There are the obvious ones: Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich,
and (unfortunately) Guy Fieri. It’s no surprise that chefs, restaurateurs, and
food celebrities are expanding their culinary portfolio into the world of wine,
establishing their own wineries around the country and around the world.
However, more and more celebrities from non-food backgrounds
are also making their way into wine. Back in the 1980’s, Olivia Newton-John
started Koala Blue in her home country of Australia. Francis Ford Coppola wine
from the eponymous Sonoma winery has incredible visibility and distribution. At
first pass, some of these celebrity-driven wineries seem reasonable and make
sense: why not leverage your brand equity, especially if you stand for
something classic, like ONJ and FFC?
But then, it starts to get a bit ridiculous. Lil Jon added a
few letters back into his name for Little Jonathan Winery, while Antonio
Banderas took a few letters out for his Anta Banderas in Ribera del Duero,
Spain. Additional celebrities on the wine list include (but are not limited to):
Drew Barrymore, Mick Fleetwood, Fergie, John Legend, Madonna, and Dan Marino.
Most recently, Jon Bon Jovi launched a rosé brand called
“Diving into Hamptons Water,” which apparently merited an entire
New York Times profile piece.
This all circles back to a central question I’ve had
throughout this class: what are people buying, and why are they buying it? Do celebrities
who aren’t coming from the culinary world still wield credibility in consumers
minds? Does Guy Fieri? I suppose I think of it differently than other celebrity-branded
products because not only are you putting it in your body, but wine has a
certain connotation that other food//bev products don’t—at least in my mind.
Perhaps this isn’t true for all consumers. Also, Coppola
wine is delicious. So maybe the celebs can figure it out, after all.
Becca, I saw the title of your post and thought how relevant this is to something I was just reading about! For our project for this class, we have been researching canned wine. For the millennial target audience, we see competitors that usually include celebrity wine.
ReplyDeleteFor instance (and I know this is beyond ridiculous), TheFatJewish has a canned wine and is launching a new one -- he announced on his Instagram today that he will can his Pinot Grigio, which he currently has in bottle form: http://snobette.com/2016/11/fat-jew-adds-family-time-hard-pino-grigio-white-girl-wine-stable/
His stance is to almost dumb it down, to make it a simple statement and takes what he calls the "snobbery" out of wine.
Like him or hate him, I find it fascinating that people will buy and drink his wine. Or do they do it for the IG photo opp?
Becca, thanks for sharing this. Like you, I've been wondering what customers are actually buying when they buy a brand of wine. One analog that I can't help but make is to the apparel industry. Several companies routinely tout high quality materials and craftsmanship as the reason their good are more expensive but rarely ever do they mention brand (for good reason.)
ReplyDeleteIf we take men's shoes as an example, a pair of Ferragamo loafers costs >$500 while a pair of Kenneth Cole loafers cost ~$150. Surely there are differences in the cost of materials that cause the Ferragamo loafer to be more expensive but are they using materials that are 3 times as expensive?
In a prior blog post, I looked at the cost to produce a high quality bottle of Napa Pinot. It turns out that the costs was close to $20 while the cost to consumers was closer to $150. That means that <15% of the cost is due to actual costs which indicates that brand dictates far more of the end consumer costs then "high quality" ever could. Now this isn't apples to applet since there are true costs of distribution but its interesting food for thought.