Creating a brand is a step to loyalty

DEAR SIR — Friday’s wine column by Michael Fridjhon (September 20) quite rightly points out that just because someone produces something, it will not necessarily be bought. This is why Australia’s Treasury Wines (Penfold’s, etc) recently wrote off stocks in the US of A$155m to unclog distribution channels, A$35m of which was to destroy wine.

Wherever there is choice — and we live in a world of huge choice — it is essential to create brands and to market them, thus creating demand, loyalty and a premium opportunity. All this means improved profitability.

Your writer refers to the phenomenal success of Cabrière and Achim von Arnhem.

Von Arnhem has achieved legendary status in his lifetime, and not just for his wine making. However, it is worth pointing out that the board of directors also includes two long-standing board members and shareholders who were both giants in their time in the local advertising industry and worked daily with leading international brands — chairman Graham de Villiers and Pierre Viljoen. As an aside it was about a decade ago, at a Cabrière annual general meeting, that your writer gave a presentation in which he reviewed the South African wine industry, followed by my presenting on the necessity of adopting branding and marketing techniques.

Other classic local examples of wine and branding having symbiotic relationships include Tim Hamilton Russell at the eponymous estate, and Reg Lascaris and John Hunt at Boekenhoutskloof, where the three main brands have been joined by that runaway cult-offering success, Chocolate Block.

It should be patently obvious to anyone in business, and especially the highly competitive wine industry, that without marketing you will be doomed to failure. It is a truism that in the most competitive oversupplied sectors, brands matter most.

But a brand is not simply a trademark — it is a total experience.

On a recent trip around the winelands it was apparent that the wine makers and viticulturalists continue to raise their game. But I was appalled at some of the other parts of the experience we discovered: tasting rooms treated as staff canteens or bearing a striking resemblance in atmosphere to a railway station waiting room, restaurants newly opened after the winter breaks still as tired and dirty as when they had closed, and one much-vaunted establishment wanting you to take the scenic garden route walk back to the car park in the torrential rain, rather than take the short cut — and shouting after us “You are bringing the umbrellas back?”

Has no one told them the customer is king?

One estate that understands the need to align all brand touch points and maintains standards at the highest level is Constantia Uitsig.

Despite it being widely publicised that the estate is on the market — if only I could win the Lotto — and having heard a little adverse comment, no need to worry. Yes, the staff members have concerns but are determined the hard-earned reputation will be preserved and added to.

If our experience is anything to go by — as anonymous paying guests — it is well worth a visit. And take the two nights for three offer — marketing comes in many forms, of which just one is incentives. Above all, it’s a job for professionals.

Wines of SA has just appointed a top-notch career marketer to sell South African wine internationally. I wish her well. Perhaps we need another for the local market?

There are arguably far too many small operations with no critical mass, no marketing budget, no marketing knowledge, simply measured by return on ego. Pulling together by region as they are doing in the Swartland is a start.