Market Strategy, Rebrand and Packaging for a Legacy Winery

SITUATION
A legacy wine brand in the northeast was transitioning to new leadership and new wines.

 PROBLEM
Generational transitions are a delicate maneuver for any brand. The difficulty in this transition was compounded by the desire to change how the winery made wines and the adversarial climate around this decision. The rebrand needed to provide continuity for the existing customers and wines and create a platform for the new winemaker to shift production techniques to court a younger audience. Plus, we needed to address the cultural and generational differences that were at odds.

 SOLUTION
We worked with the 9-person stakeholder/project team as a group. We facilitated workshops aimed at addressing internal culture and DNA, positioning and story. Once we created alignment on these territories, we proceeded with a traditional brand strategy program and workshopped “Heart of Your Brand” (purpose, vision, mission, values), brand personality and architype, core beliefs, core messages and a visual style guide. From there we developed their new evolved brand identity, updated current packaging, designed labels for the new development wines and delivered a 25-page brand guidebook capturing this new brand platform, brand messaging and identity guidelines.

BENEFITS
The synergy created by addressing their internal culture along with a new brand platform is witnessed throughout the marketing initiatives that are driving this winery brand forward. They were ready with COVID related pivots that were well suited to this new brand directive. They maintained an open and functioning wine-tasting program, created a wine subscription, launched a 7-variety wine family and have maintained their successful profile within the small cold-climate winemaking community. Beyond the evolved labels for their existing wines the new brand look inspired a website redesign filled with entirely new content directed by their platform’s messaging pillars.

For more information, contact Steve Redmond at 802-310-6474 or [email protected].