Ask many wine professionals, especially in the US, and they will say that the biggest challenge they are facing are the Neo-Prohibitionists of the World Health Organisation, the people who – on arguably very questionable grounds – have recently begun advising the public to avoid the consumption of any alcohol.
Those professionals might do well to read a little history. Roughly a third of a century ago, in January 1991, Claude Evin, the French Minister of Health, introduced ‘Loi no 91-32 relative à la lutte contre le tabagisme et l'alcoolisme’ to help in the ‘struggle’ against smoking and alcoholism. At a stroke, the Loi Evin banned TV and cinema advertising and sponsorship of alcohol in sports venues, and imposed limits on the way it could be depicted in marketing. It was, and remains, one of the toughest pieces of legislation of its kind.
Look at posters and press advertising in France and you won’t see images of people enjoying wine; what you will invariably see is a warning that ‘the abuse of alcohol is dangerous for health’ and the injunction ‘Consume in moderation.’
Slowing fall
So, what was the immediate impact of the Loi Evin? Over the following ten years, French citizens cut their wine consumption by the equivalent of around 14 bottles of 12.5% wine per person per year. But this apparently dramatic effect has to be compared with the 16-bottle reduction of each of the two previous decades.
People who have not learned that causality and correlation are not always closely related might even use these figures to suggest that the Loi Evin slowed the downward trend.
Far more interesting, however, are the lines on the chart for beers and spirits, alcoholic beverages that – and this is crucial – are subject to precisely the same Loi Evin restrictions as wine. In fact, given the far larger marketing budgets of these sectors, they were arguably much more heavily affected. Setting aside Champagne which has substantially bigger margins and promotional funds, how many French wine companies were affected by the ban on TV advertising or sports sponsorship?
Since 1991, The French have not reduced their beer or spirits consumption to anything like the extent they have with wine. Many young men and women enjoy RTDs, just like their counterparts in other markets.
The advantages of spirits and beer
What do spirits and beer have that wine doesn’t – apart from those marketing budgets?
First, they are much more easily defined. When you say ‘spirits, most people will immediately imagine vodka, gin, whisky, tequila and brandy – and a few leading brands in each. The experience with beer would be similar, and almost inevitably involve reference to Heineken, Carlsberg and Guinness.
Now, try doing the same for wine. I’ll bet that if you asked 10 professionals – let alone consumers – you would get a wide range of regions and grape varieties and very few brands. Worse still, many of the brands that are named are likely to be mentioned critically in terms of their quality or value for money. Wine professionals love to put down producers of whom they disapprove.
If there is any truth in the expression ‘divide and rule’, the wine sector has set itself up perfectly to be conquered.
Wine as a commodity
Wine is effectively a large, diverse commodity made up of smaller commodities such as Rioja, or Bordeaux or Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio, all of which are effectively bought by monopolies or supermarket chains using some form of tender. These retailers quite reasonably want the highest quality of beverage bearing a recognisable name on its label for the lowest cost. And, to be honest, every time we take part in a blind tasting – which I often do – we are simply facilitating the commoditisation – by reducing a lovingly-made vin-de-terroir to glass-number -eight-in-a-12-bottle-line-up. Very few vodka or gin drinkers buy Absolut or Gordon's because these products have shone in a competition. And enough of them want to buy these brands for retailers to feel obliged to stock them. As they do with popular Champagne brands, and a very, very small number of still wine brands.
We have to stop being obsessed by Claude Evin and the bureaucrats at the WHO, and start to pay more attention to creating closer relationships with the people we want to drink the liquid we are producing. And to do that, we have to stop marketing ‘wine’, a confusingly broad category that will certainly include many styles our target consumers will not find attractive.
We don’t see Martel, Smirnoff and Jim Bean all getting together to promote the consumption of ‘spirits’.
Build brands
Instead, we need to build brands and, because of the way we have trained people to buy wine, regions-as-brands. This takes money, marketing skill and the will to invest in marketing – all of which are in short supply. (How many generic wine campaigns would you offer as great examples to a class of marketing students?)
But, of these, belief in the value of marketing is by far the most important. If we all cared more about communication and effective brand-building, we’d be building in margins that would allow us to be doing it properly.
Please, before moving on to read about something else, take another look at these charts and how they show just how long ago wine began to lose out against other forms of alcohol. The Neo-Prohibitionists threaten bourbon and pilsener as much as Barbera and Pinot Grigio, but the wine industry is in a weaker state to defend itself.
