Talking the Talk

For years it’s been a mystery to me why the wine trade has taken so long to embrace the concept of brands. But, watching Ian Hislop dissecting management speak, the penny finally dropped. Jonathan Goodhall

Guest Column

For years it’s been a mystery to me why the wine trade has taken so long to embrace the concept of brands. But, watching Ian Hislop dissecting management speak on a recent episode of Balderdash & Piffle, the penny finally dropped. It seems the wine trade’s reluctance has little to do with wanting to retain the romanticism of wine. Instead, it’s about trying to maintain a sane working environment. It’s so obvious now, that brands are just the thin end of a pernicious wedge, and that once you let them in, there’s no turning back.

Old-school wine traders would remember, usually when the brandy and cigars arrived after a gut-busting lunch-athon, that they had “things to do” when they stumbled back into the office. Now, of course, brand managers multi-task, opting for a light, nutritious salad – at their desks – while compiling lists of “action items”. It makes them feel they’re on top of the situation, being useful, justifying their salaries – in short, wanted.

Today, it’s essential to be bilingual – in both English and marketing speak – if you don’t want to find yourself being “downsized”.  Back in the day, wines needed only to be decanted, now they must be demystified and deseasonalised.

Now that describing a wine as a “cheeky little number” will no longer do, here’s the kind of thing we journalists are expected to decode: “It’s a niche product [won’t sell many] positioned at an entry-level price point [cheap] with added value [it comes in a box] with striking shelf-standout [it looks hideous]. This new brand overdelivers [we’re not entirely sure what this means either but everyone else is saying it, so what the heck] and will be cross-merchandised with the relevant food proposition [we’re sticking it next to the pizzas] to create footfall [the punters will walk straight past it].”

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for all this hard work as I can understand why marketing departments feel the need to resort to it. Marketing speak, to use its polite name, is most commonly used to glam up unfeasibly tedious concepts, rather like euphemism. Why admit to offloading cheap fizz when, instead, you could be actioning a multi-buy Champagne mechanic, presumably to gain share of throat?

Outrageous hype, however, can ultimately devalue your products. We’ve gone from plain old premium to super-premium and now ultra-premium, so where is there left to go? Mega-premium? Uber-premium? Or how about so premium that you’ll melt just by looking at it, like the Ark of the Covenant in that Indiana Jones film? The scale now starts at premium, where once we had tat. It would seem the “blue sky” really is the limit.

Others resort to marketing speak to disguise cliché. Does anyone know of a winery – anywhere – that’s NOT combining traditional, Old World winemaking skills with cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, New World technology?

There are also times when the subject matter is so painfully mundane that marketing speak is skilfully deployed to save mutual embarrassment. A marketing exec once explained to
me that his bag-in-box format had a “larger communications interface to maximise impact”. I think he was trying to tell me that you can draw bigger pictures on a box than on a standard wine label, but I was almost thankful that he hadn’t put it so prosaically. He would have been embarrassed to state what Basil Fawlty used to refer to as “the bleedin’ obvious”, and I would have started wondering why we are here and what’s it all about?

To help you stay ahead of the game I’ve provided a few shiny nuggets (see box) with which to dazzle your peers in your next meeting. You might also wish to consult the impressive Bullshit Generator at www.dack.com. Just click in the magic box for randomly created gobbledegook of pure genius. How about “e-enabling real-time schemas” or “optimizing best-of-breed communities”?

But be careful. Others in your meeting might be playing Bullshit Bingo (available as a printout from www.bullshitbingo.net). Just like real bingo, there is a grid of boxes to be crossed out when one of the offending phrases is uttered. When your grid is complete, just stand up and shout “Bullshit!” – a guaranteed icebreaker in any meeting. 

FROM MARS … OR MARKETING?
Lemon – a woman who lives alone with little interest in new developments of any kind … probably drinks Liebfraumilch
Plum – a married man with above average income … perfect for en primeur offers. Be careful who you “pluck”
Splurchase – an impulse buy in a supermarket
Soft-drinks landscape – what you enter when opening a can of fizzy pop, apparently … equally applicable to any drinks category for those companies keen to diversify on a going forward basis
Greenlash – a backlash against eco-fraud aimed at companies that might be economical not just with their packaging materials but also with the truth
Wash its face – to earn sufficient in terms of revenue and brand loyalty to make a special offer worthwhile. For example, “This certainly overdelivers, but does it wash its face?” or “By all means, enter the BOGOF landscape, but don’t forget to wash your face afterwards” (or should that be hands?)
Adsturbation – to grab a consumer’s attention with imagery that is less than strictly relevant
The new incompetence – endearingly amateurish advertising … don’t get me started

db February 2006