Good Grape Wine Company

October 1 2006

A Bottle of Red, a Bottle of White, A Bottle of Liquor for TV Tonight

Perhaps even more difficult then marketing wine is marketing spirits—vodka, gin, and the like. There are no tasting rooms for most spirits brands—save for some whiskey in Kentucky—and there is significantly less romanticism owing to the actual beverage. Certainly there are no decorous vines to dapple the landscape and evoke sprightly visions of a lifestyle.

Spirit consumers are mercurial, finicky, status-sensitive and narrowcasted thin slices of demographic segments.

If you’ve been in a nightclub anytime in the last twenty years and shouldered into a throng of people at the bar then you know that vodka—seemingly tasteless and odorless—is frequently called by name—a Grey Goose and Red Bull, for example, is a different drink to a different person then a well vodka Gimlet, for example. Status can be manufactured and the Skyy Vodka of my day can be quickly replaced by something newer and more interesting.

Being accountable for the success of a new vodka, with quintuple distillation, made from a rare starch free potato from the nether regions of the Czech Republic is a simple enough proposition in order to tell a story, but usually there is no boutique to it—not as much artisan and more manufactured mystery—except in the Scotch trade where 60 year old barrels of scotch seem to materialize every year in order to make a special “Reserve.”

Given this, the conundrum is: how do you get consumers to identify brand attributes in a market era that plays to wines strengths, but nor liquor—authentic and artisan.

I think the easiest answer has to be if your brand can’t satisfy all of the markets demands for authentic and boutique then you should associate your brand with people that are deemed to have these attributes. This is age old and certainly no revelation, but rarely is it done effectively. Wilford Brimley and oatmeal notwithstanding, however.

This makes the Grey Goose Iconoclasts series all the more interesting. Featured in Food and Wine magazine and presented on the Sundance Channel, these shows are hour long documentaries developed by Grey Goose Entertainment that pair two seemingly disparate celebrities—like Eddie Vedder, the lead singer from Pearl Jam, and Laird Hamilton, world class surfer and American Express pitchman. Or, Dave Chappelle, comedian, and Maya Angelou, author and activist.

Without the benefit of having seen the new season that starts on October 26, I can only say that the pairings of celebrities is intriguing—intriguing to the extent that they may be pulling off the osmosis based subtle influence that the Iconoclasts series is surely trying to achieve.

I mean, honestly, Alice Waters of restaurant Chez Panisse fame and Mikhail Baryshnikov? Iconoclasts certainly!

I’m not advocating wineries do this sort of marketing because I think there’s enough marketing fodder for every winery to tap that would already resonate with consumers, but I sure would like to see an Iconoclast series that pairs a couple of wine industry titans—how about Robert Mondavi, or Robert Parker to pair with this series on Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel?

Check out the web site, in advance of the season 2 premiere here.

I will be pouring a glass of wine, though I’m certain Grey Goose would prefer that I quaff a cocktail.

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