Don't Judge a Book by It's Cover

Being a marketing major myself I have learned a thing or two about what the consumer wants to hear/see/buy. So needless to say all this jabber lately about wine labels has really caught my attention. Aside from the controversy over what companies are putting on labels, I want to focus on the labels themselves. Let’s take a journey back, o I don’t know, maybe 10-15 years ago, and most wine labels looked alike. You had the name of winery, the type of wine, and some other pretty cursive writing, and that was about it. Some might have put a flashy gold stamp or something on the front, but other than that the label was just there to tell you what the wine was.

Now the game has changed. Enter the younger consumer. Now wine companies are hiring people to come in and design labels so that way when people go to restaurants and order their wine, they will remember it the next time they hit the grocery store. How does this work? Well I remember there was this wine that my parents used to always buy whenever I still lived at home. On the label there was this old red truck on it. When I first moved out my roommates and I were having our first dinner and wanted some wine to go with it, so I suggested that wine. When we got to the store I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was called so I just searched the isles until I saw the truck. And what do you know…it was called Red Truck…I’m a genius.
However, I must warn you…just like they say “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” DO NOT JUDGE A WINE BY IT’S LABEL! I was watching this video by Gary Vaynerchuk the other day (go check out more of his videos…they are hilarious and informational) and he said “Many people think that just because a winery spends a lot of time on their label means they spend a lot of time on their label.” Not necessarily true. The cool label guy can be just as good or just as bad as the next…but you will remember it.

Some of my favorite cool wine labels are:

Red Truck

Marilyn Merlot

Voga Wine (not necessarily a cool label, but the company thought outside the box on this one...you will see what I mean.)