Finding Opportunity in Obstruction

Double Booked, Double Trouble -- Double the Opportunities for Quality PR!

It's enough to drive a public relations professional to drink -- that is, if that professional wasn't already working for one of the premier Australian wine companies. The public relations firm of 'ABC' Inc. has just landed a quality company, namely that of Beringer Blass Wine Estates. Beringer Blass is the global wine division of Foster's Group Limited, the world's leading premium wine company. Gaining the business of Beringer Blass has been quite a coup for the firm of ABC, given the impressive growth rate in the company's market depth. It is the premium table wine category in the markets of North America, Australia, Asia Pacific and Europe. Beringer Blass ranks third among the world's wine companies by earnings. The business represents 60% of the assets of Australian-listed premium beverage company Foster's, but its image is not simply that of the rough-and-ready beer company -- it has as sophisticated as well as a sophomoric side as well.

However, although beloved of many an Aussie coming home for a charming and quiet evening with his or her mate, this wine company wishes to improve its image amongst not only connoisseurs but also continue to make inroads into the ever popular youth market. It wishes, essentially, to merge the Foster's audience with its wine audience and educate the youthful palate to the smoother tastes of a new Shiraz. It also wants to circumvent a potentially dangerous industry trend. Non-alcoholic, caffeine-containing beverages like Red Bull have made tremendous inroads into the market of young, club-going wine, beer, and spirits consumers. This is unfortunate because the youth market is particularly desirable, even for a company with an already relatively strong market base. Young people, in simple and practical terms, will be consumers for longer periods of time than older consumers. Their buying patterns are just being established. Moreover, younger consumers often have more willing and able 'disposable income' to dispense upon luxury, perishable goods such as alcohol than older consumers. Younger people are also living at home in greater numbers, attend university for longer periods of time, and are getting married and having children later on in life. Thus, although they may have full or part time jobs, they have less rent to pay, fewer utility bills, and still can rely on mum and dad to bail them out in a tight financial squeeze. They also spend more dollars upon their own pleasure than on the needs of others, such as children, and are ready consumers for the non-luxury alcoholic beverage market.

Hence the creation of a new bottled screw-top wine. This brand will be specifically aimed at young people in red and white forms. Both will be called 'Shining Shiraz.' The wine will be sold in smaller, colorful bottles, have a sharp, fruity taste, and look more like a wine cooler than a wine itself, although it will have the same alcoholic content and be made fermenting process as traditional wines. To launch this new product, a venue has been rented where young ravers will dance into the wee hours of the night. The location will be in the recreation room of a newly opened hotel on the waterfront of the capital of Melbourne, spilling out into the beach but of course still being tied to the hotel's bar area, to ensure that the wine and other beverages are kept properly chilled or at room temperature.

The purpose of the event is to show that this wine has an effervescent quality that causes the drinker's energy to rise rather than to fall, even if the wine is not comparable to a 'Red Bull' style drink, and is priced slightly higher than a cooler or a beer. All well and good, you might say. However, potential PR disasters are never far 'round the corner -- it has been revealed that a new chain of the popular American fitness center, Bally's Total Fitness, is also opening a venue nearby. It intends to use the same facilities at the hotel to promote memberships in the area. What to do, when ostensibly the lifestyle of Bally's is so American, while the wine company's image is so manifestly Australian? What will happen when these healthy, clean-scrubbed American personal trainers, at the behest of Bally's descend in droves upon Berigner Blass' exclusive event?

Also, it might seem upon the surface that there is a contradiction between the healthy image of a fitness center and the dissolute pub-crawling atmosphere that pervades the alcoholic beverage industry. However, a canny PR player will see that there are many possibilities for cross over between the two markets. First of all, many of the young people being courted by the wine company are also likely candidates to become members of Bally's Total Fitness. After all, doesn't many a happy club-going raver attempt to work off his or her indulgences the morning after in the gym? Don't young people usually have more time and motivation to work out, as well as to party into the wee hours of the night?

Thus, one could create a kind of a joint venture between the two companies, that of Bally's and Beringer Blass. Instead of merely having a traditional (but legal) style 'rave' to promote the new wine, in the form of a party one could create a kind of fitness event that would rehabilitate the image of Blass in the youth market, and enable it to better corner some of the Red-Bull swilling audience. This would give an added marketing advantage to the new wine as well, stressing the healthy as well as the energetic and active lifestyle pursued by its drinkers. Wine's health benefits are not merely confined to its antioxidant properties, but choosing wine to fuel one's self during a rave thus pays off in healthy dividends in a more immediate fashion, even in terms of performance in the gym the day after. A drinker is less affected by the poor and performance qualities of wine, one could suggest, than other spirits, and even under the mild influence of a bit of tippling, a young partygoer can still 'spin' with the best of them, upon a stationary exercise bike.

Yes, this joint PR event between Bally's and Beringer Blass would thus cumulate in the ultimate event -- not a dance-a-thon or a drink-a-thon, but a spinning bike-a-thon, a kind of exercise class upon stationary bikes, sponsored by both the Beringer Blass Company and Bally's Total Fitness. The wine would be provided free, and the individual, who stayed on the longest, at the highest level of intensity, would win a prize for his or her stalwartness in the face of this feat of strength and endurance. One could even pair the different red, and white teams of tipplers and give awards to the team that stayed on the longest. Bally's could give out sports bottles with wine logos on the front, and the wine company could dispense wine glasses as promotional favors.