Monika Elling: Brand Bordeaux Marketing – missing the mark?

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This week, we bring you a #GrapeMoments guest blog article from our US partner Monika Elling, founder and CEO of New York based top specialist luxury good Marketing and Communications agency Foundations Marketing Worldwide. Following last week’s announcement from Bordeaux Wine about the launch of its first ever global marketing campaign, she talks to Paradise Rescued about her assessment of the marketing challenges facing Bordeaux wine and other “old wine world” regions.

<<Challenges continue in the wine business, as “Bordeaux To Launch First Global Marketing Campaign to Address Falling Sales“.

Tradition, in itself, is not enough. As wine consumers are flooded with options, famed wine regions are struggling in a new reality. Case in point, Bordeaux’s move to a global marketing message to drive awareness in key markets, including the U.S.A.

It is also not enough to discuss what has happened with China’s falling sales (predictable equivalent to the dot.com bubble) and the 2013 harvest. It is more realistic to consider some of the following factors, in particular as seen in the United States:

1. Consumer have more options for wine, every day. Old and new wine regions alike are vying for market share, while Sommeliers embrace great wines from any corner of the world. (Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Greece, etc.)
2. Most American consumers have no idea what is actually in a bottle of Bordeaux, and this is true across generations. (Not sure a European Agency understands that Americans choose wines based on varietals.)
3. With few exceptions at the First Growth level and maybe right beneath that, Bordeaux wineries have done little work in building their individual brands.
4. Bordeaux wineries, with extremely few exceptions, do not communicate with the American consumer. How many are on any type of Social Media? How much of that is in English?
5. How many Bordeaux producers actually know their importers/distributors and how their wines are priced in the U.S.?

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Much more insight on this topic, but for now it is enough to say that brand Bordeaux in itself, is too generic for today’s market to be effective in regaining its former foothold. Wineries need to start differentiating what they are all about, have a clear market strategy, then communicate, connect, and compete for the American consumer. And not least of all, offer great wines that over deliver on price in the context of global competition.>>

Thank you Monika. We love the work you do – thank you for your support, writing for us and working with us to bring our unique wine and Paradise Rescued micro-brand to market in the USA.

If you would like to read some more of Monika’s articles, click here for her blog. And if you would like you to hear some more from Paradise Rescued, please subscribe to our newsletter below.

Paradise Rescued has a partnership with Foundations Marketing Worldwide to market our wines and micro-brand in North America.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]