Mario Batali famously said that there is no such thing as Italian food – there are only the diverse regional cuisines of Italy. I believe the same idea applies to the wines of Spain. Spanish wine? No such thing. 

The many regions are so different and the wines, grapes and styles so diverse that it is impossible to say very much about them as a group. They are best understood individually.

Something for Everyone

This is a great advantage for wine enthusiasts who are seeking diversity. And it is an advantage for Spain’s producers too just now because their wines are seen to be good values and at time when value is so important.

Diversity and value mean that Spain can offer something for everyone and indeed sales of Spanish table wines are up 3.7 percent in the last year (same as the overall market), rising at an annual rate of 9.4 percent in the last quarter according to Nielsen Scantrak data.

The Diversity Challenge

But diversity is also a challenge because it means that you need to be both a winemaker and an educator. Spain’s regions and grape varieties are unfamiliar to many wine enthusiasts and to engage them you need to inform them. How do you establish a market identity for such a diverse group of wines? It’s a real problem and I decided to look closer at how Spain’s wine establishment is trying to solve it.

What image or images do current marketing campaigns project of the wines of Spain and how do they compare with other national or regional advertising efforts? Raphaela Haessler and Lily Chiang, two of my students, volunteered to help me find out. I loaded them up with a stack of wine and lifestyle publications (Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine & Spirits, Bon Appétit, and Gourmet among them) and asked them to prepare a comparative analysis of the advertising they found. Here, in part, is what they had to say.

The ads portrayed Spanish wines as new, different, fresh, and lively.  In contrast, the French seemed outdated, austere, cold, and inaccessible.  The Spanish ads had bright but earthy colors connoting Southern Spain, late summer and late evening parties; whereas Italy’s romantic black and white photos and France’s monotone or beige imagery did not pop out as much to the reader.  The French, Italians, and even Americans based their advertising off of their reputation, family, and tradition.  The Spanish, on the other hand, focused more on moments of joy and lightheartedness.  While the traditional wine producers said “you should buy our wines” the Spanish message was “anyone’s invited to our party.”

I think this is a great message for the current economic climate. Wine enthusiasts don’t want to simply trade down because wine is a lifestyle product and trading down means accepting a lower self-image for many buyers. They would rather “trade over” to a different lifestyle that is more fun and relaxed (and, incidentally, less expensive to support).

Reputation versus Lifestyle

Reputation and tradition are still powerful marketing tools, to be sure, but the lifestyle message is potent in today’s market

The Spanish wine ads also highlighted the wine’s uniqueness and diversity with the national wine slogan being “far from ordinary” (and the national tourism slogan being “Smile, you’re in Spain.”)  The ads mention that there is great variety and something for every taste.

Something for every taste — yes!  And every wallet, too, I suppose. Good to see the diversity advantage being exploited. But there are two sides to diversity when it comes to wine.

The ads promoted a specific state of mind, but what they were lacking was a sense of place.  While one ad had historical sights of the country, there were no images of vineyards, cellars, or even winemakers.  There was also a lack of refinement.  Most of the other advertisements presented wine as a cultured, luxurious form of leisure, or at least a family endeavor resting on tradition.  In contrast, Spain’s ads came across as youthful, energetic, social, yet naïve and flippant.

Faceless and Placeless

As you can see, Lily and Raphaela really reacted quite strongly to the lack of terroir in the Spanish wine advertisements. The association with a fun Spanish lifestyle is a plus in their view, but compared with other marketing schemes Spain was surprisingly faceless and placeless. That’s the diversity challenge.

So what is my bottom line of Spain’s wine identity? First it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study — these conclusions are based on a snapshot of Spanish wine marketing at the present moment in a small number of important publications. A more detailed analysis over a longer time frame might produced different conclusions.

I think that the current campaign is right for the times, but incomplete as an overall stragegy. I hope Spain’s wine marketing gurus are prepared a follow up program that will educate and inform about the particular wines and regions (or an orchestrated set of private marketing campaigns by the major producers and distributors to accomplish the same thing).  It is important to drop the second shoe and not leave well enough alone.

That’s the message that Australian producers have learned the hard way. Their inexpensive Shiraz wines were so successful that they let them become Brand Australia. Now that they have fallen from favor, the job of re-branding Australian wine in terms of its fabulous regions is very hard. Spain should start now on this project and not wait until the fun lifestyle fad fades.

>>><<<

Thanks (and a bottle of Las Rocas Garnacha from Calatayud) to Raphaela and Lily for their research assistance on this project.