Daniel J. Flint

Contemporary Branding Tactics

This case vignette is starting with the story of two people, Daniel and Florence Cathiard. They are former ski champions and were members of the famous French Olympic team in the sixties. With charismatic personalities and a gold touch in business, they are best actors in a company’s history, so we would like to open this case study telling their stories.

A Global Overview of Wine

The 2008 American movie Bottle Shock offered an interpretation of the now-famous 1976 Paris wine tasting that put California on the international wine map. In that movie, a young wine maker, Gustavo Brambila (played by Freddy Rodriguez), was celebrated. Gustavo was known in the region as an amazing wine maker. By the time we engaged in our project, he had opened his own winery, Gustavo Thrace, and we interviewed him there. He now runs the winery Gustavo Wines with his wife, JoAnn.1

Conclusions and the Future of Wine Marketing and SCM

So here we are at the end of our stories. Our intent was to offer insights into some interesting perspectives and practices in the wine industry as we saw them over the last six years traveling the globe and interviewing winery owners, directors, wine makers, and managers. Our intent was not to provide a comprehensive practical guide to all things wine. We hope the book has opened your eyes to possibilities. If we did our job, you have seen areas where your or someone else’s winery is doing well and other places where opportunities to do better exist. If you are at a winery, ask yourself some honest questions: n n nHow well do we really understand our customers? n n nHow rigorous are our market-research processes? n n nHow solid are our relationships with customers, intermediaries, and consumers? n n nDo we manage our brands and our corporate identity as well as we could? n n nIn what ways are we working to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of our supply chains? n n nHow strategic and professional is our sales team? n n nHow do we see ourselves in this winery? Innovative, modern, traditional, or classical? n n nDo we pursue innovation and/or experimentation regularly? n n nIn what ways are we diagnosing our performance? n n nIn what ways could we improve regarding any of these topics?

Toward Communication 4.0

Sandro Boscaini has been the president and managing director of Masi Agricola since 1978, and runs the company together with his daughter, Alessandra, and his son, Raffaele. The company remains strictly family-owned, but its management style is highly professional and open to international influences. Masi’s company history is the history of Boscaini’s family for seven generations. The name of the company derives from “Vaio dei Masi,” a small valley in Valpolicella acquired by this family at the end of the eighteenth century. Now Masi, according to its website “has lands in the best terroir sites of the Venetian regions with vineyards and historic estates.” In 1973, the company started a joint venture with the Conti Serego Alighieri family (descendants of the poet Dante) on their estates in Valpolicella (near Verona). More recently, the Conti Bossi Fedrigotti family (wine producers in Trentino-Alto Adige) started to collaborate with Masi. Both agreements are part of a project aiming to rediscover the farming and wine-making traditions of the nobility from the Venetian area. Masi’s president believes in the “Veneto” (a region in the Venetian area) way of wine making that could be exported abroad, where there are good conditions for viticulture. So he launched a company in Argentina to produce a special wine brand with Argentinian wines made in the Veneto style.

Forms of Markets

Ricasoli is “one of the oldest family wineries in the world, dating back to 1142,” we were told as we began our discussion with the marketing director of this medium-sized, innovative Tuscan winery. But he immediately qualified that statement, clarifying that they were “much more busy fighting with Siena at that time than making wine.” Wine production here is more commonly thought of as dating to the late 1800s. At that time, a Ricasoli ancestor began experimenting with wine production and invented Chianti Classico, which is not to be confused with Chianti. Different markets see various varietals differently. For example, Ricasoli knows that in the US markets, no difference is acknowledged between Chianti and Chianti Classico, when in reality there is a significant difference. In part, the difference can be seen in the exclusion of white grapes from Chianti Classico, as well as 80 percent of the wine produced from Sangiovese with the remaining 20 percent allowed to come from other red grapes such as Canaolo or “international varieties” such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The point here is not to focus on viticulture but rather that Chianti Classico is unique and special with strict rules associated with its production and labeling. The nature of the product is often related to the markets a winery seeks to sell within.

Brand Management Fundamentals

Castello Banfi di Montalcino is “unique in the wine world in Tuscany and in Italy,” so we were told by the marketing director. It is a US-owned winery (owned by Banfi Products Corp.) that started in Italy in the late 1970s. Banfi Products was founded in 1919 in New York by John Mariani Sr., and focuses on the production and import of wine, helping to manage the brands of over 30 wineries. Banfi Vintners is the US importer of the Mariani family’s Italian estates and other wineries. The Mariani brothers brought the Banfi name to Italy in 1978. The winery we visited was the first one they opened of several, Castello Banfi di Montalcino. Montalcino in Tuscany is the literal heart of Brunello wine, one of the most elegant and sophisticated of Italian wines, wines that can also be some of the most expensive. Also in the region are Banfi Toscana and Banfi Piedmonte.

Supply Chain Design

Australia Wine Group is a collection of wine companies that has grown organically over the past couple of decades. Wanting to create a family business, the founder acquired four iconic wineries in different regions in Australia over a ten-year period. Many of their grapes are estate grown, although they do purchase 40 percent from other growers to provide stability in vintage variation. Due to the high cost and complexity of shipping to other countries, they opened their own distribution center in eastern Australia to take advantage of shipping large quantities to other countries. This facility added bottling equipment in addition to state-of-the-art storage capabilities, and they now offer bottling and logistics services to other companies as well. Another complexity they faced with respect to shipping to other countries was import regulations; therefore they opened importing offices in the United States to manage imports through New York and California, and a joint venture to handle imports to China. They also employ independent distributors in Australia and the UK to manage relationships with sales outlets. Retail/restaurant sales outlets seem to be the only pieces of the supply chain that are not part of Australia Wine Group.

Innovation and Experimentation

A passage from Dr. von Bassermann-Jordan’s website is consistent with what we learned when speaking with the director of this German winery with a rich three-hundred-year history: “With a passion for research and entrepreneurial energy, with a quest for innovation and concern for the preservation of our cultural heritage, we have, for centuries, worked on cultivating methods that increase the quality of our wines.”