Yellow Tail's great marketing story

The New York article in its Sunday business section titled, "The Wallaby That Roared Across the Wine Industry," outlines how this one brand from Casella Wines Ltd. grew from zero to 7.5 million cases imported into the US in just five years. The article talks of the many factors that have contributed to its success, but I think the marketing and branding story speaks volumes because of its simplicity and honesty.

The Deutsches have scheduled some $24 million for promotions this year, up from $4 million in 2005. Billboards featuring yellow tails on a bird, an airplane and a mermaid, as well as a yellow ponytail on a pretty girl, have become familiar sights in some cities.

Perhaps more important, Mr. Cartiere and others in the industry say, the Deutsches provided Yellow Tail with almost instant access to the American market, using the distribution network they had built over two decades for Duboeuf wines.

The increasingly familiar Yellow Tail label is loosely meant to depict the brand's namesake, a yellow-footed rock wallaby, a smaller cousin to the kangaroo. The bottle labels and in-store advertisements always put the brand name in lower case and within brackets: [yellow tail].

As for those brackets, the story is that the Casellas were looking up "kangaroo" in a textbook when they came upon a technical description of a wallaby. In the margin, alongside the Latin derivation of the name, was the Australian version, in brackets: [yellow tail]. They decided to keep the brackets "to set the wine apart" and to retain the lower-case lettering "to underscore the wine's lack of pretension," John Casella said.

Yellow tail shows how a single clear marketing concept -- a clean brand identity and broad distribution -- can slice through today's media clutter. And with a delicious product behind it (I love Yellow Tail for everyday wine and buy it regularly), the Casellas have created a powerhouse Australian business. Now the question is only, who will do the same for Argentina or Chile?

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Branding, Wine, Australia