How to capture the millennial consumer?

Millennials are the most loyal generation of consumers to their favorite brands. I anecdotally know this to be true, based on my own and my friends' purchase preferences, but this claim is also backed up by studies on consumer trends. If a millennial decides they love a brand, chances are they'll love that brand for a long time, not to mention recommend it to a dozens (or hundreds) of other millennial friends. It is critical for brands to think about how to win over those consumers, particularly before someone else beats them to it.

So how do you capture the millennial consumer? As we have talked about before, packaging and label design is a huge piece of this game. But what else can brands do to win the hearts and wallets of millennial wine drinkers? Especially brands like Charles Krug that have traditionally appealed more to an older demographic.

The same article on millennial brand loyalty points out a two factors contributing to this trend that could help guide the way brands like Charles Krug win over these consumers:

• Social Proof: "43.5 percent of Millennials said they use social media to spread the word about products or services, meaning that people within any given network have more access to what their friends, family, and acquaintances are buying."
• Authenticity: "Only 1 percent of Millennials say they are influenced in any way by advertising. This means that what the brand has to say about itself and its products is of little to no importance to this generation. What does work, however, is delivering authentic and quality experiences every time the customer has an interaction with your brand, no matter where the encounter happens."

There is a vast array of articles online about how wineries can think about winning over the millennial consumer, without many definitive answers. It strikes me as unsurprising that an industry so entrenched in history and legacy has been slow to keep up with the rapid pace of changing consumer preferences, not preferences for the wine itself, but preferences for how it is marketed and sold. 

Resveratrol, Wine, & Aging

I wanted to follow up on the Mondavi case, which referenced a 60 Minutes special that extolled some of the health benefits of wine.

Researchers such as David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School eventually isolated the red wine compound resveratrol, which they believed was responsible for wine's health benefits. Resveratrol appeared to work on sirtuin genes,  and mimicked the effects of caloric restriction in some non-human animals such as mice. When on low-calories diets (60% of ad libitum diet), mice life spans expanded meaningfully -- sometimes by 30% or more.

Unfortunately, studies of caloric restriction and resveratrol use on humans have thus far not produced the same concrete effects of lifespan extension. Even though GlaxoSmithKline bought Dr. Sinclair's firm, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, for $720mm in 2008, resveratrol research has tailed off significantly since then. GSK opted to shut down Sirtris in 2013, relocating some of its employees elsewhere within the firm.

Wine hasn't so far yielded the fountain of youth. But there's still solid evidence that moderate alcohol use lowers mortality versus both non-drinkers and heavy drinkers. The full study showing the so-called "U-Shaped Curve" is available here, as is an updated version here. Drinking ~7 standard drinks/week minimizes mortality, while drinking ~14 standard drinks/week results in mortality risk comparable to non-drinkers.

Wine in China Feature in The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/can-wine-transform-chinas-countryside