Giving Consumers What They Want, and Giving It To Them Good and Hard
It’s fun to watch corporate behemoths chase the Millennial Generation, given the Millennials’ antipathy to things corporate. Here’s a great article about Constellation Brands and its quest to analyze and focus group the Millennials into submission. Constellation is applying marketing techniques developed by Proctor & Gamble, the defining experts at manipulating insecurities about personal hygiene and household disorder. So why not wine?
My favorite line in the piece is this:
“They don’t want to look like a giant mass-produced wine company,” says JPMorgan Chase analyst Neal Rudowitz. “You want to appear authentic.”
Which reminds me of the quote from French playwright and diplomat Jean Giraudoux, who said:
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the Millennials react to this. My guess is they’ll eventually fall for it, because marketers are relentless.
May 13th, 2011 at 3:11 PM
I wish them the best of luck, ’cause they’re gonna need it, especially after consolidating all its marketing.
A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon with Christopher Barefoot, the then head of marketing for Robert Mondavi Winery. In addition to being a consummate professional, it was his mission to debunk the perception that RMW was a behemoth institution (actually <250k cases), something he was left alone to do – at least until the consolidation. Since his departure, that role has been outsourced to a firm staffed by lovely young millenials who are quick on Facebook, but don't know that Mondavi was actually a person and not a place.
To date that afternoon remains one of the most personal, informative, and – dare I say – authentic experiences I've had in wine country. Or maybe he just learned to fake it…
May 13th, 2011 at 11:55 PM
They need to start selling labrusca hybrids to the millenials. That’s authentic. It will also solve S.C.’s wine tourism problem and make Tom a well-paid, published expert on the wines millenials like. No, no – your gratitude is thanks enough. I’ll check to see how it all worked out when I get back from Italy.
May 14th, 2011 at 9:02 AM
Wally,
Constellation’s local wine company, Canandaigua Wines, is systematically canceling labrusca contracts with New York grape growers. That cow obviously has stopped producing cash.
Incidentally, true labrusca is a native, and that would be authentic. But many grapes that the unknowing refer to as labrusca (Catawba, for one) are indeed hybrids, and that likely would not be authentic.
The reason that such a blatant attempt at “authenticity” might work is that while marketers are relentless, the general consumer is also easily molded. Everyone past the age of 21 should have learned that being a nonconformist ultimately becomes an act of major conformity.
May 14th, 2011 at 12:14 PM
Tom P:
Brian: “You are all individuals!”
Crowd: “We are all individuals.”
Lone voice: “I’m not!”
And I think you have to get past 30 to realize that non-conformity isn’t.
All my life I’ve wondered “who are these people Madison Avenue is marketing to?” Well, not really. I see them all around me, and they are represented in the Millennial generation to the same extent they exist in the GenX and Boomer generations.
May 14th, 2011 at 2:56 PM
If Shakespeare was writing today, he’d say, “First, we kill the marketers.”