Frank Sinatra, the Jack Daniels and Stoli drinking entertainer, once said something to the effect that champagne was a drink for women.  Well, a great deal has changed since the “rat pack” days especially when it comes to drinking tastes around the world.
 
Once again, we’re overseas to talk about the power of a brand!  This time it’s France!  Champagne is a kind of wine, but did you know that it is also a region in France?  Technically, none of the sparkling wine that comes from anywhere else in the world but Champagne can be called champagne.  If your sparkling wine is not from this region then it is not Champagne.  It is simply sparkling wine.  And the brand police in France knew enough to make that point long ago and continue to make this point.   And, to this I say, Hurrah!!!

Some of the bubbly produced elsewhere can be very good –believe me, I know!— but without that name it’s not the real stuff.  I never drink anything less than Don –but I also love Crystal! 

So what do you do when worldwide demand for champagne soars and you want to produce more champagne?   You expand the region called Champagne, of course!!!  And that’s what the French are about to do.  See here.  But they better be careful!!  If you are like me, you can take the wine out of the region, but you can’t take the region out of the wine!   Wine is all about taste, and if you have a brand that meets certain taste criteria you better know what you are doing otherwise you are heading for disaster!  It seems like the French do, though, since the area they are considering expanding into has the same soil, growing conditions and tradition, et cetera…  Let’s hope!!
But I have a different point to make today.  It’s not that often that a veteran brander like myself gets to show people the incredible dollar difference that the power of a brand makes … but this little snippet does it like nothing I’ve seen in a while!!!  317 villages are set to be considered for the new expanded region of Champagne.  If you owned 2 and a half acres on non-Champagne land today that land would be worth about $8,000.  But if tomorrow that same land is designated part of the expanded Champagne, well, it would suddenly be worth $1.5 million dollars!  Wow!

Marketing 101 says that a brand grows by building trust between the producer of a product and the consumer of that product.  That’s trust in the quality; trust in the consistency and trust in the uniqueness of the product.  This trust must be re-enforced again and again until turning to the brand becomes almost second nature to the consumer.  Think about Champagne!  When people anywhere in the world have popped a bottle of Champagne to toast an anniversary, celebrate a wedding or christen a ship, they’ve been building Champagne’s brand.  And just like what’s happening with Champagne’s land, an established brand brings its established magic to whatever it touches!  
If that difference in land values doesn’t show the value of building your brand, I don’t know what does!!!  Now if I only owned a bit of Champagne.

JTISM #1501 – Wine should be French and it should be red (except when it is Champagne –in which case, it should be French, white and bubbly … and from Champagne).