Southern Glazer’s WineForward Event Focuses On Recruiting New Consumers
At Southern Glazer’s inaugural WineForward symposium held in Denver on Monday, a key topic was the necessity of cultivating younger consumer demographics and ushering them into the wine category. Several of the speakers at the event noted the urgency to connect with consumers on an emotional level, and above all to make wine less intimidating and more fun for the uninitiated.
Keith Colbourn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Total Wine & More, told the WineForward audience that the retail giant now aims to structure conversations with its consumers around what drinking occasion they’re shopping for rather than diving into discussions of specific wine varietals or regions. “What we’re doing is reaching out to consumers in a way that they want be talked to,” he said.
Colbourn went on to demonstrate Total’s success with user-generated content as a marketing tool, showing a viral clip of a customer using a Total Wine wine chiller. The lighthearted and approachable tone, he said, is the direction the industry needs to go to attract consumers put off by detailed tasting notes or elaborate food pairings. The key for the industry, according to Colbourn, is to keep wine fun and highlight the connections people make over a glass of wine.
Nik Modi, managing director at RBC Capital, suggested that wine marketers remember they’re effectively in the “mood management business,” and must seek to expand wine beyond its traditional occasions. Consumers tend to have about eight different beverage occasions in a given day, he noted, and wine needs to be seen as an appropriate option for more of them.
Addressing the need to engage new consumers while still catering to wine’s core drinkers, Modi suggested a “twin-engine approach,” in which marketers continue to offer seasoned consumers the traditional cues and detailed information they expect, while also deploying more fun-focused campaigns to draw in younger and less experienced wine drinkers. Creative social media engagement is a powerful tool to reach the younger set, he added, explaining that Gen Z consumers’ purchasing decisions are swayed more by their peers and influencers than by traditional marketing.
Following the presentations, Southern Glazer’s president, commercial sales Mark Chaplin and EVP, general manager, fine wine Cindy Leonard joined the speakers on stage for a panel that drilled down further on how to build new consumer connections and raise wine’s profile with younger drinkers.
One way to do that, Leonard noted, is to embrace and promote a wider variety of food pairings for wine, such as sparkling wine and fried chicken or various wine types paired with popular snack foods. Another is by leaning into diverse formats such as low- and no-alcohol wines and wine cocktails, and offering smaller bottle sizes to meet different occasions.
All of the panelists agreed that tighter collaboration among suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers is essential to refreshing and growing the category. Ted Seburn, vice president of sales at Gallo, highlighted the need for wholesalers and suppliers to be on the same page when it comes to sales plans and strategies, aligning their approach to the consumer all through the pipeline.
Total’s Colbourn went a step further, calling for all three tiers to commit to marketing wine as a whole and not just individual brands. He cited Total’s participation in “Come Over October”—the campaign launched last fall to encourage gatherings with wine—as an example of an initiative that can pay dividends for the whole category. —Shane English
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Tagged : Southern Glazer’s, WineForward
