The Chal­lenge:

Bring a fresh U.S. per­spec­tive for a fast-growing Aus­tralian win­ery that was quickly devel­op­ing many vari­etals and brands and help them grow in a down-draft U.S. wine mar­ket. As in many indus­tries, wine peo­ple tend to talk to the buyer in lan­guage that is mean­ing­ful mostly to the indus­try. ASM’s task was to craft new com­mu­ni­ca­tion that would con­sis­tenly speak mean­ing­fully to the con­sumer and to build a com­mu­nity of enthu­si­asts for the brand using all media includ­ing social media.

The Process:

ASM began by review­ing all com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the win­ery to date — every sell sheet, brochure, shelf-talker, and news bul­letin. ASM inter­viewed the key U.S. and Aus­tralian lead­ers (some of these archived on video for social media pur­poses) when they vis­ited the U.S.

ASM vis­ited and inter­viewed wine buy­ers for the whole­sale mar­ket, whole­sale sales­peo­ple, wine indus­try experts, con­sumers, chefs and sommeliers.

ASM made a com­par­i­son of lan­guage used by the client to describe their vision and com­pared it to the lan­guage used by other lead­ing winer­ies through­out the world. We observed that there was a ten­dency to gener­i­cize the lan­guage around the wines and the winery.

We also observed that the web­site and social media efforts for the win­ery did not reflect an under­ly­ing strat­egy or plan.

A new under­stand­ing of the winery’s true iden­tity was pre­sented by ASM and as con­sen­sus grew around that under­stand­ing, all com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the win­ery could begin to reflect the fun­da­men­tal drive for qual­ity that char­ac­ter­ized every­thing the win­ery under­took. Find­ing a wide panaroma of lan­guage that could be used in adver­tis­ing, back of bot­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion, brochures, sell sheets, shelf-talkers and lan­guage for the sales peo­ple began to cre­ate a national clar­ity for the per­cep­tion of the win­ery in the consumer’s eyes.

ASM cre­ated new and con­sis­tent mate­ri­als of all kinds for the win­ery — news­flashes, a news­pa­per com­ing from the winery’s home in Aus­tralia, all POS mate­ri­als, coupons for char­ity events, a flight con­cept that is used in adver­tis­ing and on a cus­tom basis in the restau­rant mar­ket, cus­tom cloth­ing to raise the win­ery pro­file at major tast­ing events, and a redesign of the web­site that turns it into a new and com­mu­nity hub for the win­ery globally.

The Result:

Growth in U.S. sales year over year was 238% dur­ing a time that Aus­tralian wines in the U.S.market shrunk by 10% overall.

The Future:

ASM con­tin­ues to pro­vide all com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices in the U.S. for the win­ery, with many sched­uled reg­u­lar ser­vices as well as instant-response ser­vices on a 24-hour turn­around basis.