![\"IMGP9600\"](\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/IMGP9600-500x333.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been thinking a bit about brands of late, and it is coffee that prompted my thoughts.<\/p>\n
I was in Washington State in June, and you just couldn\u2019t get away from Starbucks. Every hotel had Starbucks coffee, aside from the ubiquitous Starbucks stores. My coffee geek friends tell me that Starbucks coffee isn\u2019t very good. But it\u2019s clearly popular. It is a very powerful brand.<\/p>\n
If Starbucks isn\u2019t great, why is it such a strong coffee brand?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s because it does what brands are supposed to do. It\u2019s not great, but it\u2019s not bad. It is good enough, and it is consistently good enough. The brand reassures people that they are not going to have a bad cup of coffee, and they know what to expect when they order a Starbucks coffee.<\/p>\n
For coffee geeks, reassurance and consistency are not good enough. They want great coffee. Clearly, for most people, good enough coffee is just fine. Quality is best defined as fitness for purpose, and for normal people a cup of coffee that isn\u2019t bad<\/strong> is usually all that they want. After all, coffee is not just about the flavour. It is a psychological punctuation mark in the day; a ritual; a special moment. So according to our definition of quality \u2013 fitness for purpose \u2013 Starbucks is good quality, for most people.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s extend this thinking to wine. Most people find wine brands reassuring, even though wine geeks usually find branded wines dull and uninteresting. As with coffee, normal people want a wine that isn\u2019t bad<\/strong>, and the flavour of the wine isn\u2019t the primary consideration in their purchase decision.<\/p>\n This applies to expensive wines, too. For people shelling out serious bucks, high-end wine brands \u2013 think Penfolds Bin Series, famous Napa Cabs, recognizable classed growth Bordeaux \u2013 are reassuring. Champagne brands are a great example here: you could show a normal person a grower Champagne that they prefer the taste of and they\u2019ll still choose the Grand Marque that\u2019s more expensive, because the branding is powerful and reassures them that they are drinking the right thing.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that brands mean different things to different people. You could argue that for the natural wine crowd names such as Ganevat are powerful brands. Here, the brand becomes more aspirational than reassuring. There are somm-bait and geek-bait brands, just as there are brands appealing to affluent dudes who like a bit of conspicuous consumption.<\/p>\n Overall, though, the role of the brand is to reassure those who are looking to spend and consume in safety, with no nasty surprises. And this is what wine brands do, and it is largely why they are so successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been thinking a bit about brands of late, and it is coffee that prompted my thoughts. I was in Washington State in June, and you just couldn\u2019t get away…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-of-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12364,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361\/revisions\/12364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}