Would you like fries with your wine?

Following a bit of a rant in my previous blog about the Australian wine industry, I was wondering how to start Part 2 (a more structured look at the industry), when this little gem hit my inbox:

Someone in the Australian wine industry had called New Zealand Sav Blanc ‘the McDonalds of wine.’

If you are in the business of selling products to consumers, then comparing a competitor to McDonalds is a compliment, not a sledge.  There is none better than McDonalds at understanding the purchasing behaviour of consumers.

If you feel that your industry competitor is just as good, it might explain why they are kicking butt in the Australian market with the following figures:

• -          39% of all white wine now sold in Australia is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
• -          Of the top 20 Sauvignon Blanc’s sold in Australia 17 are from New Zealand.

In the same article someone reasoned that New Zealand Sav Blanc is successful because 95% of Australia drinkers are not discerning.  Exactly.  So why try and market your own wines to us, as if we are?  That was the point of my previous wine blog.  The average consumer doesn’t understand what you are saying.

So perhaps the Australian wine industry could use McDonalds as a case study for learning what drives consumer behaviour.

Social Chatter

Speaking of behaviour; I keep hearing that the Australian wine industry is an effective user of social media.  Something that is very topical amongst Australian small business at the moment – social media versus ‘real work’.

The wine industry is certainly an active user of social media; but I wouldn’t say most of it is effective, as far as engaging consumers are concerned.  The industry just seems to talk (sledge) amongst itself.

I’d like to see smaller wineries extending their reach with Australian consumers, using social media – at the very least please have a decent web site.  If anyone has any great social media examples out there, let me know.

No local focus

Clearly, the Australian wine industry doesn’t want to talk to us anyway.  There has been so much emphasis on exporting, I feel Australian consumers have been neglected by the wine industry for a long time.

Not long ago, Australian consumers were some of the highest discretionary spenders in the world.  We were out for a good time and many wineries didn’t even notice.

I know that exporting has been held up for all its glory; but a bit more local love would be nice.

The rise of cleanskins

The rise and rise of cleanskin sales may be the evidence to support that Australian consumers are still confused about buying wine.  Cleanskins were introduced in the early 00’s to get rid of the wine glut.  The timing was perfect for consumers that were looking to spend more on wine, but didn’t know how to decide.  The scenario looks like this - if I don’t understand what the winery is telling me, the only way I will find out what I like is to buy-n-try.  Will I risk $20 each time – no thanks.  Will I risk $4 on a cleanskin – absolutely.

Cleanskins now represent value-for-money and a fun experience for many regular wine drinkers.  Consequently, a significant percentage of Australian wine sales each year are cleanskins.

Australian wine labels have become so confusing, they are being beaten by products with no label at all.  Go figure.  So much wine, sold so cheaply, because no one wanted to make the labelling simpler for consumers.

Design & Layout

My last observation about the wine industry is bottle shops and retail outlets.  The design-layout of these stores is a complete dis-service to the wine industry.  Consumers are left drifting aimlessly through rack after rack of wines.

It would be great to see the wine industry encouraging retailers to stock its wines based on occasion, use, function, food, experience etc – or something to that effect.  It would take a bit of research and trial-and-error; but some better planning at the retail end would make buying wine so much easier. 

 

My idea is to have touch screens in each section of bottle shops and I can tap through a series of questions about why I’m there to buy wine and it makes some recommendations for me.

Think I’ll leave the wine industry alone now.  I haven’t set out to poo-poo the wine industry; it’s just that when I hear of constant doom and gloom coming from an industry sector, I like to burrow into what could be done better, from a strategic and tactical perspective - especially for small and medium enterprises, as is my passion.

What can wineries or retailers do to encourage you to buy more local wine?

Australia needs a food safety scare.

Do you know where your food came from?

Australian consumers need a food safety scare as a wake-up call and to get them asking the right questions about where their food comes from.

That sounds crazy, I know; but I have experimented with this topic in dozens of conversations over the last 12 months.

Let’s put some method behind the madness of that proposition.

Firstly, one of the hardest things you can ever hope to do is change peoples’ attitudes.  As the best marketers will tell you, it’s very, very difficult.  Australia’s agricultural and food producing industry has tried on many occasions to change the attitudes of Australian consumers.  The campaigns have been very aspirational and it hasn’t worked.

Australian consumers say one thing, and do the other – despite what they tell us in numerous surveys.  And it’s not just when it comes to buying their groceries.  For example, Australians also say they would be happy to donate their organs to save someone’s life, but never do.  You see my point.

By now we know enough about Australian consumers to start changing tactic.

This brings me to pressure points.

One of the key ways to change peoples’ attitudes is to find their pressure points.  Where do we find the pressure points for Australian consumers?  Inside their homes - we need to get inside their front doors.

If Australian consumers start getting nervous about what’s going into their kids lunch boxes; what’s going into the fridge; what’s going onto the kitchen table at night – they’ll start to ask questions.  I’ll get to the power of questioning in a moment.

Thirdly, we use the power of shared experience to spread our message.  If something happens to make Australian consumers nervous about where their food comes from, it becomes a shared experience.  Picture this - it would be the number one topic at school drop-off points, in the school canteens, at family functions, at kids sport on Saturday mornings, Facebook, etc etc.

Back to the power of questioning.  If the Australian agricultural and food producing industry wants to make retailers squirm, you set up a situation whereby their consumers start hammering them with questions, questions, questions about what they’re doing and how they do it.  Nothing makes a corporation sweat faster than when they are getting beaten around the head by angry consumers, who are banging their fists on the table and demanding ‘if you don’t answer my questions, I’m shopping somewhere else.’

Consumers just aren't asking the questions we want them to.

How do we make this happen?  Remember the Grim Reaper advertisements on TV. 

Absolutely legendary campaign, watched in peoples’ living rooms around Australia every night in 1987.  My idea is that we do a similar ‘grim reaper’ campaign about imported food, to show consumers what might happen if there is an accident regarding imported food from a country that has poor production safety standards.
 
If you had a grim reaper bowling an imported apple at a bunch of school kids, I think it would get peoples’ attention.  Watch the ad and imagine it talking about imported food.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U219eUIZ7Qo

So, what I’ve been proposing all along is that we don’t have an actual food safety scare and people actually start getting sick – we create one, by putting the notion in peoples’ heads of what might happen if they don’t change their attitude.  That’s all the Aids campaign did – the people watching it did the rest e.g. remember all the talk about the ad?

How do we know this works?  Well, at the moment there are other countries in the process of restructuring their entire food chain, because there was a food safety scare and consumers have now demanded change.  But for them it was too late.  Think horse meat.  Think baby formula.  Think milk contamination.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to stir the pot, because I don’t think what we’ve been doing is very effective.

What do you think?  Go the Grim Reaper tactic?