Successful drinks brands tend to create legends which attribute success to thoughtful planning, logical decision making, timely insights and inspirational leadership. This exercise of joining the dots backwards can feel comforting and flattering for those involved in the success, but often disguise the real reasons why a certain product succeeded where others failed. If success has many vocal parents, far less attention is given to the failures – a classic human characteristi

The wine industry has spent much of the past five years debating whether the post-Covid trend of shrinking wine volumes across major consumption markets for wine (beyond those traditional Continental European markets where wine has been in steady retreat for decades) is a cyclical downturn or a structural decline. Similar conversations are taking place across hospitality, retail, media and numerous other consumer-facing sectors as they too face flat or declining sales. When c

Wine has more stories than pretty much any other consumer category on the planet. Ancient vineyards, heroic winemakers and centuries of tradition. And yet, for all of this narrative richness, most wine brands remain stubbornly invisible to most consumers most of the time. So what is actually going on? The case for storytelling is older than marketing itself. Anthropologists have long argued that humans developed language not merely to share information, but to gossip, build

A brand is how we relate to everything we buy - wine included. Whether it’s actively managed is another question. But with every bottle purchased, those cues shape what we choose, why, when, and how. The word brand comes from the Old Norse brandr — “to burn” — the mark seared onto cattle to show ownership. From the start, it meant more than a symbol: it was a promise of quality, reliability, and consistency. We can define as wine brands as: "The total set of associations,

How do you recruit wine drinkers in a declining category…particularly those pesky Gen Zs? In the past few weeks, we have seen two big UK wine launches, both core legacy brands that I have a soft spot for, having worked with them both regularly over the years. Both seem to be trying to crack the same nut: how to bring consumers into the category. Now, I am well known for my rather strong views on all things marketing in wine. So, I did what any responsible marketing strategist

Amongst the trends highlighted by WGSN in their work on retail trends in Asia is solo-fication. More people living alone (not new), but now more people doing things alone: shopping, eating, treating themselves - and doing this deliberately rather than apologetically. It reminded me of a question Felicty Carter and I on our podcast A Question of Drinks: Why isn’t more wine sold in half bottles? When you look at how people are actually behaving, the friction becomes obvious.

Felicity Carter’s Drinks Insider interview with Caitlin Vartain Ward of Bread & Butter is basically a masterclass in what wine marketing should be doing more of: starting with the consumer, rather than shouting harder about vineyards, heritage, soil types and winemaking credentials. Bread & Butter’s “Don’t Overthink It” campaign works because it understands something the wine industry still likes to pretend isn’t true: a lot of consumers find wine stressful. Not because they

I’ve been in trouble again. Apparently telling a wine business to kill half their brands in front of their investors is “confrontational.” I thought it was just being honest and helpful. It did remind me of a suggestion made to me recently at a dinner for a board I sit on, where someone suggested my personal tagline should be: “Never knowingly under-opinionated.” I took it as a compliment at the time. In the cold light of day, I’m starting to suspect it might have been a warn