of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti? Could you imagine it is so weak? Well, actually, I could…

Of course there are other smart ways for marketing wines already going on, but the web presence is a sign that wine has found its niche for marketing. Yes, you can still argue about the lack of marketing in the other medias, but this is a start that can’t be ignored, especially for a conservative sector.

Internet is definitely the most active channel for the wine marketing. There’s a problem with it though: on the web, the audience is free to choose whatever they want to see, unlike other media channels such as cinema, TV or radio. Thus, maybe the web mustn’t the best vehicle to conquer new consumers. But this is another story...