Adults play cards in a courtyard. Someone brought pretzels and chips. It is daytime, but a string of festive lights stretches across a courtyard of lush green trees. The friends have bright expressions, their mouths open. Someone is laying down a winning hand. There are bottles of wine, one with a perfectly discernible label. This scene is from an advertisement for a cheap Pinot Grigio. It’s an example of a modern lifestyle image, and there’s more here than meets the eye.
A lifestyle photo is an evocative visual message intended to connect a potential customer with a specific product. They include models or insist, through props and settings, that it is a human experience. While these types of consistent images are evolving, much progress is still needed for them to address the current reach of wine consumers. Fortunately, talented professionals are heeding the call.
Diversifying wine advertising
Juliana Colangelo, vice president of California and new business at Colangelo & Partners, a beverage-oriented public relations firm, says ads for beer and spirits “do a better job of placing the product in the environment in which it is going.” to consume”. For her, wine faces a problem “inside”. If one were to open a legacy print magazine focused on wine, there would be more images of Eden-type vineyards at sunset than wine drinking in action. When there are people, it’s often not a diverse crowd.
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Credit: Outshinery
Thats nothing new.
The lack of diversity in images of the wine lifestyle ranges from where the scenes take place to who is depicted within the images and what those people eat and do.
“It was extremely rare to see a wine ad with people of color,” says Jean Kilbourne, a critic of alcohol advertising. He began his work in the 1970s. The subjects were typically older, “upper-class white people.”
The wine mainstream is struggling to shake this exclusive imagery. In the Pinot Grigio card game, the three friends are all from different racial backgrounds, but it is one of the only examples of diversity in the wine magazine in which it appears.
“They’re so redundant,” says graphic designer Laurie Millotte, speaking of traditional images. Her Canadian company, Outshinery, helps beverage brands develop visual content while simplifying the process. The shots include people of different races, genders, ages, and sexual orientations. Dragging images of the vineyards into more exciting occasions is also key to the company’s production of it. “It’s such a fun product,” she says.
CGI images or classic photography? It is the choice of a brand of wine
To be efficient in the modern market, convenience is the cornerstone of Outshining. Take the scene and insert the bottle later. “It’s all self-service,” says Millotte. Customers choose from a catalog of scenarios, and the Millotte team adds a perfect computer-generated image of the customer’s product. “We have more than 150 bottle shapes,” says Millotte. So far, Outshinery has delivered more than 16,000 bottles to its partners. Once a customer chooses a scene, they are out of reach for other businesses in their area. Finished images can be expected within a few days.
In 2020, Gabriella Macari of North Fork’s Macari Vineyards started using Outshinery and has only good things to say about her experience. “For small, family-owned wineries like ours,” says Macari, “Laurie and her team…are a dream to work with.”
The nature of the process eliminates shipping concerns and the turnaround time is quick compared to conventional services. “Shine Credits” are purchased through subscriptions. The most popular enrollment is for one year and costs $2,159.90. With it, customers receive 25 credits. Lifestyle images cost from one to three credits.
Credit: Jeremy Ball
Some growing companies, like California’s Bottle Branding owned by Jeremy and Michelle Ball, use a more classic approach to lifestyle shots. A bottle is on the spot when the photo is captured. Ball says that making an image “overly processed or posed” can remove a sense of authenticity. “Someone might think they need X, Y, and Z to pull off a lifestyle shot,” she says, but “sometimes it’s just watching the sunset shimmer off wine glasses.”
Bally says a customer could sign up with $600 and “get more than a handful of high-quality shots.” It all depends on the length and size of the shoot. A couple of days can cost thousands.
Lifestyle images online are full of food
Colangelo & Partners has an expanding creative team and is seeing a significant increase in requests for digital images and social media content. In fact, many new customers are signing up for just these kinds of services. In a four-year period, the company has seen a shift from in-person event-based marketing to strong online brand campaigns as customers try to retain customers and reach out to new ones on virtual platforms.
Colangelo, Ball and Millotte see an opportunity with food. Wine is uniquely tied to what you eat with it, and in the real world, consumers enjoy wine with more than just cheese boards. Wine lifestyle images now promote foods inspired by Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican and Indian cuisines. Even the pretzels and chips in the Pinot Grigio lifestyle speak to an audience traditionally untapped by wine marketing.
Kilolo Strobert, owner of retail store Fermented Grapes, in New York City, believes that lifestyle shots that incorporate specific foods might work well when delivered to the communities they’re enjoyed in, but might flop outside of. they. “For someone to think about your message,” he says, “you have to give them the tools to do it.” Whether it’s curry in an Indian restaurant or chips and pretzels on a patio, for Strobert, these images need a revealing atmosphere, even words, to resonate with the general wine consumer.
Credit: Colangelo
But today, businesses can target particular groups relatively easily, which is a big reason why the online wine lifestyle landscape is so much more diverse than it is in print. A shot promoting Prosecco on Instagram has two fizzy glasses placed next to pieces of nigiri and sushi on a dark wood table, and includes specific hashtags to get the image to the right consumers: #sushi, #sushilovers, #sushiroll. A sushi lover scrolling through the posts might take a look at the combination and try Prosecco. Similarly, someone who already enjoys this pairing might appreciate being recognized.
Understanding lifestyle images for what they are: stories
“What’s really for sale here, aside from alcohol,” says Kilbourne, is “a particular life.” For decades, Kilbourne has educated consumers about subliminal techniques in alcoholic beverage advertisements. In his 1982 film, “Calling the Shots: The Advertising of Alcohol,” his goal was to “bring those unconscious messages to light.” By understanding how certain images quietly promote binge drinking, the viewer is better prepared to protect themselves. “It gives us power back,” he says in the film. Forty years later, he says it’s just as important to “pay mindful attention.”
“It’s very complicated because we’re so surrounded by these images,” says Kilbourne.
More consumers will recognize themselves in wine-related media as representation in lifestyle images becomes more developed. Technology is making your production more efficient. Social media is a frontier for brands to broadcast to all wine drinkers, and they’re innovating ways to do it with precision. In a lifestyle image, a fun Pinot Grigio card game is not just a fun Pinot Grigio card game. it’s a message. What an image represents, Ball says, “depends on the story we’re trying to tell.” Hopefully, we strive to count them all.
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Source: vinepair.com