branding a new consumeable

I have put up two links one to port wine labels and the other wine labels. Port as some of you may know generally sells for 3x or more than wine and has a some what smaller but more upscale market segment. My question is, if you were designing a new up market consumable would you follow the path of “port” or wine and why. thanks for the imput

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_en___US384&biw=1089&bih=785&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=wine+label&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=f&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_en___US384&biw=1089&bih=785&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=port+wine+label&aq=0&aqi=g1&aql=f&oq=port+wine+la&gs_rfai=

Looking at it from a venture-design perspective - Accessing the gourmet retailers, a specialty segment, is going to be more forgiving then entre to mass-market grocery. Nutella (gourmet chocolate spread) took this route. Now, years after its intro-one now finds it in Costco where people like me buy it.

If access to capital is an issue, or its a start-up, positioning it on the high-end offers more flexibility (if successful you can always increase volumes and follow the Nutella route). Volumes to breakeven are going to be more forgiving. Capital requirements more forgiving. Access to dist more forgiving. Pricepoints less sensitive. And in this economy - the high end market still has disposable income.

So, my thought would be to build brand on the high-end with a label that compliments.

thanks for the input., didn’t know about the story of nutella. One thing that is sort of obvious now is that Port is a blend that is distilled so its labeling is more a brand than the wine’s which tend to be from smaller producers that have a wider spectrum of products.

Is your item actually a Port…or some other consumable? The San Francisco Gourmet show was the big annual trade show event in the specialty gourmet foods category. Years ago Gourmet France was a distributor to that market - but I don’t have a clue if they are still around. I used to supply that market with high-end cheescakes in a million different flavors. That is until I invented the industrial pastry slicers that place those little sheets of wax paper between every wedge-shaped slice.

No the product is not port, it is a gourmet consumable though and now that we have the tech nailed its brand building, distribution etc. Your comments are really welcome, as you have direct experience in that market.

Talk to people that are representative of the target.

It is very hard to give you feedback not knowing what your product is. This needs to go through the traditional brand building process. Evaluate your competitors, evaluate your consumer, create a brand strategy, create a brand story. This should include mood boards, graphic exploratory, competitor analysis, the whole nine yards and should be treated the same as your ID projects. Just asking if you should go the wine route v/s the port route…I don’t really know what that means. To me they both sit in the same markets.

+1.

Branding as you know is a passion of mine and something I don’t take lightly. It’s more than saying “make it Port and put some sans serif logo on it and sell for more money”. The product, brand, identity, position, distribution, market, business plan, capitalization, and consumer has to all be on the same page.

Without knowing a lot more any comments are pretty much useless.

That being said, I think the label should definitely be blue. :wink:

R

I’d bet, in some strange way it’s got something to do with coffee.
(and you all have a short memory…)

Regardless the brand story needs to be created. Branding is a very complex process. It is not just slap some graphics and type on a package. It needs to have a personality, a meaning for being and create an emotion with the consumer.

Yeah, perhaps a nice safe PMS301?

Haha, yeah this is exactly what I was thinking. Based on some of those discussions and your target demographic, and just off the cuff, the more invisible you make the tech the more magical it’s going to feel to the consumer. Putting them in creative control of the large range of possible blends, and making it easy to experiment could be pretty cool. Steampunk is a bit worn out, but it does do well to mask leading edge tech.

I believe it all depends on your target audience and your business objectives. Do you want to sell your consumable to 50-54 year olds in upper management in the 6 major urban US markets - or to everyone? Do you want to sell 483 packages a year - and no more, or as many as 4 plants can churn out every month?

Now is a fuzzy time for brand placement analysis, as many brands that clammered for exclusivity over the last 20 years are now in Sam’s Club simply to survive!