In this guest post, Dr Brian Mitchell and Evan Mitchell, directors of wine PR firm Love & Wine, take a look at how to get the Millennials to drink more vino and regale what they learned from the process…

History’s most aspirational generation abandoned history’s only aspirational beverage.

Wine, the craft beverage par excellence, had surrendered this marketing mindspace to “craft” beers and ciders.

An obvious loss to the wine industry, but a loss as well to Gen Y itself, and to wider society. International studies bore out the local findings from the Centre For Alcohol Policy Research (CAPR) painted an even darker picture of “wine cultures” in Europe seeing spikes in drunken antisocial behaviour, as their youth swung to lagers and alcopops.

Previous attempts to create Gen Y wine brands had been driven by superficial and naff novelty, or by clumsy co-opting of Gen Y slang. These approaches failed to nail the sense of authenticity Gen Y demands from their lifestyle brands.

Engagement could only come by building the brand on the defining characteristics of the Gen Y mindset.

So Australian Vintage Limited approached Love & Wine. And the YOU wine brand was created.

The Gen Y worldview is in the brand’s DNA:

• The lifestyle priority of image and identity
• Celebritisation and fame-fascination
• Abandonment of authority for peer influence
• Relationship dominance in social currency
• Technological saturation – tech as both means and end

Each wine variety in the range declares its own personality, ideal for Gen Y who describe so many things in terms of individual personalities and relationship compatibilities.

The brand’s interactive website quiz ( www.youwines.com.au ) forges an immediate consumer/wine personality alignment.

Rejection of traditional tasting notes replaces a strong intimidation/alienation factor with a new wine vernacular, easy and immediately accessible.

A digital campaign focuses on the discover/share factor, backed up by event partnerships with on-trend brands (Oscar Wylee, Hew Clothing, Radlivin’ festival), harnessing the message-dissemination of generational influencers.

Gen Y now has its own wine brand and it’s the the fastest-growing wine brand in Australia on Instagram.