McGuigan Relaunches Passion Pop
Friday, 31st August, 2007
- David Farmer
Little things tell the story. Thus I was delighted to find tucked away in the McGuigan Simeon briefing on the 22nd August, by Dane Hudson under ‘Significant Opportunities Exist’ the following item: ‘One of the many initiatives to improve profitability is rebranding Passion Pop’.
For decades I’ve believed that our wine industry has ignored the fact that a very big market exists serving those with a sweeter taste. Brown Bros has carried off the market coup of all time by exploiting this area. Yet any examination of what sells from a major wholesale warehouse will show that many of the top selling 50 wines are sweet.
The growth of attractively packaged sweet alcoholic beverages known as RTD’s or Ready to Drink is a marketing phenomenon and the category that began 35 years ago with UDL cans is now gobbling up market share. It is now over 17% of the total liquor market.
Yet with Leo Buring Rinegolde that goes back I think to the 1930’s through to the launch of Barossa Pearl in 1956 and numerous sweet, still and sparkling wines since the wine business should have owned this sweet alcohol category. What went wrong is hard to say. We had a stab at the answer with What Comes After Barossa Pearl and Ben Ean? .
It is not to late to reinvigorate this category but the lesson to learn from Brown Bros is to use conservative packaging as the days of Mardi Gras and indeed Passion Pop are over. The consumers are not clowns yet it seems that products in the sweet category were and still are dressed up to look like a circus. I have thought for some time a company dedicated to making only sweet wine styles, still and sparkling, without the distractions of dry wines and the constant worry of show results and critical acclaim, would do rather well. After all concentrating in this area was how Ian Hickinbotham saved Kaiser Stuhl over the six glorious years he was there, 1958 to 1964.
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