Most winemakers hadn’t heard of Augmented Reality (AR) or thought about how it could help them sell more wine. The launch of Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates’ 19 Crimes wine brand saw a remarkable AR experience created to accompany its wine bottles. The AR experience was created using the Living Wine Labels app. Photos of AR-enabled wine bottles manipulated by users have been shared more than 1,000,000 times.
Treasury Wine Estates uses AR in wine branding.
Understanding why the 19 Crimes AR wines are so successful is how wine consumers choose their favorite brands. 19 Crimes is a brand that offers a story or a narrative. Wine drinkers look for brands that have sparked curiosity. The brand’s concept is that 19 Crimes was founded on the idea that British prisoners were sent to Australia to commit one of 19 crimes. Each wine style has a different prisoner. AR allows you to learn about the history and stories of these prisoners. The AR app allows you to point your smartphone’s camera at the label of a wine bottle, and the prisoners will animate and tell their stories in their own words.
Marketers noticed the excitement that AR was generating among wine drinkers. The technology was reviewed by Forbes magazine in December 2017. It was called an “amazing example” of adult-targeted AR. The best part was that there were different stories for different prisoners, so consumers were tempted to buy more bottles to collect all of the stories. Market Watch named 19 Crimes its Wine Brand of the year in 2017.
Based on its initial success, Treasury Wine Estates has launched its AR platform for different wine brands, including The Walking Dead, Beringer Bros and Chateau St Jean. The Walking Dead wines stand out because they take AR to a new level. Each wine bottle becomes a story about Rick Grimes, the zombie hunter who must face many zombies. A whole entertainment experience is created when you point your smartphone at a bottle. The best part is that two bottles from the same collection can be placed side-by-side, and the two bottles interact with one another. This concept is brilliant because a customer walking into a wine shop to purchase a single bottle will be tempted to buy another bottle to enjoy the full entertainment experience.
Other wine brands also use AR as a marketing tool.
Not only Treasury Wine Estates has made AR part of their overall marketing strategy. The Paso Robles-based Rabble wine Company has created AR experiences that tell the brand’s story and engage customers in new ways. You can get a story about a comet hitting Florence if you buy a red blend; the story of Mount Vesuvius eruptions on Pompeii if you purchase a Cabernet Sauvignon. You can access these AR experiences by downloading the Rabble Wine Company app from the App Store or Google Play Store.
In September 2017, Argentine wine brand The Owl and the Dust Devil launched an AR experience that featured both an owl and a devil. This AR experience lets you see an owl trying out for the title of tornado chaser. This hints at how AR can create cinematic-like experiences with a wine glass.
Wine brands are using AR to promote social movements and societal trends.
Showing that your wine brand is part of a larger social movement or societal trend is one way to persuade consumers to purchase your bottle of wine. The bold wines brand was launched in August 2018 at the same moment as the #MeToo campaign supporting women. Nellie Bly and Josephine Baker were among the prominent historical women featured on the wine label. You can listen to Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz describe how she became the most popular Latin artist of the 20th century by pointing your smartphone at the AR label. You can hear her voice, but you can also see her face on the side of each bottle. It almost seems as if she is speaking to you. These are what wine insiders call “living wine labels”.
The real magic happens when consumers share those stories with friends and connect with them on social media. It is fascinating to think that a wine bottle can communicate with you. It becomes a viral social media sensation when the wine bottle tells a story you care about.
AR is a way to stand apart in a crowded market.
Augmented reality is about increasing engagement with wine drinkers, making them fans of your brand and finding new ways for you to stand out in an increasingly crowded market. AR technology users tend to be younger than the average user, so creating AR brand experiences is a great way to connect with young wine drinkers. Wine brands often create displays specifically for retail stores. AR can tell engaging stories that wine drinkers will return to again and again.