Frontera targets millennials with ‘after dark’ range

Chilean wine brand Frontera is hoping to crack the lucrative US millennial market with the launch of a new ‘After Dark’ range, tailoring its labels to suit this demographic’s tastes.

Frontera’s After Dark range, comprising a red blend named After midnight and a white blend named Moolight, will be launched this autumn.

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Moonlight is described as a “semi-sweet, faintly effervescent” Moscato-based blend, while After Midnight is a Cabernet Sauvignon-Syrah blend, rounded out with a touch of Merlot.

“Frontera wines have always stood for quality, affordability, variety and fun, shared with a sense of social responsibility”, said Ed Barden, director of marketing at Excelsior Wines, which distributes the brand in the US.

“With millennials projected to surpass baby boomers as America’s largest generation in history, it is time to recast Frontera and position this legendary wine brand for even greater success and enjoyment by successive new generations over the next 30 years.”

Each label will feature an additional “after dark” tagline, which the producer said was a “nod to the younger generation for whom the day starts to come alive at night.”

Its label will also seek to highlight the winemaking methods behind each blend, with each bottled labeled as a “night harvested blend”, with grapes harvested in the cool of the night.

While this is typical to the production of many wines, in particular aromatic whites, it’s rarely highlighted at a consumer level.

In keeping with research that suggests millennials are more receptive to dark labels, the design of each bottle will feature a black background overlaid by a depiction of the Andes Mountains, traced in pale gold.

According to Frontera, black labels registered a 29% volume increase in sales during 2015 compared to cream or white labels, with its new range also said to be the first “dark label” wine to enter the US $4 to $7 sector. Both wines will retail at $6.

Frontera’s 1.5-litre range of single varietal wines are also set to get an ‘after dark’ makeover. Launched in the US in the early 1980s, its 1.5-litre formats will, from summer 2016, feature an enhanced image of the Andes Mountains against a cream background to “evoke a heightened sense of place and origin”.

Frontera’s After Dark range will be supported by a marketing campaign that will include geo-targeted social media ads and partnerships with the Ibotta in-store shopping app and online delivery services such as Drizly, as well as retail promotions and a digital ad campaign targeting social media.