Old wine in a new can

I recently read an article which talked about a company importing and selling canned wine in India. This product is aimed at young adults and offers many advantages – it has a pocket-friendly price vs the traditional bottle, the 180-250 ml cans need less time to chill than the 750 ml bottle and one doesn’t need accessories like cork opener and glasses. It can be the perfect thing for casual drinking, can be stored in mini bars and be easily carried around.

All of these present great rational arguments for “wine in a can” at a very functional level. But what does it do to our perception of wine? It’s a classic case of old wine in a new bottle, err can!! In many ways it democratizes wine drinking, makes it more accessible and convenient. But it also alters the way we experience wine- there is a whole ritual of storing the wine bottles at just the right temperature, selecting the right kind of matured wine for a specific occasion, opening the cork and the clinking of the glasses.

Brands are constantly looking for ways to broaden their consumer base to further drive their business. Marketers would do well to keep a few things in mind as they go about driving penetration and broad-basing their brands.

Tap into Consumer Insights: Have a deep understanding of consumer behavior, which will help in tapping into their articulated as well as unarticulated needs. Therein lies a nugget which can lead to innovation. This of course requires market research, but also consumer observations. At Perfetti, we realized that chocolates are an universal favorite but the category starts at a higher price point of INR 5. So, we created a product Chocoliebe which borrows the delectable product attributes from chocolates and is available at INR 1. This opened up an entire new segment based on affordability and accessibility.

Nurture equity while broad-basing: It is important to ensure that as we broad-base our brand, we aren’t diluting its equity. Several categories including shampoos, tea, hair oil are sold in sachets which helps drive penetration. However it is important to ensure high quality of product and packaging to preserve the equity of the brand.

Cross-pollinate ideas across categories: There are many learnings to be had from other product categories that can be relevant to our category. In the case of the wine in the can, the can format is a well-stablished format for soft drinks and beer- it makes it affordable, accessible and convenient. These attributes when transferred to the wine industry, can do exactly the same to this industry. Packaging formats like sachets and tubes have now been extended across multiple categories.

Leverage Technology: It is important to follow consumer trends and leverage technology to address them. Two categories which have gone through a major transformation are the way we consume news and the way we read books. Consumers are increasingly time-starved, they like to be well-informed on their own terms. Delivery of news has undergone a transformation. Today the newspaper has largely been replaced by our mobile phone as our source of news. News is more up to date and it comes in all forms- from long formats to 140 characters.

Similarly reading books has undergone a major change. A couple of decades ago, we used to pick up books from the library, savor the feel and the smell of the paperback. Many have now moved from books to Kindle and some to even Audio books, which you can listen to even as you are doing some other physical activity.

As Marketers go about extending their brand to make it more relevant and appealing to new segments, it is important to engage them with their brands in a meaningful manner. Wine in a can will only work if it delivers consumer benefits without diluting the consumer aspiration or the experience.