Are You Prepared to Change Your Brand?

After 60 years of hard work the New Zealand wine company Nobilo Wine Group is re-branding itself. After all that time and effort this could not have been an easy decision, but perhaps made easier by the fact that the Nobilo family sold out seven years ago.

Nobilo Wine Group, now Constellation New Zealand, owns a number of leading export wines including Kim Crawford, Nobilo, Monkey Bay, Selaks and Drylands. Chief executive Joe Stanton explained that the company was changing its strategy from a volume and sales orientation to one focused more on quality and premium positioning. This is understandable given current industry trends of increasing competition and increasing educated global wine consumers.

Stanton uses the term "free up" when referring to the effect the name change will have as it neutralises the impact that 'Nobilo' has on the wines in its product portfolio. Thus, their strategy will allow each wine to speak for itself.

Personally I think that this is a great move as even though it appears that all their hard work building the brand is worthless, it is not. Nobilo will still remain a standalone brand, as it currently is, and because each of the above mentioned brands are so strong Constellation New Zealand may take on the persona of a parent company with each brand as a strategic business child.

For the New Zealand wine industry to be successful it needs to build strong brands positioned in premium markets, Nobilo recognised this and acted. This idea of brand building is not foreign to the industry sustained, consistent, targeted effort is required.

Overall Nobilo has more to gain than it will loose therefore decision made.

You can expect many more posts on wine related issues as it forms the basis for my Master of Entrepreneurship thesis at Otago School of Business