SGA is an Italian brand and packagingdesign agency with a focus on the wineand spirits business. Founded 25 years

ago by art directors with backgrounds in bothart and corporate design, the agency’s aesthet-ic links corporate branding to artistic expres-sion. SGA mostly works for Italian companies,but has done some work for companies in theUSA. Clients include Bellavista, Campari, GIV,Berlucchi, Gaja, Valdo, Fontana Fredda andFerrari, among many others.

The agency’s philosophy is ‘give shape tovalue’, which is our motto. When we beginworking with a winery, we go there andspeak to the winemaker and try to under-stand the winery’s soul. I am not speakingabout ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ and all thosemarketing words, but about understandinghow the winemaker lives his wines, how hewants to get on the market and how his cus-tomers approach his wines and the category.After doing this, we usually get the concept.From our point of view, there is no differencein approach to Old World and New World. Theimportant thing for us is to express what thewine is.

When we visit, we talk with a lot of people.Afterwards we try and extract elements fromthat experience. In one case, Ceretto'sGrappa, we found a church in the vineyardsthat had an artistic work that was verycolourful. We used the same colours for the

label. We give the customers a piece of thewinery experience. The communication istrue, so the customer finds on the label whathe finds on the ground of the winery. Theimportant thing is to be true to the customerand to express something that is clearly dif-ferent from competitors. When we start towork on the project, we get all the bottles anddesign labels of the main competitors. Themain advantage is to avoid copying, but alsoto understand how much you can stand outfrom the rest of the labels.

The importance of story

We have a lot of experience in the winemarket and understand the vineyard lan-guage. Piedmont has a label language,Tuscany has another label language. Youhave to be part of this, but if you only usethat language, you will not stand out fromthe crowd. For example, we rebranded aPiedmont winery, Enrico Serafino, forCampari. It had a typical Piedmont look, butit was old fashioned, so the market got bored.Campari began to rebuild the quality of theproduct and we rebuilt the imagery. Wesearched in their cellar and found a letterfrom the first owner. We used that to rebuildthe wine’s image. We designed a font basedon the handwriting in the letter and alsofocused on some elements of the region,Roero; it’s like Barolo but it’s a new one.

From old pictures we saw that the main char-acteristic of that firm was that a train couldstop in front of it. There were oak barriquesall over the front of the company, so welinked the handwriting with the two first let-ters ‘E’ and ‘S’ in the brand. We wanted thedesign to give some fresh energy to the salesforce, as well, because they are so important.They took the new brand all over Europe. Wedo not have precise sales figures, becausethe company is listing on the stock exchangeand can’t give numbers, but they said therewas an improvement in sales and ordersaround six months after the new image was presented. It also won a prize at Vinitalylast year.

Because we want to create value, we alsodid a document that explained how theimage was built. This was to we give the coreteam the idea of the project, because in wine,narrating a story is very important.Everybody needs a story, that’s clear. If youhave got an interesting story founded on thewinery’s history and you can show what thewinery did to improve its quality, it lets peo-ple get in touch with something authentic.

There are many quality wines out there,so it is important that they each bring some-thing different. Our clients are very happywhen we give their wine some additionalvalue, to help express the quality of thewine. When the bottle goes into the sales

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The first contact a consumer usually has with a wine is through the label, whichmeans that design matters. We spoke to three design firms about their very differentphilosophies. Here, Massimiliano Hangler from SGA in Italy outlines their approach.

IMMERSED IN DESIGN

M A R K E T W A T C H

channel, there is no one supporting it, butthey know that the product can speak foritself.

Archetypes

To create a long-term relationshipbetween the customer, the bottle and thewinery, we try to introduce some uncon-scious elements into the label that can speakto the customer. We use archetypes; we didsome cultural research and found out thatthere are shapes that people all over theworld associate with the same things. Sowhen people see a square label or a squareshape, they associate it with the earth. If youare talking about vineyards, you can use asquare shape to tell them there is a deep linkwith the earth.

We worked on a bottle of Tosti, which is asparkling wine. We shaped the bottle so ithad a belly on it. The reason we chose thatshape is the bottle was going to be sold allover the world and the belly can be foundeverywhere. You can see it in ancient objectsthat have been found in Africa. Everyone isfamiliar with the archetype. We shaped thelabel around the bottle so when these bottlesgo on the shelf, there is always unconsciouscommunication between the customer andthe product.

Another project we did was with AloisLageder from Trentino, which had an old-fashioned product line with old-fashionedlabels. In this case, we organised a contestwith modern artists; we brought themaround the winery, we made them speak

interesting story to tell, because when youtalk about how the artists worked, you areproving that we are really authentic. In theend they went with the label and the resultwas that they sold out.

What not to do

The most common mistake is copying. Ifyou go to a territory like Piedmont and visitmaybe two or three of the wineries whichhave no conception of branding, marketingor design, you see they look the same.Maybe they have looked at each other, orlooked at the leader, to get their design ele-ments, but in doing this they are onlyworking for the leader. They are reinforc-ing the leader’s ideas. Another very com-mon mistake is to try and design some-thing so new and unusual that is has nosubstance behind it. The third mistake ismaking a very nice design when the wineitself is not so good.

Sometimes for the international marketwe are asked to design different labels forsecondary lines. In this case, you canchoose to design a label to be seen as typi-cally ‘Italian’ and many do this. But nobodywill remember your label or your brand,because you have made yourself into justanother Italian wine. So even on the inter-national market, we still prefer to design insuch a way that it expresses the winery. �

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D E S I G N

with the winemaker and we told them tocreate a team to express the winery. Thismain thing with this winery is that they tryto have as little impact on the environmentas possible. They are biodynamic. At theend, we collected all of the art papers andchose teams to express what the winemakeris doing with his wines. When you see thepictures, you will see there are two arche-typal elements: the circle and the square.The circle is an archetype of the sky and itcan also express the continuity of nature.This means if you are biodynamic yourespect the environment and have a circularlife – if you use a lot of chemicals, on theother hand, you cannot have circulargrowth, because you will have to keep onusing chemicals or have no fruit. So you see,these labels have three levels. The first isthat they are nice to see, because they haveart work on them; the second is that theyexpress nature. In nature there are fourthemes: the ground, the wine plant, thewine maker and the wine itself. For theground the artist's work was about putting astone on a paper and to brush it, so we got alabel with an image of the ground that gavebirth to the wine. The second label has astylized vine leaf on it. The third step is thatyou can find the handprints of the wine-maker on the label. This is a very moderndesign and it replaced a very old design.The export manager was afraid to put thiswine on the US market and also on theItalian one, because it was a break from thepast. But in this case the label had a very

Above: The squaresuggests the earth.

Right: Massimiliano Hangler,

accounts executive, SGA, Italy

The shape of the Tosti bottle isbased on an ancient archetypefound around the world.

SGA believe that the label has toexpress the core of the winery’sunique personality.

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Just Add Wine was founded in 2000 tohelp producers who are targeting thewine export market, when director and

owner Barbara Harkness created a portfolioof off-the-shelf ideas to show producers. Oneidea, bought by Casella Wines, has gonedown in wine history as one of the biggestbrands of all time – [yellow tail]. Just AddWine also refreshes and designs for existingbrands, including McWilliams, Majella andMcGuigan. Today the company has fourdesigners and works with companies all overthe world.

Just Add Wine was the result often years experience of workingwith boutique producers inAustralia. I started in 1990 and bythe year 2000 I had seen a lotchanges in the industry and real-ized that the consumer wasbeing more attracted to labelsthan to the boutique producersthemselves. My producersneeded an avenue to get theirwines to the export markets,so I came up with the idea ofcreating the wine name, aswell as the label and the ancil-lary products that go with it.The idea was that clientswould get the name, the label

Some of our briefs are from establishedwineries and established products and theywant something based on heritage, but everybrief is different. More often than not if youhave a meeting of minds and they like yourthought process, you can build a good rapport and working relationship. But peoplein the wine industry aren’t marketers anddon’t know what they’re looking for and youhave to feed them an idea and get them tofall in love with it. We could get a big brieffrom a corporate company that has guide-lines that are so specific that the labelalmost designs itself. The most interestingprojects are for the boutique producers,because you’re designing for their vineyardand creating a whole new story. I had a clientrecently who bought a vineyard in Tasmaniaand they had inherited a name which hadsome value. We couldn’t get to the vineyardbut, after all, a vineyard’s a vineyard, so Iworked on the idea of selling Tasmania as atourism destination. We created a whole newidentity for the existing name which had nolinks to the old label. Sometimes the baby isso ugly you need to throw it out with thebath water.

[yellow tail]

We have off-the-shelf concepts which wedesign ourselves and then sell to companies.We came up with our concept for [yellowtail] by designing to our heart’s content.Brand Australia and, I guess, the kangarooare the most iconic things that Australia has.We decided to use a kangaroo but a ‘YellowTail’ is also a variety of fish, and a blackcockatoo parrot. It’s simply a very memo-rable name which we came up with after abrainstorming session. That design was in

and the intellectual property, so all theyneeded to do was add wine.

Credibility is all

Wine sales used to be about the produc-er’s name, but then came the trend to attractcustomers by doing something better thanthe bottle next to it, which became a game inthe end. That’s been pushed to the Nthdegree, with people finding more and moreclever ideas to use to sell wine. We’ve beenthrough the gimmicky time of coloured bot-tles and so on, but in the end everythingcomes back to credibility. Coloured bottles

and Tetrapaks are not perceivedas the real thing. It’s the labelthat has to do all the work,though you can use it to get newideas across. People will respondto a quirky label. Trends at the

moment? Right now I am see-ing a lot of producers goingconservative. Nobody wantsto take a gamble in the cur-rent climate (except that theconservative path may alsobe a gamble!) I still think,however, there is room atthe commodity level withgood quality wine whichstill makes a profit.

One New World design firm, Australian company JustAdd Wine, designs not only labels and packaging, butalso the entire wine brand concept. Owner and directorBarbara Harkness explains their unique approach.

JUST ADD WINE

Above: The Moore’s Hill labelis as all about Tasmania, theregion, not the vineyard.

Right: Barbara Harkness, founder of Just Add Wine

Far right: one of the most successful brands in wine history, [yellow tail].

Left: Port Lincoln is renownedfor its tuna farms.

Below: Back to the classics.

imaginea butterfly

Free to flutter among France’s

celebrated winemaking regions,

alighting only on the finest,

most aromatic grapes...

Such is the inspiration

behind Chamarré,

offering only the best

of what France’s vineyards

have to offer.

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For more information,please contact OVS on +33 1 40 20 04 70

or www.chamarre.com

M A R K E T W A T C H

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the portfolio that we took to Sydney. The con-cept was shown to Casella’s marketing man-ager in an airport meeting as we flew in toSydney and the brand manager flew out tothe USA to meet with their distributors. Itwas also showcased to others during that initial trip and although betrothed to Casella,we could have sold it many times over. Everyproducer loved it and saw the potential.

Coming up with ideas like this is the waythe industry is evolving. There are a lot ofvirtual vineyards in the wine industrytoday, where people don’t have actual landholdings, and this is where the off-the-shelfconcept really works. Sometimes peopleend up with labels that have no associationwith the producer, but often there is an ele-ment that will connect with their need andthen we develop it further. The design is astarting point.

We offer three design categories: classic,modern and lifestyle. One category, classic,reflects what the market is like at themoment. We never used to offer this, as wewere more about innovation. We have had alot of enquiries for label designs going intoChina. They want European-looking design,as they perceive this to be more credible andexpensive. They say the Chinese don’tunderstand modern design and they wantFrench or Italian, so they ask for classicwhite labels with a little bit of gold foil. Butthis is the starting point, with the introduc-tion of wine. There will be an emerging winegeneration in China eventually.

Critter wines? I have very mixed feelingsabout them, because I probably helpedinvent the category. I know that theAustralian wine industry is trying to reposi-tion itself in the world market but it’s a hardtask because they’ve denoted that they’reabout happy, cheap and cheerful wine. Idon’t have an answer to that and I don’tknow how Australia is going to repositionitself overnight as it would like to do,because the consumer will continue to buycommodity level wine whether the producerslike it or not.

New directions

The first designs we did for Argentinaespoused Brand Argentina, so we used funkyllamas, tango dancers, gauchos and theAndean mountains to promote this genre.Those labels lasted about five years and thenran their course and only one survived. But

then the importer came back to us with a dif-ferent want. This time, they didn’t want to gothe Brand Argentina route. They bought aconcept off the shelf and said there was noneed to sell Argentina as a commodity wine.These days people don’t really care where thewine comes from and they see New Worldwines in general as having anything on thelabel. With this concept they didn’t even put‘Wine of Argentina’ on the front.

Most of my clients don’t have the samelabel in the different markets. [yellow tail] isthe exception, but even that doesn’t work aswell in the UK as it does in the USA. Veryfew people have the same labels across allcountries. This makes naming a real issue,in trying to find one that hasn’t been trade-marked worldwide.

Things that bother me? Really dumbnames that somehow make Australia lookstupid and make the wine producers lookstupid as well. That’s what I hate the mostabout new products I see in the marketplace,because they denigrate the whole industry. Ithink the name is the most important part ofthe package and the imagery has to relate tothe name, preferably in a quirky fun sense.There are labels out there that are just tryingtoo hard at the innovative price point (sub$10). There is so much choice out there thatthe new consumer is always going to be driv-

en by the emotive connections to the label,because they have so much to choose from.Every week you can find dozens of newbrands you’ve never seen before on the wineshelves. It’s incredible. But at the same time,there are very few credible products around.There are too many virtual vineyards and I find that frustrating, because not havingreal producers on the shelves makes thewine industry lose credibility.

We don’t design for specific demograph-ics. It’s hard to do and you shouldn’t anyway,because you’re eliminating people you couldsell to. Women don’t want to be targetedspecifically because it’s an insult to our sen-sibilities. And why cut out the male popula-tion anyway?

I sometimes get these briefs where theywant a label to target women specifically. I'mchosen for the job because I’m a woman andthey think I can hit the market, whereas Ithink we should be getting back to morecredible labels that relate to the producer.We should be getting that authenticityacross.

I guess my challenge for the future ofdesigning is still being innovative with winelabels, and a creator of ideas. The wine labelis the producer’s face to the world, thedesigner is simply the link, and it is our taskto connect to the consumer. �

Heavy Metal and Higher Octave were namedby marketing guru Mark Cashmore forHungerford Hill, to capitalise on Sydney’s

icons. These wines are now sold in duty freein Australia. Above right: a classy look for aflagship wine.

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Autajon, founded in 1965 by the father ofcurrent CEO Gérard Autajon, has madea name for itself in pharmaceutical and

cosmetics packaging. Its head office is inMontélimar, France but the company hasbranches through Europe and one in the US.Fifteen percent of Autajon’s business is dedi-cated to wine and spirits labelling, with print-ing sites in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Loire Valley,Côtes du Rhône, among others. In 2009, thecompany projects a turnover of €400m. Alain Courbière is the sales director of winepackaging.

When we started the wine and spirit pack-aging division [in 2002] we were very wellpositioned, because we knew about the dif-ferent marketing developments that went onin perfume marketing, such as the soft toucheffects and the colour effects. Knowing thatbusiness helped give us a leg up on winepackaging. For instance, we were the firstones to develop a varnish that is used forBraille. That had never been done. That wasone of the innovations that we transposedonto wine labels that gives a definition andfeel to it. We have a ‘soft touch’ varnish thatcan be made of velvet, tissue, leather orwood and used on the wine label and that issomething we transposed from the perfumeindustry. Also the holographic effects.

Today the company has 17 designers andmore than 5,000 wine clients, almost all ofwhom are in France. Some are based inFrance, but are part of an Australian orCalifornian wine group, such as PernodRicard or Foster’s. In general, we act as moreof a technical consultant to the big groupsthan a creative agency, because they havevery strict technical and aesthetic rules, sowe’re mostly technical and production.When it comes to our wine clients, there isnot a major difference between the Frenchand the Anglo Saxons, because we have avery diverse base of clients. Some of them

look for a very traditional French label andothers want something new. What we’ll do isgo to a given market, go to the agent orimporter and work with hand-in-hand withthem. The importers know their market andso are in the best position to know whatworks, rather than us doing a market study.

Consumer moments

We don’t go to a winemaker and tell themthey have to change for the sake of changing.We keep what works best in the traditionalmarket and add value by enlarging it, toenrich their product offer. We never knowwhat will work, so while we do look at con-sumer trends, what we find works better is tolook at consumer moments. We find thosemoments – those times where the consumeris enjoying the wine – and then create a labelthat better fits that particular moment ofdrinking.

The means of consuming has changed.Traditionally, for instance, the French con-sumed wine at dinner, perhaps a fam-ily dinner on Sunday night. Todaywine may be drunk at other times –perhaps around a swimming pool. Sothe moments are changing and youformulate the creativity of the labeldepending on that moment, whetherit’s a happy moment or a traditionalmoment. So a swimming pool wine isa convivial wine. It’s a moment withfriends in the sunshine and that gives it anemotional impact. Such a wine does not haveto be a moderately priced one – you can haveChampagne in this moment.

We do 15-20m wine labels for Moet &Chandon. In the Champagne and bubblyworld, everything is directed towards festivemoments and celebration. It’s also linked toelite moments. So we can learn a lot fromChampagne, because there are other winesyou can drink in elite and festive moments.

The difference is that there are certain behav-ioural codes linked to Champagne, whilethere are far more behavioral codes attachedto the other different types of wine that makethem more complex than Champagne. Thebehavioural codes are wide and varied.

Before you can begin creating the label,you have to understand the final use of the

Major French company Autajon is a leader, not just in thewine and spirits category, but also in perfume and cosmeticsdesign and packaging. Sales director Alain Courbière revealshow that informs their unique approach.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Classic elegance meets the moderndelight in ‘moments’.

The old label of Château deCouspaude (above) not only has a lot of writing, but the sketch ofthe château is less defined andbusy. The new label is what theycall in French ‘purified’, that is,the label has had all the ‘busy-ness’ removed. It has also beenrendered more elegant by theabsence of visuals and the refinement of lines.

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wine. This has to start with the quality of thewine, but it also has to reflect the moment. A‘pool’ wine can have a bit of acidity, a bit offruitiness and be for a moment that’s festive.The wine inside has to evoke a certain use orenergy, and the label is the ambassador ofthe wine when you’re not there.

Big changes

One of the major revolutions in the winebusiness in France has been learning how tosell wine. They have a very good knowledgebase and knowhow about producing wine,but it used to be that people would simplycome and buy it. But now they have to sell, sothey need a large variety destined for differ-ent consumers. That’s a major revolution forthe French wine industry and that’s wherethe whole idea of altering or changing thepackaging to fit different consumer position-ing comes from.

When you speak to the French vintnerswho don’t change, they’re often the GrandCru Classé. They base their experience onhistory and so when they work on their winelabel they change it in little salami slices.Then there is a new generation, the CocaCola and TV generation that have been nurtured on marketing visuals. This move-ment started in the 1980s, but the major

ries can’t be duplicated. For instance, we dothe label Fat Bastard, but we wouldn’t try a‘Fat Pig’ in a different market.

We don’t often have financial case studies,because clients won’t tell us if our labels orpackaging solutions have changed their bot-tom lines, because they don’t want theirlabels going up in price. But we do knowwhen something works really well, becausethey buy a whole lot more from us and oursales increase, or they ask us to develop thesame technology on other brands.

Final thoughts

In France at least there are 40,000 wine-makers all of a certain size, from small tolarge. Compare that to the spirits market,with five companies in France, while thereare maybe 20 or 25 in perfume. Many ofthem (the perfume companies) belong tolarge groups and can do the marketing stud-ies and research that goes into creating aes-thetic advertising. The other problem withwine is that it’s very difficult in France toadvertise.

The major thing that the wine businesscan learn from the perfume industry isprobably the branding, creating a strongbrand. In France, this will probably meancollective action. On the one hand it’s a goodthing, because if you collectively get togeth-er you can pump a lot of time and effort intocreating a strong brand. The bad thing is that if you manage eventually to galvanizeopinion of a large group of winemakers into going into a certain direction.Unfortunately, it also has the possibility of erasing the unique elements of winesmade in France, by standardizing them. �

wave came in the year 2000. The major errorwe see is the vintner or wine maker creatinga label that he personally is pleased with. Helikes it and he thinks it’s right for the market,without taking the target market into consid-eration. There are a lot of people like that.

One winemaker brought in a crayon picture that his son, who is in kindergarten,had done. He wanted to make it into a label,but we talked him out of it. Such a conversa-tion is more human relations than anythingelse. If he had wanted to make a micro cuvéeto dedicate to his son, that would be fine, butthe winemaker cannot always take his ownemotions about the wine into consideration.

Dealing with clients

There are generally two different scenar-ios with clients. If they want to have a tradi-tional French image to present to their exportmarket, then there are no questions to beasked. But if you want different labels for dif-ferent labels for different export countries,then we draw on our treasure trove of mar-keting knowledge. In our client base, we have5,000 clients and a lot of experience. Withsuch experience come many success storiesthat we can dig into.

However, there is no simple recipe for theexport market, because specific success sto-

This is a less well-known vineyardthat uses the family branding element, to bolster recognition of the whole group. This was part of a ‘family makeover’.

Autajon draws onideas from their workon other products, likeluxury cosmetics andperfumes, to informtheir wine label andpackaging design.

Alain Courbière, salesdirector of wine packaging

at Autajon.