MORE USEFUL WINE SURVEYS
A revolutionary wine survey about wine surveys has once again exposed the vast chasm in our knowledge about the drinking habits of Joe and Joanna public and thereby pointed out the irrefutable need for more wine surveys. Incontrovertible research demonstrates that people living below the poverty line tended to spend less on a bottle of wine than plutocrats, Russian oligarchs and Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was further discovered that drinks advertising aimed at babies and people in a vegetative state tended to be less effective than that targeted at impressionable twenty somethings and alcoholics. Other extraordinary revelations include the fact that all women drink Pinot Grigio to a man, that Australian wine is physically louder than French wine and Chateau Latour would sell far more bottles off supermarket shelves if it were varietally labelled Posh Frog Cabernet Merlot and sported a day-glow back label explaining that the wine could be drunk with red meat or poultry or quaffed as an aperitif. Meanwhile another survey which proudly announced that consumers could be profiled into several fine discrete socio-economic segments (Calais hypermarket; €3.99ers, €4.99ers, €5.99ers and rich as Croesus) has been trumped by the new brilliant ground breaking and entirely inoffensive categorization by Wine Omniscience:*Old Fart always goes to the Mouldy Cheese Wine Bar in Fleet Street, orders a bottle of house label crusty claret with his well-done steak and a glass of Ten Year Manky (port) with the Stilton;*Red Bull Bint drinks a glass of Chardonnay, a Red Bull, a vodka, a Red Bull, a cocktail, a Red Bull, throws up in the men’s toilet and passes out. She comes from Essex, her name is Sharon Tracy, she’s a genuine bottle blonde and takes eight weeks hen night holiday in Ibiza every year.*Brandma is aged 70 and upwards and spends all her time comparative shopping in supermarkets. She has accumulated so many reward points that she could fly to the moon and half way back. She always drinks own label and the cheapest brands and, in her spare time, appears in Tesco adverts.*Wine Nerd has not only tasted the wine, but visited the vineyard and arranged for his ashes to be scattered there. He is a living compendium of Parker points and riveting trivia.*Ironist - buys Californian blush wines and bog standard labels because… like um… wine, is like.... sort of pretentious (like) and it’s cool not to be interested in anything interesting”; *Trend Junkie - One who rides the hobby horses of journalists off in all directions etc. etc.
Meanwhile, one on-trade wine company is trialling B.O.R.A.T (Business Outlook Retail Audit Tracker). The value of this system was neatly summarised by account director, Viktor Hotelier, who remarked “Iz nice!” The system, operated by a management drone in head office, uploads all sales data, analyses it scrupulously and within a mere six months gives an authoritative breakdown of the information: “Already we’ve learned incredibly quickly, for example, that Italian trattorias and pizzerias sell Italian wine, that haughty French sommeliers tend to buy Bordeaux and Burgundy for their lists and that cheap Chinese restaurants are still under the impression that Piesporter Michelsberg is a wine. The huge advantage of this system is that we can instantaneously download the data into the microchips installed in the heads of our sales managers and scramble their brains”.
They’ve also introduced a new loyalty card and launched an advertising campaign called “Chip, Pin & Chin-Chin”. Every time a nominated gatekeeper (otherwise known as bar or restaurant manager) uses the card to order online, reward points will be given by the particular brands (who are sponsoring the card) as long as only the brands are ordered. This is known as “golden brandcuffing” and is said to breed positive brand awareness. The system is totally secure and information collated will only be shared with future employers, the intelligence services, credit rating companies and dating agencies.
A spokesperson for Global Brands Incorporated hailed the importance of the results: “If we didn’t find this information out, we’d surely have to invent it. Ultimately, we can envisage a situation wherein there will be as many demographic categories as there are drinkers which will enable us to continue with our “twin track upside down business to business ground control to Major Tom” approach”: demythologising wine whilst simultaneously proselytising the consumer to explore the wonderful wide world of our brands or, more simply, recalibrating the brands to fit the customers and recalibrating the customers to fit the brands. And the ultimate objective of all these endeavours? “Upsegmentation of all underindexed drinking categories”. And what is that in real English? “More less choice.” Pinot Grigio for all!