On a supermarket shelf, 200 labels compete in silence. In the consumer's mind, barely five survive. The rest do not exist. The winery that does not understand this is not in the wine business.

It is in the business of losing relevance... at the end of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs disappeared. We have been told for decades that the quality of the product is enough. That history, land and tradition will speak for themselves. That he who knows, chooses. But the market does not reward those who know. It rewards those who feel. And feeling is a brand operation.

 

Ricardo Moreno

 

We live trapped in a moment in which the tectonic plates that are dimension and history collide head-on. The market no longer rewards the biggest or the most traditional. It rewards the most adaptable. This maxim, which could well have been signed by Darwin, is today applied with surgical precision to the ecosystem of Spanish wineries. In an environment saturated with stimuli, brands, varieties, stories and labels, where the supermarket shelf and the restaurant menu become invisible battlefields, either you differentiate yourself or you disappear. Branding or extinction.

 

The environment has already changed

The rules of the game have mutated. It is no longer enough to make an excellent wine. In fact, doing so is almost a minimum condition to go on the market. Technology, oenological knowledge... everything is within reach and fewer and fewer wines are flawed. The real challenge is to be perceived as relevant, different and emotionally connected to a proprietary story. A few weeks ago, at FENAVIN, the wine sector's leading trade fair held in Ciudad Real, the feeling of surprise at the situation hung in the air. It seems that the signs were not seen coming in time or that they were directly ignored: the drop in consumption, changes in habits, a greater supply, wineries with overstock, climate change, together with an increase in costs and less loyalty to a specific brand or style... the perfect storm.

Faced with this scenario, the whole sector is looking for solutions; they may not be valid, but as long as they are new or sound new, they are welcome. And that is why we suggested some ways forward in the talk we had the opportunity to give.

In a world saturated with options, indifference is more lethal than rejection.

 

The heritage trap

Many wineries are still trapped in a narrative of legacy and tradition that, although valuable, is no longer differentiating. We have been making wine for five generations" has become a commodity. The traditional narrative has worn out and, without a contemporary translation, loses its evocative power.

This does not mean giving up the story, but giving it context. We are not so crazy as to relegate the credentials of a winery, in many cases it is unfeasible and would be a betrayal of its history, but to revisit it and above all to re-signify it in order to resolve this question: Why should a 35-year-old consumer in a city who has never set foot in a vineyard care? The key is to translate the legacy into current value: real sustainability, innovation, brand culture, participation. And this is where branding as a strategic discipline comes in. READ MORE AT https://www.infopack.es/revista/326/index20.html