How to do wine marketing well
- Lulie Halstead
- Jan 1
- 2 min read
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 don’t care, but because there is too much choice, too much unfamiliar language, too much quiet judgement, and too much pressure to know what things mean.
So Bread & Butter does something very clever. It simplifies, without dumbing down and that distinction matters. “Good wine is wine you like” is not anti-wine. And frankly, wine could do with a lot more of that.
I also loved the discussion about distinctive brand assets (an obsession of mine!) especially the ampersand. Not just as a logo flourish, but as a proper brand device: a way to connect occasions, pairings, moods, and high-low moments in a way consumers can immediately understand.
It’s a neat reminder of what effective brand building actually looks like in practice:
1. Clear consumer insight
2. Distinctive assets
3. Occasion-led thinking
4. Simple messaging
5. Consistent execution
All the unfashionable basics that, annoyingly, tend to work.
There is also a very sharp point about low/no alcohol packaging: if consumers and merchandisers are confused at shelf, that is not a consumer problem. That is a brand design problem. Again, consumer empathy rather than internal logic.
We spend a lot of time in wine asking how to recruit younger drinkers. This episode gives a pretty good answer: make wine easier to choose, easier to understand, and easier to fit into real life.
And perhaps stop assuming people are lying awake desperate to decode your vintage hierarchy.
Listen to the episode here:
