Home truths

The marketing team behind Valdivieso swallowed their pride and asked for some frank opinions on their brand.  The result is a very sexy bottle of wine, says Chris Orr

THERE ARE SOME facts in life that you have to face up to.  For example, it’s a fact that if Eddie Irvine is in a bar, you can more or less kiss goodbye to any chances of pulling.

It’s also a fact that Posh Spice isn’t remotely posh, wealthy but not posh, that Prince Charles doesn’t stand a chance of ever becoming King and that, no matter how hard you try, your father-in-law will never truly love you like a son – thank God.

It’s also a fact that when you rebrand a successful product in the wine industry, somewhere along the line you will be forced to face some fairly unpleasant… er …facts.

And when you re-label, sometimes you have to face the most unpleasant fact of all – that for the past goodness knows how many years, you may well have been peddling a first class product wrapped up in second- or thirdclass packaging.

Valdivieso is the perfect case in point. In 2001, the brand’s owners and their agents in London, Bibendum, decided to take radical action to revitalise what they thought was potentially a very successful brand.

The company had already begun to invest significantly in improving the vineyards and viticulture ($2m to date), and last year it brought in Brett Jackson as winemaker, giving him carte blanche to revamp and revitalise what was increasingly being seen as a lacklustre product inside the bottle.

It made sense, therefore, to do the same with the outside and to take a good, long, hard – and ultimately critical – look at what the range encompassed.

As decisions go, it was quite a unique one. Valdivieso had been a considerable success up to a point. Sales had risen 70% between 1997 and 2002, and the brand was retaining market share within the Chilean category. It was still in the top four brands, with a 9.1% share of the Chilean market and more than 149,000 case sales.

But there was a feeling that it wasn’t actually going anywhere.  "We were essentially holding our own in the Chilean market," claims Scot McCrae, brand manager at Bibendum for Valdivieso, "with what we regarded as an outdated proposition. But we felt there was potential for Valdivieso to be the number one brand, and to do that we had to question where we were going and what we were doing."

At the end of 2001, says McCrae, the company began some initial brainstorming as to what it needed to do, not just to maintain market share, but rather to drive it forward and upwards.

Early the following year the company put the case for a repositioning and redesign to a series of agencies and by July of that year had appointed Interbrand to focus on the identity and packaging.

This bit alone was something of an eye-opener, claims Caroline Ewing, marketing manager for Bibendum.  "I was amazed at how many of the agencies we put the project out to were completely off the mark – just hadn’t a clue really."

The crucial first move was to establish what the brand wanted to do and give it a distinct, tangible identity.  "We knew we faced strong competition," explains McCrae, "but essentially there is no clear branded leader covering all the price points and all the relevant channels.

We felt that was key to grabbing the opportunity to create a mainstream ladder brand within Chile."  So far so good. McCrae looks slightly embarrassed when he runs through the next part of this phase.

"It sounds a little cheesy but we had to put our brand identity in words and this is what we came up with," he explains, sheepishly pointing to a single paragraph on a piece of paper in front of him.

"Senor Valdivieso is a larger than life character who lives his life to the full. He is a lover of all good things and his enthusiasm for his wine and country is contagious.  His enormous experience and integrity as a winemaker is equalled by his passionate belief that his wines should be enjoyed in the spirit in which they were created.

His warm and exuberant personality is reflected in the Valdivieso range."  Anyone who has ever sat through a repositioning meeting will be only too aware of how necessary the above "brand identity" paragraph is in anchoring customer and design service providers to the same basic core values. But it doesn’t make it any less cheesy or vomit-inducing when you’re forced to read it out in public.

The next move was to work through a series of creative discussions and consumer research programmes, comparing the Valdivieso brand with other brands in the field, and trying to assess what the consumer actually wanted.  This research alone threw up some interesting details.

For Valdivieso the conclusions were that simple packaging, in the mind of the consumer at least, equals trust; that price points are almost entirely tied in to occasion; that males are more interested in the technical heritage of a wine and its ability to add gravitas to them and the occasion they have bought the wine for; and that packaging should not be gimmicky, but needs to be safe, reliable and trustworthy.

Which is all probably news to the makers of Old Git, but then there are exception to every rule.  Once these findings had been taken on board the design team got to work and came up with a range of possibilities, all of which were tried on a series of focus groups.

Watching the recordings of these sessions, you have to feel sorry for the teams at Bibendum and Valdivieso.  It’s never particularly pleasant having participants pour unparalled levels of scorn upon the packaging that you’ve been comfortably using for the last decade.

From "Seventies Starsky and Hutch" through "It looks like knocked off gear" to "Oh my god", the comments on the old Valdivieso packaging must have been somewhat demoralising.

But the plus point was that the new packaging alternatives were seen to be a vast improvement, and hit many of the right buttons.  The result, in range and packaging terms, was an entirely new Valdivieso.

The range was simplified from over 30 offerings to just 12, and the packaging completely redesigned to offer two linked presentations, one for £5.99 and under, and one for the premium range that runs up to £15.99.

"We feel pretty confident that it’s going to do the business," explains McCrae.  "We’ve already had a lot of interest from potential new listings and we feel incredibly bullish about the possibilities for the brand."

Six months after the new packaging has been launched, there is still no hard data to indicate whether the project has attained the boost in sales or listings that the crew at Valdivieso hope for.

But there are some positive signs. In Sainsbury, for example, the brand saw a 50% rise in like for like with its £6.99 Reserve Caberenet Sauvignon (during an unpromoted period), and similarly the £4.99 Merlot saw a 50% rise in like for like sales at Tesco.

There’s also a fascinating and illuminating piece of info that, even if the brand fails to achieve its goals, will alone have made the entire exercise worthwhile.  "When we did the consumer research as to what were plus points for women versus men, the rather hackneyed adage emerged that women like to go for a ‘softer’ side of wine, romance etc," explains Ewing, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"But when we showed women in the group the new packaging, which is quite masculine, they went weak at the knees for it. To quote one lady, if it were a man, she’d drag him home for dinner."

So it’s not pretty flowers on bottles that appeal to women, but rather raw, dirty, sweaty, masculine sexiness that appeals? "Looks like it," comments Ewing.  Very interesting indeed.