Pride of place

In 2006 Jacob’s Creek will be 30. To celebrate this milestone, Pernod Ricard has treated the Australian brand to a major makeover aimed at capturing a slice of the elusive £5-and-above market

As any of us approach the big three-oh-dear-God-I’m-closer-to-40-than-20 birthday party, most of us start taking a good look at ourselves. “What happened to that idea of quitting the rat race and retraining as a potter?” you might ask yourself. Or “Where’s that gym membership card?” “Perhaps a repackaging in the shape of a new wardrobe wouldn’t go amiss?” you might ponder. Indeed, in these times of air-brushing, media spin, marketing and branding, it’s possible that, as you approach 30, you might be in need of a bit of a relaunch. And this, it seems, isn’t any different if you are a wine brand, either.

Jacob’s Creek – the world’s best-known wine brand, it is claimed – turns the magic 30 this year. This grandaddy of Australian wine brands hit our shelves in 1976 – the same year that Concorde went on its first commercial flight, Jimmy Carter became president of the US and, perhaps most significantly, former Spice Girl Emma Bunton was born. Aviation history, American politics and school discos haven’t been the same since.

In honour of this auspicious birthday, brand owner Pernod Ricard is spending a cool £2 million on rebranding the range in the UK alone. There will be TV advertising, a funky all-singing and all-dancing website (in a bid to keep up
with the “yoof”, no doubt) and both on-trade and off-trade promotions.

Increasing value share
Despite reaching a ripe old age, the brand isn’t afraid to take on a challenge. The basis of the campaign (and the aim of the brand over the next few years) is to take the average consumer spend on Jacob’s Creek wines over the magic
£5 mark.

“Value share is very important to us,” explained Patrick Venning, head of marketing for wines at Pernod Ricard UK (PRUK) at the campaign’s launch. “We know that wine is a repertoire purchase, so firstly it’s about getting your wine into that repertoire and then it’s about encouraging consumers so they pay more than £5 on more occasions for that brand. That is our aim for Jacob’s Creek.”

Of course that shouldn’t be achieved at the expense of volume sales, and there’s the challenge. “Price is a key purchase criterion for New World wine buyers,” Venning confirmed. “It is a differentiator used to select from a repertoire of brands and denotes both the quality and the value of promotion.”

The aim the team set themselves, therefore, was to build on the existing Jacob’s Creek brand values but make them more distinctive to Jacob’s Creek, thereby differentiating it from its New World competitors. The target audience is “brand dependents”: those New World and Australian wine drinkers who stick to what they know and spend on average £4.40 a bottle or £6.96 for a special occasion. To achieve this objective, the chosen route was to reposition the brand from being Australian to being from the heart of the Barossa Valley, from the actual place Jacob’s Creek (yes, it does exist), and from being merely a reliable wine purchase to being seen as a crafted and quality wine.

Welcome to the Creek
The new TV campaign had to establish a personality for the brand and enhance its quality credentials. The result is the “Welcome to Our Place” adverts, which focus on the vineyard at Jacob’s Creek in the Barossa in order to root the brand in an actual place. “Through revealing the passion and pride behind the brand, we hope to inspire people to be more confident in their wine drinking,” said Venning. The advert will be shown on all ITV channels, C4, Five, E4, More4 and the Sky network; it is hoped that by the end of the initial three-week burst, some 72% of people in the key sales regions of the Midlands and London will have seen it at least once. This element of the integrated campaign will take the biggest chunk of the budget (£1.6m).

The Welcome to Our Place strategy will also be taken online, with the launch of a new website and online advertising in the spring. “The internet is increasingly a point of reference for consumers looking to learn about wine,” confirmed Venning. “It is a medium that can deliver a real depth of message and it gives the opportunity for consumers to interact with and really experience the brand. The site is all based around the place Jacob’s Creek, and it will reflect whatever the current weather and seasons and state of the vines are at any particular time of the year. We are eventually also working towards having an interactive wine-tasting section.” The team has confirmed that further online presence will come in the form of online advertising from this month, which will target food, wine and lifestyle sites.

Other promotions
Given the new emphasis on provenance and quality, the man behind the wine is also to be brought to the fore in the new campaign. Phil Laffer, the winemaker for Jacob’s Creek, is to be a significant part of the consumer PR offensive, details of which will be released next month.

The below-the-line promotions are also set to emphasise the quality and provenance of the brand, taking the form of a competition to win trips or free flights to Australia. This will take the form of posters and table-cards in the on-trade and neck tags in the off-trade, all designed to drive rate of sale on the premium range (single-serve bottles, sparkling wines and the reserve tier).

After this initial burst of brand activity, the second wave will begin in July, with a whopping £3m budget behind it. The finer details of this have yet to be confirmed, but it will again be on TV and online and will continue to emphasise the quality and provenance of the brand.

Now that’s what I call a relaunch. Happy 30th birthday, Jacob’s Creek.  db  May 2006

Vital Statistics:

• Jacob’s Creek sells 9m cases worldwide
• It is the number-one Australian wine
• Jacob’s Creek is the number-one sparkling wine brand in the UK
• It hit the 1m case mark in the UK in 1986
• Jacob’s Creek expects to sell 4m cases in the UK this year
• In 2004 the brand began its sponsorship of Friends in the UK