Wine Brand Image: What About the Label?

Vineyard celebrity makeovers:
When is it time to give your wine a facelift?

Everyone needs a little makeover now and again. For your wine label, it might be sooner rather than later.

A lot of thought goes into the design of wine bottles and labels, and so it's understandable when wine companies are reluctant to change them too soon. The established importance of digital marketing to the wine industry, however, means that wine companies who aren't revisiting their labelling could be missing out on a very important step in the marketing process.

Why you might need to relabel

The old reasons for redesigning a label aren't the most prominent any more. Where once a label simply needed an update, these days the label may need a redesign because everything downstream on the marketing plan is jarring with the current design.

Wine labels have always influenced decisions at the checkout. For a wine company interested in creating long-term relationships with customers, however, there needs to be a long-form marketing plan. In the past, this may have started with a cellar door visit followed up by newsletters. These days, digital and social media play a massive part – and that's where label redesign comes into play.

Today, wines aren't sold just on labels. A consistent brand image needs to be developed. Websites, social media and PR representations are all important in developing that image.

What is your market research really telling you?

Of course, a clash with website design isn't sufficient reason to go through the cost of redesigning your wine labels. So when should you redesign, and which aspect of your marketing – labelling or something further along – should be redesigned?

The answer should lie in your market research. Your target market will respond better when they perceive your wine to have a certain personality. Research should be undertaken to see which types of personality your customers are looking for in their wine brands. It should also suggest which aspects of your current brand are working, and which aren't.

Once this is done, the fun begins. If your label matches with that personality, your web design, social media voice and PR campaigns should all take the label's lead. If your digital presence is projecting the right personality but your label isn't, however, it's time for a label facelift.

The many types of labelling

Walk around your average bottle shop and you'll see the bright, fresh designs that currently dominate the bottom of the wine market in Australia. This is no indication that wines in the upper levels should opt for flash over elegance. However, the difference between labelling styles doesn't mean that it's only wineries aiming for the $20-a-bottle market who have to match their web presence with their labelling. Upper echelon brands may be creating a barrier for their customers if there's a label/digital personality gap.

More thoughts on redesigning:
*This piece in Wine and Vine, discussing the dangers and benefits of redesign
*Read the article written by label designers Skye Hallberg and Ron Woloshun where they talk about the way wine labels relate to branding.
*This is a great analysis of what labels really say about a wine.