WTN Services- Is Cabernet masculine or feminine? Gender Marketing?
Is Cabernet masculine or feminine? Is blush or white zinfandel more feminine? Is Meritage non-gender sensitive? Recently over dinner I was engaged with a group of marketers and wine enthusiasts in a round table discussion concerning- the gender of wine. A wine geek I am not- but a individual entertained by the idea of gender based marketing I am, indeed. I recently read an article about Trojan of all things and how they were shifting more of their marketing dollars to gender based marketing. In their world a majority of purchases are male, imagine that. They believe if they market to females brand loyalty and the number of purchases will increase.
So over a few glasses of wine with a few marketers and wine enthusiasts I asked the question- can a winery learn from Trojan?
At first the dinner group gulped their wine and thought I had lost my mind then the debate began. I asked 5 winery marketers how many of their clients knew the percentage of cabernets purchased by men verses women. A few thought they knew but wanted to ponder and look further.
The next question was blush. Is blush or a white zinfandel a woman’s drink? Sutter Home probably knows male to female consumption of white zinfandel by zip code throughout the US. Does anyone else?
Then the questions began to pour concernong what makes a wine feminine or masculine? Is it earthy tones for masculine verses fruity feminine? That sure sparked a debate. Is it the lable and packaging or is it the wine inside? What is the difference if any to gender taste and wine preference? All great questions.
Action items from the group were to go back and look at percentages of purchases by gender. Next each determined how many marketing campaigns they had ever completed that were gender sensitive. The results were minimal but it lead to many interesting questions and a lot more thought.
What will be more interesting is who will be the first to launch a web campaign focused and segemented to the various genders and what their success rates will be. Be on the lookout Intertia Beverage, E winery and others you may be asked to establish a gender based perspective to email campaigns and market segmentation.
Oh- and Trojan by the way -has seen double digit growth in female purchases of their products.
What could the wine industry learn? Pause, segement and try a shot at gender based marketing. You might be suprised and sell a bit more wine then you did yesterday without considering the gender factor.
Chris Edwards
Director of Sales & Client Operations
WTN Services™
a division of 1800Flowers
2545 Napa Valley Corporate Drive Ste F
Napa Ca 94558
707.265.2934
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 am
All I know is, chicks dig Petite Sirah.
Seriously, segmenting by male and female vs varietal (never mind blends) sounds frightfully expensive for the small winery, or at least time intensive assuming the data was even collectible (which it isn’t for us - yet anyway.)
Not to mention dangerous….
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
El Jefe,
Appreciate your feedback and perspective. Keep the comments coming!
Chris
September 15th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Chris! Very very engaging remarks on wine gender! I loved it and as a creative sort myself, often buying wine because of the lable or the name, I think there is something to a gender purchase. It would make for a fruitful survey and perhaps an entirely new way to look at wine sales/purchases and “What” a female cab drinker “Looks” like. It could be turned into all sorts of fun ways to sell you business. Thanks to Trojan’s forward thinking, a wine like “Menage a Trois” could have a few different meanings… Similar to the same reason why people bought “Bitch” with the pink lable or “Ball Buster”, which was a fav or mine while it lasted… Any way we look at it, sex sell… so why not play with it and use your clever marketing idea to it’s fullest potential. This could put you on the map!
Aloha, June