Gender-specific wine labels don’t hold up under scrutiny

A May 14 article by BusinessWeek columnist Elen McCoy, dissected the wine industry not by prices and sales figures, but by wine labels and marketing. McCoy took on the industry’s growing trend of marketing specific brands for women and whether the custom labels do the trick or fall flat.

The article quotes the Beverage Information Group’s 2011 Wine Handbook, saying that women make up 60 percent of U.S. wine consumers.

“Which is why there are so many companies starting up lines of wines for chicks,” writes McCoy. “Most are targeting women 21 to 34, but their marketing efforts often treat this audience as if it had no more sophistication than a bevy of sorority sisters on spring break.”

But, McCoy goes on to decimate the marketing campaigns of certain wine labels. For example, Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) comes under fire for launching a line under the umbrella brand, “Be.” The series includes a pink moscato called “Flirty,” a pinot grigio known as “Bright,” an unoaked chardonnay called “Fresh,” and a riesling dubbed as “Radiant.”

Labels like this tend to make grand assumptions of the way women perceive wine, as this particular one indicates that women may only want to drink wine when “when they’re feeling upbeat, not when they’re tired and grumpy at the end of the day.” Another brand, Skinnygirl, markets wines under the assumption that women are primarily interested in diet-oriented wines.

But, vintners may want to take McCoy’s findings to heart when they design their brand’s labels, as McCoy’s argument was fully realized during a blind taste test where “girly brands” were mixed with other labels not geared towards women but of the same market value. She found that only three stood out as being “barely acceptable,” saying that the other wines not specified as feminine taste just as good, if not better, than the gender-specific lines.