Bordeaux breaks away from 'traditional wine advertising'

By Emily Kearns, Tara Craig

Published: 03 October, 2013

Rather than a series of regional arrangements, Bordeaux Wines has opted for a single global advertising account.

The account, worth £8 million, was awarded this week to the London-based creative agency Isobel, following a pitch called by the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB), the industry body that promotes wines from the Bordeaux region in France.

Responsible for UK advertising until the account ended in December 2012, Isobel created the "Good food would choose Bordeaux" print campaign, which launched in 2010 and promoted Bordeaux as a wine that pairs naturally with good food.

Bordeaux Wines' aim, marketing director François Jumeau told Harpers, was to "create one identical global campaign to be used in all of our seven key markets (France, UK, Belgium, Germany, USA, China and Japan)."

"The idea behind this is to have the same message for our wines everywhere", said Jumeau, adding that the seven key markets were selected on the basis of both volume and value sales when the strategic paper "The Bordeaux tomorrow plan" was first released in 2010.

Isobel's chief executive, Paul Houlding, describes the new campaign as "a complete break from anything that Bordeaux has ever run before".

"Our enemy was 'traditional wine advertising' and the work reflects that. It is quirky, illustrative and uncompromising," he said.

The new global ad campaign will kick off in 2014, although a concrete release date has yet to be announced. The campaign will be run digitally in China and the US, but also in print (both press and display) in other countries, Jumeau said.