"I'm the man in the box, buried in my…"

I’ve got a client that makes, among other things, wood stains and finishes for outdoor use. Their marketing efforts are obviously very skewed toward men, including the magazines in which they advertise. Each year I spend a couple of weeks putting together ad campaigns for these products, and every year it’s the same stuff, recycled, reworked and regurgitated. So one year, in an effort to pull them out of their conservative slumbers I came up with the following ad: A woman in a bikini is laying down and sunbathing on a gorgeous deck, and sitting next to her are gallons of said product. The headline reads, “Her cans, our cans—both look great on a deck.” Needless to say, my boss pulled that concept from the presentation despite the fact that an ad like that, placed in the right magazines would no doubt pump up sales for our client’s products. Never mind thinking outside the box here, I couldn’t even pry the box open a little.

The wine industry is, unfortunately, no different. At a time when the younger generation is opting for wine instead of beer more than ever, so-called marketing gurus are missing the boat. Forget beauty shots of vineyards in your ads—think concert sponsorships. Forget snore-fest shelf talkers—think text message trivia contests. Forget the stale blog with the dude’s-nose-in-a-wine-glass photo—think viral word of mouth. Organizations like Wine 2.0 are actually forward-minded enough to know that technology is the wave that needs to be ridden here, but I challenge marketers to stop riding waves and start causing them. Have the balls to step outside the tamed lion’s arena and into the mayhem, because THAT is where you will find your new loyal customers. And if your market research team of forty-somethings finds your ideas “risqué” or “lacking in sophistication” well then you’ll know you are on the right track.

Tagged as: wine marketing