Treasury Sees “Living Wine Labels” App Drive Competitive Advantage
Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) has seen innovative digital marketing efforts—epitomized by its Living Wine Labels app—help propel impressive growth for its 19 Crimes and Walking Dead brands among others lately.
19 Crimes has defied trends in the Australia category, rising from 100,000 cases in 2014 to over 1 million cases last year, according to Impact Databank, while the California-based Walking Dead label, launched in January, is projected to sell around 100,000 cases this year and is already on allocation.
TWE’s global CMO Michelle Terry tells SND that the Living Wine Labels app—which allows consumers to view brand-related digital content after scanning a bottle’s label with a smartphone—has been downloaded around 1.3 million times. The app provides the company with direct access to consumer-use behaviors like frequency and length of use and how consumers are sharing the experience.
According to Terry, the Living Wine Labels app has been successful at driving consumer engagement with its sharable content for social media platforms. “We launched the 19 Crimes app in July 2017, and it was the first of its kind in the wine category,” she notes. The app’s augmented reality (AR) content is tailored to each brand’s specific story. 19 Crimes’ AR features tell the stories of the convicts turned Australian colonists depicted on its labels, while the Walking Dead brand—inspired by the popular AMC series—has content that ties in with the show’s zombie theme. TWE has also launched Living Wine Labels content for the Lindeman’s Gentleman’s Collection, Chateau St. Jean, and Beringer Bros. brands.
The program has generated a positive retailer response along with a wealth of consumer data, and Terry is confident that the app will continue to drive interest in TWE’s brands, including future innovations. “We feel that Lindeman’s Gentleman’s Collection has the most room to run, and we’ve created a lot of rich content for that brand,” she says. Matua Sauvignon Blanc, which ranked number 40 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2017, is also set to receive more backing, including augmented reality marketing efforts.
Overall, Terry says TWE will continue developing its digital marketing tools, where the company feels it has an edge on its competitors. “I want to drive big, strong, global brands, making sure that we’re strongly consumer-centric, and that our brands and our marketing efforts are disruptive,” she says.—Shane English