What can Taylor Swift teach the wine trade about consumers?
As global sales decline, we need to get better at forging a powerful connection with our audience, something the Shake it Off singer has in spades, says industry expert.
Speaking at the Pinot Noir New Zealand 2025 event held earlier this month in Christchurch, Dan Simms, founder of wine festival Pinot Palooza, held up pop star Taylor Swift as an example for wine brands looking to develop a loyal following.
Sims took to the stage to argue that the biggest misstep in wine right now is that “we see our customers as ‘consumers’ and not people.”
“We don’t need to educate,” he told an auditorium packed with producers, winemakers and media. “We need to empower”.
Time to do away with snobbery
Continuing, Sims said: “Taylor Swift doesn’t talk about her ‘consumers’. She has fans, an audience and a connection.”
“She [Swift] doesn’t care that her fans don’t know as much as she does about how her music is made or how her live shows are put together.”
“Your customers are also your people,” he added. “And you need to consider them with as much care as you do your vineyard.”
Points at the expense of utility
“We’ve been too focused on points at the expense of utility,” Sims argued. “Occasion is everything. Experience is everything.”
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For this reason, instead of bigging up wine scores at Palooza, Sims encourages guests to think about wine “in terms of occasions like date night, picnic party, hump day etc”.
And the strategy seems to be paying off with Pinot Palooza attracting more than 15,000 guests in 2024, 55% of which were under the age of 35.
Pinot Palooza launched in Melbourne in 2012 before rolling out across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The notoriously unstuffy consumer festival is entirely dedicated to Pinot Noir and is described by Sims as “the world’s biggest Pinot party”. A stand-alone Palooza event was staged in Christchurch this February, as part of the varied and in-depth Pinot Noir NZ 2025 event.
Gates not fences
Echoing Sims’ cry to put an end to wine snobbery was Nigel Greening, owner of premium New Zealand producer Felton Road. Greening added that critic scores and certifications “are all fences when what we really need are gates…”
“We need to put an end to the tedious snobbery and pretention and start speaking the language of our future consumers,” he said.
Read more in our article on Felton Road’s transformative new approach to fine wine.
And for more insight on how Taylor Swift is impacting the economics of wine, check out our analysis here.
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