Can Wine Labels Influence our Decision?

At an outdoor event I attended over the summer, a friend offered me a glass of wine.

“Have you had it before?” she asked. When I said no, she poured a sample into my plastic cup and asked me not to hold her responsible if it was terrible. It turned out that she hadn’t tried it herself either. Curious, I asked her why she had decided to purchase this particular bottle of wine. I assumed she would say a friend had recommended it.

“First of all, it’s a red blend and I really like those,” she said. “Other than that, I guess it was the bottle that really caught my eye.” The bottle itself had influenced his choice … really? I probed further. After thinking about it for a moment, she concluded that the real reason she had picked it was the label. She liked the way it looked.

“Yeah, the label is pretty cool,” she explained, referring to both the front and back labels on the wine bottle. Then I turned to another friend and asked if he also picks wine based on the label design. Definitively, yes. In fact, being an infrequent consumer of wine, he almost exclusively purchases wine using this method. Turns out, even the lady sitting next to us does the same thing … but only when she is in a rush.

This story illustrates how important it is for anyone creating a wine label to consider the power it has to affect their sales, particularly when it comes to acquiring new customers. That said, not everyone, of course, will buy wine without tasting it beforehand or having someone recommend it to them. But if you put bland, generic labels on your wine bottles, don’t be disappointed if your sales are low. There is a very good reason why you often hear me say that labels are your product’s most important marketing vehicle.

So if I was a wine maker, I would certainly hedge my bets by ensuring that all my wines were labeled with eye-catching, unique designs and printed in full color on high quality materials. Of course, we here at Victor Printing, we would be happy to help you with that last part. Any time you need to have custom wine labels printed, please feel free to contact our customer service department at postmaster@victorptg.com, or give us a call at 800.443.2845