November 10, 2005
the stormhoek label design: “why shouldn’t a small wine company see apple or google as its competition?”
So here’s where we are with Stormhoek.
We’ve got a great litte wine from South Africa, which I’ve been blogging about.
Then we sent out some bottles to other bloggers, no strings attached, to see what they had to say about it. As they’re fond of saying in the blogosphere, to start a conversation.
I did this not because I wanted to turn bloggers into wine pimps, but because, hey, I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be disuptive. I thought it would be my kind of thing.
So far it’s working. The groovy cats at Stormhoek are happy. By interacting with the blogosphere [I call it “Taking the Cluetrain seriously”], it’s changing the way the company see themselves, and the the way the wine trade sees them.
It’s changing the brand. It’s evolving the brand. Sales are up. Good things are happening, whether they want them to or not.
So what’s next?
The bottle design.
99% of people who go into wine shops do not read blogs. They’ve never heard of Stormhoek. A very small percentage may have read about it in the mainstream press (a lot of British wine writers like it, happily for us), but who can remember all those wine names you see in the Sunday papers? Sure, all the Cluetrain/Hughtrain stuff I’m doing for them is great for “The Internal Conversation” and “The Porous Membrane” etc etc, but as I’ve said again and again, 95% of Stormhoek’s marketing to the customer happens on the supermarket shelf, in three seconds or less.
We need a new bottle design. A new label. Something that JUST. ISN’T. ABOUT. THE. FRICKIN’. WINE.
[btw: This is what the current bottle designs look like.]
I told Nick Dymoke-Marr the Managing Director of Stormhoek: “You’re not competing with Jacob’s Creek or Blossom Hill. You’re competing with Google and Microsoft and Apple and Skype.
Yes, the product category is always irrevelvant. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it etc etc.
So I’m now on the hunt for a label & bottle design that better reflects the whole post-Cluetrain/Hughtrain schtick that Stormhoek is slowly becoming internally, that telegraphs this instantly to the external market.
Why shouldn’t a small wine company see Apple or Google as its competition? Think how more interesting the world would be if more small, non-techie companies thought the same.
I’m looking for a new “look” for the bottle that sits there on the supermarket shelf. The look may require a new label a new bottle, or both. Something that conveys everything I’ve been talking about above.
Something that conveys what the brand is becoming in this crazy, post-Cluetrain, wired age of ours.
So here’s the deal. Instead of the usual going to a graphic designers and giving them a formal “Cluetrain-savvy” brief (which 95% of them wouldn’t understand proeply, anyway) I thought I’d start the conversation by asking The Blogosphere if they have any ideas.
No, you don’t have to be a graphic designer. An idea that works on the back of a cocktail napkin is just fine by me.
It’s the idea, not the execution, that interests me at the moment.
Anybody who comes up with the winning idea, an idea we can actually run with, we’ll pay them
![[btw: This is what the current bottle designs look like.]](http://www.nickreynolds.com/images/stormhoek_bottles.jpg){kind=link}
A friend posted this spot to me, so i decided to forward a thumbnail of an idea. Trying to do the exact opposite of what most wines I have seen do.
Its an interactive .swf so when you roll over elements, an explanation pops up.
http://66.90.104.220/stormhoek.swf
Think inside the box:
http://www.tetrapak.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra_Pak
Labelling can be good…
It’s funny what happens when you start actually having a conversation with people… We started talking about the stuff that matters to us and lots of people have joined in. Stormhoek has been a catalyst for a lot of interesting…
tetrapack? fricking tetrapack. jesus christ — the bane of landfill. save more than it costs? tell that to the rubbish mountain.
Further to James’ point about the environmental impact of discarded Tetra Pak containers: http://perc.ca/PEN/1991 – 10/fleischer.html
Hello Hugh!
Thanks for the challenge and for sharing all the exciting adventures!
I hope you will forgive a poor english…
Few things I would like to say first about STORMHEAK:
–I don’t know the wine
–I have heard about it because you’ve talked about it
–I don’t feel like going back to their blog, but I like what YOU are saying about the blogging around their wine
–I like the idea that the important is telling stories others will like telling others..
–I like thinking people all around the world will taste this wine just because they’ve heard about it by Word Of Mouth
–I like being able to “trace” the stories so we get linked together
–At the end I would like to have a bottle of Stromheak for my next dinner so I can tell that story to my friends! I will tell them about all the ideas and everything on your blog…and if by any chance I have the right friends then we’ll be right on the spot for a very very nice conversation feeting right close to our needs?!
Ok, here is what I thought could be interesting:
(I wish I could show you that on a table cloth, that would be easier for me, I tell you!)
FRONT OF THE BOTTLE
–STORMHEAK
WINE MADE OF WOM*
(*Word Of Mouth)
–MAP OF THE LINKS made by / towards blogs talking about the wine (I think it is possible to visualize!)
The map is like visualizing the “chateau” were the wine was made. The “chateau” is everywhere but can be visualized and reached.
And then, a precision (very important!): BEST LINKED BY “the name of the blog” in 2005
–on the bottom, a fine line:
WOM made this wine very popular
or sometnhing around the Mouthfull…
–Every year or every cycle you can come up with (we never know with you!) makes a DIFFERENT COLOR on the top of the bottle and means different things like: “better drink it before they change their mind!” etc.
BACK OF THE BOTTLE
–TELL THE STORY
YOURS
AND REWARD BLOGGERS FOR COMPETING WITH GOOGLE
(his picture? the adress of his blog?…
the one who best linked…)
Well, I hope It is clear enough to talk about it!
Have a good one
And thank you again!
Estelle
FWIsW, I like the above idea of portraits (all in B+W maybe?) with “I drink this wine” — simple, fun and direct, perhaps with a brief biog. Could induce nausea if too smiley, beautiful or aspirational (“I’m a dj / architect / rocket scientist and have recently had my first novel published” would really turn you off in your local 7 Eleven on a rainy Wednesday evening) but otherwise has great potential. I also like Estelle’s ideas, tho’ I can’t follow them all. Finally, it is interesting to note how many comments refer to wines the names of which the commentee (?) cannot remember…
Sorry not to have ideas of my own yet — I’m working on them over a glass of Oyster Bay (chosen because of its taste, I originally tried it because it comes from New Zealand which seems to produce consistently more interesting and tasty wines than other countries, though maybe this too is all in the marketing).
Just a few quick comments — most people posting here have no idea about the legalities of wine labels. Every country you want to sell your wine to will have rules — like the size of the font and font size relativities between different things (e.g region to product name to vintage), the size of the label, the detail on the front and rear labels, etc, etc. As I ran my eye over the posts I noticed things like “use an envelope instead of a label” — but a lot of countries have very strict rules about having all the info stuck (ie not removable). Plus you need to consider the practicalities and costs associated — the minute you move to labels with cut-outs, or etching on the bottle, or any of that flash stuff the packaging costs skyrocket. Winemakers will also have a lot to say about the colour of the bottle — the darker the better to reduce the effect of heat and sunshine on the wine. And ultimately, if you’re after repeat sales it doesn’t matter what the label looks like — it’s what the wine tastes like that matters.
So sorry Hugh, don’t want to burst your bubble — but you probably should have given people some boundaries to work within. I work in the wine industry and the label is one of the most regulated areas in the industry. The last thing you want to do is spend time and money on a label only to find it won’t be approved for sale in say the UK or US!! It’s all well and good to think outside the square — but it’s worth knowing your limitations too.
For more info check out your country’s wine industry board for all the rules — e.g. in Australia go to http://www.awbc.com.au.
I’m not quite comfortable with wiki, so I post here as well.
I’d rather suggest to try something inexpensive instead of changing the shape of the bottle or making individual labes for every new bottle. Why not to wrap completely every bottle with cheapest paper, like a gift wrapper? Two reasons a) you can use more surface as a label and it makes you very flexible in implementing new designs (if you actually need any) and b) why not? create a legeng (people tend to love things like this) that this is the only wine which first meets daylight in your glass, which preserves… whatever you want to preserve in good wine. And by the way, I would agree with Brock Tice — the bottle should be transparent. Nothing to hide, true. But if you have to protect your wine (I have no glue, do they have to?) paper wrapper can do the job.
When I stare at the endless wine lines in a supermarket I would preferably notice bottles which look different, and I’d rather believe that the bottle which looks outstanding has something outstanding inside. So why waste time and money in creating new labels (who said you can create something truly fresh and convinient simultaneously) if you can change the way it looks and the way it percepts? When last time you were looking for a bottle of wine as a gift or just for something new besides this same looking merlots and sovignons, weren’t you looking for something outstanding? Er?
I like your site very much, but I’m not sure about the idea of getting some product design for $2000. I live in the US but I read this London blog as well. http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com
Thanks for all the great feeback, Everybody.
Me and the groovy cats at Stormhoek spent the weekend going through your ideas, and have moved the conversation forward to here:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002020.html
So I’m closing down this comment thread, and moving on to Phase Two. Thanks again.
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