From The Olympian:
In the super-competitive business of selling wine, animals give new brands an edge. When a beast is on the label, Americans buy a new wine twice as often as the competition, according to the marketing information company ACNielsen.
A kangaroo — actually, a yellow-footed rock wallaby — helped get the trend going. Introduced five years ago, Australia’s Yellow Tail “was a spectacular success,” said Danny Brager, vice president of ACNielsen’s alcohol beverage team.
“And I think it taught the industry a lesson: You don’t need to get bogged down into the details of wine pretension or snootiness to be a success, if you have the right product,” Brager said.
Humble is the name of today’s wine game. In addition to using colorful, funky labels, some of the hottest-selling wines have swapped their corks for screwcaps or are being sold in boxes.
Annual sales of wines with animal labels or names reached more than $600 million last year, ACNielsen said, while overall sales were nearly $4.07 billion. ACNielsen records its sales data from supermarket point-of-sale purchases.
[via Adfreak]
