Above: wine labels for Dunlor Wine
Although the popular adage ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ seems to apply to most things, the same cannot be said about wines. Wines are not just described by their notes, but also by their label. In fact, bottle labels on a wine are what catch customers’ attention. An article of Practical Winery and Vineyard Journal explains the message that the label on the wine sends across to people. Fine Dining Lovers’ Domaine Dorléan has also investigated how the wine label impacts people’s decisions when they decide to buy a bottle.
The label matters and thus, its design should be done with great care. The following are a few reasons why the label on wines is so important.
Personal Connection and Identification
People often judge a wine by the beauty of its label. Cornell University’s Brian Wansink is a Marketing Professor and he conducted an experiment to gauge people’s responses to wine labels. A restaurant like setting was set up by him, and half the wines had a California label while the other half had a North Dakota label. In truth, they were all $2 cheap wines that tasted just the same. The result of the experiment revealed that people who chose to drink the California label wine not only sat at the table for a longer time, they also ate more and gave a higher rating to the food and wine as compared to people going for the North Dakota label wine. It was just because of the wine label that such different responses were collected from people.
Catching Consumer Attention
When a label is eye-catching, that is when it becomes a success. Because of the severe competition in the wine business, it is important that the wine looks unique and different, giving it an edge over others. Because of the reliance that millennial drinkers (21 – 30 years) place on the wine label, having a creatively designed label is even more important than ever before. Wine companies get a lot of business from the current generation and thus, they have to ensure their customers are kept happy. Some studies would even suggest that there are some non-millennial drinkers as well who focus on the label instead of the taste of the wine. If the wine seems sophisticated and cool, consumers tend to buy it. If the wine’s label doesn’t look attention grabbing enough, even if it tastes good, people will not buy it.
Memorable
This is pure psychology that most people tend to remember things by visual cues (and smell) instead of taste. Thus, when the label is customized and designed properly, it is the thing that will stick with the customer later and they will come back for it. Scotland’s Edinburgh Science Festival proved the memorable impact of labels in a blind tasting where people simply could not remember the taste of the wine they were offered. This proves that the desirability of a wine is based on its appearance. In fact, there are many drinkers of wine who cannot differentiate between an original and rebottled wine. If the same wine was packaged under different designs, the perception of people towards it shifts considerably. Because of the label, the customer remembers the wine and forms an association with it, going back to purchase it.
Success of Other Marketing Tools
Do the above points prove that a wine label is everything? Of course not. If one marketing tactic was enough, companies would never look for new ways to make customers buy their products. Also, not all people use the wine label to base their decision but that doesn’t mean that the design of the label isn’t one of the important factors that come into consideration when choosing a wine. For instance, the new trend is that people go into a wine shop and choose a wine after scanning the bar code with their smartphones. The manufacturers making use of the RFID technology have come up with something pretty interesting here because, as soon as the code is scanned, the buyer is taken to their website to watch videos, read reviews, look at the grapes used to make wine, their winery and vineyards et al. However, the big question is – what makes a customer pick up one wine bottle over another to make a conscious choice of scanning the bar code and learning more about the brand? It’s the wine label.
What Appeals to the Consumer?
Everyone has seen a bad wine label and a great one. If the bad label was bad enough, consumers would remember the brand name (and disassociate themselves from it). The big question of what appeals to the consumer has been asked by many wine label designers and the answer is – who knows? People have different tastes and reactions to bottle shapes. However, when it comes to colors, typography, designing and graphics, everyone responds differently. There are people who don’t like Van Gogh’s style and there are those who prefer him over Da Vinci. So, while designing wine label, the focus should be on creating a unique design and hope that the consumers will like it.
A label that is well designed can have a great impact on profits as well. As a recommendation, images on wine labels are known to attract people more than anything else. The focus on typography and designing of labels for wine manufacturers has also seen a considerable shift because of this reason.
My name is Daffy and I am an accountant and writer. I am a health enthusiast. I read a lot of stuff about health. I love writing about it coz, it gives me the chance to learn more about things that are related to it. My Dad is a herbalist or an alternative doctor and my mom is a vegetarian. I learned a lot about how to live a healthy lifestyle from both of them.
