REthink Wine Blog

If you think you’ve been noticing more and more animals on wine labels over the past several years, it’s not just your imagination. According to a study by market research firm ACNielsen, approximately one out of every five table wine brands introduced features an animal on the label. Traditionally, a logo or label with direct relevance to the product it represents has been emphasized as a key to success. For wineries, this would generally be grapes or a vineyard. In spite of this established practice, wine labels with animals have been warmly received, and even demonstrate an increase in sales. Danny Brager, VP of ACNielsen’s Beverage Alcohol Team, states that the sales generated by new brands featuring a ‘critter’ outperform other new table wines by more than double.

One theory suggests that an animal label has a unique presentation that differentiates it from more traditional label styles. This may help to distinguish it on retail shelves drawing the attention of new consumers.

A second theory of this trend explains that consumers have an easier time relating to images which they have already been primed to. The imagery is already familiar to the consumer and may have other meaning in their personal lives as well.

Earlier this year Peter Renton, founder of Lightning Labels, further explored this idea noting a study by Professor Aparna Labro (University of Chicago Booth School of Business), Ravi Dhar (Yale University) and Norbert Schwartz (University of Michigan). According to their research, consumers tend to purchase products which reflect themselves rather than the product.

Below are a few examples showcasing labels which have interesting and unique animal designs.

Nebraska Table Wine

A partnership between Lincoln Children’s Zoo and James Arthur Vineyard, these clever labels highlight animals within the zoo and include catchy names such as Pokey Red and Snappy White (shown above). Nebraska Table Wine was awarded in Commart’s 2008 Design Annual for its crisp packaging design.

www.jamesarthurvineyards.com
www.commarts.com

Mutt Lynch Winery

Supporting a long list of nonprofit animal rescue shelters and organizations, Mutt Lynch Winery stands out for both its community leadership and award winning wines. Each bottle design has its own unique, individual flair. Featured above are Merlot Over and Play Dead, Unleashed Chardonnay and Portrait of a Mutt Zinfandel.

www.muttlynchwinery.com

PengWine

Offering delectable wines sourced from Chile’s Maipo Valley, PengWine dedicates its brand and label designs to Chile’s regional bird - the penguin. Each bottle illustrates a specific type of of penguin and is even tied to a PengWine persona which provides a brief summary of the bird and wine characteristics. Shown above are Humboldt, Royal and Rockhopper.
www.pengwine.com

Email campaigns are fast and cost-efficient. However, unlike traditional methods of advertising such as print ads and direct mail, what you see is not always what they’ll get. How do you ensure that the messages you send will display correctly in your customer’s inbox? Below are five tips to help improve the success of your next email blast.

Use Alt Tags On Important Images

Many email clients disable images by default, prompting users to manually click to download images. To help prevent total loss of information, use alt tags which will display text descriptions when images are not downloaded.

Include Hyperlinks

Web users are trained to rollover images and text to access links. Within your email be sure to link all of your images and relevant text back to your website. If your email is focusing on a specific product, link to the product detail page to make it as easy as possible for customers to purchase. Also be sure to use concise language in your call-to-action links.

Avoid Rich Media and Flash

While animation can sometimes add aesthetic interest, the majority of email clients do not support flash. Animated gifs are sometimes used, but be careful because these can dramatically increase the size of your emails.

Test Your Email Across Multiple Browsers and Email Clients

To ensure your email will display consistently, create a testing environment including multiple email accounts. Listed below are a few of the more common email clients used.

	Yahoo		Gmail
	AOL		Hotmail
	Outlook		Lotus Notes
	Thunderbird		Entourage
	Mac Mail

Make sure to test across different browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari…) on both Mac and PC.

Provide A Web Page With Your Message

Take one extra step to ensure the delivery of your message by including a link to a web page including your email promotion or content. This can easily be done by making an orphan page and dropping in your images and text.

Periodically, take a moment to step back and look at your store. Are you maintaining it regularly? Does it have a clean, tight presentation? Here are a few high level tips and suggestions to help you wipe the dust off your store.

Storefront

Your store landing page is one of the most important pages within your site. Make sure that it’s intuitive and easy to use through strong hierarchy and logical organization.

Hierarchy
If you want to grab your customer’s attention with certain products and promotions, don’t bury them deep within your store pages. Treat your store landing page like a window display, and place your most important features front and center. The CMS area at the top of your store page is precious real estate that can be strategically used.

Cellar 360 includes a kicker for Father’s Day.

Organization
Organization goes hand-in-hand with the hierarchy of your store set-up. Who has time (or patience) to sort through a mish-mash of this, that, and the other? Make the shopping experience as easy and painless as possible. Guide your customer’s eye through the store by hierarchy, and make it easy for them to sort through your products by organization. Create logical categories within your store. For example:

• By Product Type (Wines, Gifts, Accessories)
• By Varietal (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay)
• By Wine Type (Red, White, Dessert)
• By Usage (Wines to Pair with Food, Wines to Cellar)

Within the CMS area at the top of the page, you can create image buttons which link to your different categories. While the automated category crumbs are convenient and easy-to-use, images are attention grabbing and can instantaneously tell a customer what they can expect. (This is one of the reasons that iconography is so widely used.)

Terra Valentine uses bottle shots to give a preview of each store category.

Israeli Wine Direct sells several different brands of wine and uses labels to show each store category.

Products

Take time to focus on each product’s imagery and content.

Images
Don’t underestimate the importance of your product images. The quality of your images communicate the quality of the product and brand.

Are you debating between using bottle shots or labels? If you have substantial inventory, you may find yourself fighting for space. Try using a 3-column store setup with labels as thumbnail images. Labels require less vertical height, so even when displayed at a smaller scale the branding of the label will remain prominent. (As a compromise, you can always use a bottle shot on the product detail page.)

Now if your situation allows you flexibility between use of bottle shots or labels, my personal preference is to use a bottle shot. This is reflective of what your customers are accustomed to seeing on the store shelves and their dining room tables. Besides, what could be more enticing than a glossy bottle shot with deep shading, striking highlights and a crisp, clean label? If all you have are grainy snapshots taken from your old Olympus camera, with your reflection clearly visible in the bottle, than I highly recommend investing in professional photography. (Artisan Media knows what they’re doing.)

Tamber Bey uses beautiful bottle photography throughout their site.

Teaser Description
Tantilize your customers’ taste buds with a short description (1-2 sentences) about your product. If available, also include a noteworthy review or award. Your teaser could be the deal breaker between click or no click, so give extra thought to what is written.

Venge Vineyards includes a short description and awards in their teasers.

Detail Description
Use your product detail page to elaborate on the description of your product. Keep in mind that while you are providing more information, there is a such thing as “too” long, so be concise and clear. (And if you can’t say it like Steinbeck, it may be better to take a simpler approach – make it short and sweet!) Include any other relevant information a customer might want to know such as pairings, tasting notes and reviews/awards. If you have have PDFs, you can include them as downloads. Or if you have pairings in another section of your site, link back and forth.

B Cellars includes ratings and suggested pairings on their detail pages. Winemaker notes can also be downloaded.

Rodney Strong includes a vineyard map and product sheet which can be downloaded. Notice how they use icons for these downloads.

A small handful of observations and predictions for web design trends in 2009.

Prominent, Easy-to-Use Navigation

Big, Bold and Beautiful Type

Publication Style Layouts

Glossy, 3D Icons

Even if these specific features aren’t the aesthetic you’re aiming for, it’s always a good idea to keep your site fresh and interesting for your visitors. (After all, the pace of the constantly transforming web moves in dog years.) Contact your Account Manager for more information on how you can breath new life into your site.

A couple of our clients who recently had redesigns:

Israeli Wine Direct

Before

After

Deloach Vineyards

Before

After

Dutcher Crossing Vineyards

Before

After

Pushing five decades of excellence, Communication Arts is the preferred publication among Creatives searching for inspiration, information and award winning ideas. Every year, Communication Arts carefully selects the best of the best creative introduced throughout the passing year and presents it to the rest of the world in its single annuals. Currently, there are five individual annuals uniquely dedicated to advertising, design, illustration, photography and interactivity.

Frequenting the glossy pages of last year’s Design Annual No. 48 is the packaging of several wineries around the world. Listed below are the awarded companies.

To learn more about Communication Arts visit their website.

Communication Arts: Design Annual 48 November 2007. Pages 7, 13, 14, 20, 22.

Do you ever have days where you wake up to the sound of birds chirping outside of your bedroom window? You wake up feeling rejuvenated, refreshed and ready to start your day. Your ordinarily congested ’stop-and-go’ commute to work is reduced down to a cool cruisin’ fifteen minute ride.

When you get to work, the coffee has already been made and tastes just right - not too strong, not too sweet. It’s just the way you like it. When you get to your desk you notice that the usual stack of paperwork waiting on your chair isn’t there.

Throughout the day, you have a fountain of ideas - flowing seamlessly, one after another. You are like a jaguar. Sleek. Agile. Fast. Nothing can stand in your way.

Ahhhhh, if only every day could be like this. You can almost hear the resonance of Astrud Gilberto’s euphoric melody above your ringing phone.

But as they say “what goes up, must come down”.

Just as many of us have experienced days like these, we have also endured the opposite.

You are abruptly awakened by the dreaded pitch of your alarm. Your habitually long commute to work becomes even longer when you get stuck behind a semi that causes you to wait through three streetlight passes before actually being able to make your turn on a green.

Moreover, the coffee pot does not contain fresh, aromatic coffee. Rather, the remnants from last night’s final pot is stinking up the kitchen.

Worst of all, throughout the day - ALL DAY LONG - you’ve got Creative Block and can’t come up with any solid ideas.

As Charlie Brown would say:

For many of us in the creative field, this is a typical dilemma that comes up again and again. Before, (and not so long ago) I used to think that creativity was simply something you’ve either got or don’t got. Your ability to exert your creative skill was like a movement in nature - uncontrollable, unpredictable and at the mercy of a higher force.

But this was a passive assumption. It is true that it helps to be naturally gifted in your career field, or at least a convincing fit for your role. In the film “Mighty Aphrodite” Woody Allen references to this when he explains to Mira Sorvino that “Clint Eastwood doesn’t play a meek little hairdresser”. (Ideally, you are investing your time in a field where you have “some” natural competence.) However, creativity does not consist entirely of “raw” innate talent that you are either born with or not.

Creativity can be practiced, taught and learned. My first art director was the first to correct me on this. Whereas before, I felt that I could only move with the pace of my creative flow - which had its own erratic rhythm - I realized that the defeat of habit through originality is also a learned skill which requires practice and constant prodding.

All of this considered, I do have a laundry list of things I like to do when I feel myself getting stuck with Creative Block.

Maria Piscopo, from Communication Arts, states that creatives need to take time to recharge their batteries.

The Basics
First and foremost, make sure that you are taking care of your basic needs. How’s your diet? Are you well rested? Do you get enough sleep? Have you exercised lately? Taking care of your essential needs is critical in order to function at full speed. There’s no way you will be able to perform your best when the needle is pointing to “E.”

Aside from tending to the basics, I have acquired a few other tips from other creatives searching to breathe new life into their work.

Mood Enhancers
Not St. John’s Wort. Rather, are there special foods, drinks or music that you like to have on hand when you are brainstorming? Are you aware and sensitive to these idiosyncrasies? When I am feeling high anxiety, I break out my jazz albums and let Sarah Vaughn’s deep, soulful voice recalibrate my gears. I clear my mind and start over with a sharper, stronger focus.

Superstition
Like many athletes, some creatives have special traditions or rituals they will engage in when trying to achieve a certain goal. At a former agency I worked at, our copywriter would storm through the office pacing back and forth with a deep contemplative expression on his face as he tried to come up with headlines. When those perfect five words were slow coming, he would hide in his office and close the door where he claimed the **magic** happened. Never to disappoint, he always emerged from his **magic** feng shuied office with new and fresh ideas.

Novelty
“When you need new ideas, do new things.” Simple but effective advice. If you are looking for new ideas or inspiration, why not approach the situation from a different angle? If you continue to use the same method over and over and it does not yield the results you were hoping then maybe you should rethink your process.

As scary as it may seem, we are already in the thick of O-N-D - the busiest time of year for gifting as your customers are eagerly searching for the “just right” present for coworkers, friends and family.

Now is the time to buff up your marketing resources and take advantage of this lucrative season. Inertia is offering creative services to help “dress up” your websites and email ads for the holidays.
Below are a couple examples of clients who have already began their holiday campaigns.

Holiday Email Example:

Holiday Website Example:

Don’t get left behind this holiday season! Contact your client development manager today to learn more about how you can jazz up your marketing for the holidays.

A couple months ago I was cruising the Serramonte mall in Daly City when I spotted an iPod Vending Machine for the first time.

“Wow,” I thought to myself. “That’s so convenient. You can buy an iPod, bottle of Gatorade and pack of gum and be right on your way. You don’t even have to deal with an overly attentive salesperson breathing down your neck following you around the store.”

And that is just the way I like to shop. I am a no frills, no nonsense kind of shopper. Give me what I want and don’t make too much small talk. I like to get in and get out.

The same principle applies to shopping online. I refuse to be forced to spend excessive amounts of my precious time waiting or searching a poorly constructed site. Based upon this commonly shared distaste for sluggish, messy, disorganized stores, an e-commerce site must have heightened awareness of their users’ shopping experience.

It’s for this reason that Flash is so heavily frowned upon when it comes to e-commerce. Who wants to stare at a blank screen while a movie you don’t even want to watch is loading?

Think about it. When you are out shopping would you rather:

A. Hang around a store while you watch a product demonstration. Wait politely as time tick-tocks by until the moment you can do what you initially came in to do. SHOP.

B. Zoom by a vending machine in you rollerblades, toss in some change to the machine and WHAM-O!

The former might be interesting the very first time you buy from that store. But it’s going to get old-real quick. And those feelings of awe are going to be replaced with aggravation and frustration.

If you need proof of this, simply browse through any popular e-commerce sites. At most there may be a banner or two including some light Flash, but it will most likely be relatively small and/or quick to load. Even www.adobe.com, home of Flash CS3, does not include a Flash splash page that you need to ‘click to enter’. They know.

There are numerous other reasons why Flash should be avoided for e-commerce sites.

Information embedded into Flash is virtually invisible to most search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. These search engines are your gateway to the outside world as an overwhelming and increasing number of users rely on search engines daily to find information.

Assuming that your site is found, Flash splash pages can deter users from entering your site. To elaborate, your homepage is your most important page within your entire site. It receives more hits than any other page. If you use a Flash splash page, it becomes a wall between your user and your homepage. If your user never makes it to your homepage, then your chance to make that sale will undoubtedly be flushed down the toilet. Not to mention all those purchases which would have inevitably followed. In addition to all of the other referred customers you could have gained through that one customer that “X”ed out of your Flash splash page.

Moreover, Flash breaks down the web’s most fundamental and powerful features. Web features are built to allow their users to sit in the drivers’ seat. We go where we want to go. But most importantly, we get to make the decision. Flash forces its users into the backseat at the mercy of whoever built the site.

Listed below are a few examples of this dilemma:
- The “back” button doesn’t work.
- The ability to highlight, copy and paste text doesn’t work.
- Link colors don’t work.
- The “Make bigger. Make smaller” function doesn’t work.
- The “Find in Page” feature doesn’t work.

These reasons only skim the surface as to why you should avoid Flash in your website. To prevent these issues from arising, I suggest two alternatives.

1. Rather than using Flash to grab the attention of your users, focus on the quality of your photography and illustration. Coca-Cola is an example of a company which uses its images to capture the attention of its users. Its simple, clean site with plenty of white space gives breathing room to its users allowing them to better focus on the information of the site.

2. If you absolutely must use Flash consider keeping it contained within a banner and be sure to keep it under control. By that I am suggesting that “just because it CAN move doesn’t mean that it necessarily SHOULD move.” While Flash can be useful with its ability to display a series of images all within a neat, contained box, be sure that it is not overly “flashy” and does not make a nuisance of itself. Moreover, if you opt to use some light Flash within your site, be sure that it does not include any critical information that could be better communicated in text which is scannable by a search engine. Apple is a good example of a site that utilizes Flash in this fashion.

So, while Flash may win a few initial “Oooo”s and “Ahhh”s, remember the purpose of your site. If your goal is to improve your users’ shopping experience and to bring them back again and again, I advise to make your site as simple and as easy-to-use as possible.

As a graphic designer, I have a natural inclination to formulate my ideas through pictures and symbols. My imagination flows in colors and forms weaved through a systematic grid. Even when I step outside of my design cave, most of my simple day-to-day actions are guided by a set of icons whether it be an icon on my cell phone or a stop sign at an intersection.

The exhausted cliche “a picture is worth 1000 words” is permeated into our daily lives. Particularly in a fast-paced culture which embraces a “Get to the point!” lifestyle, pictures and symbols are utilized to allow people to understand faster, but not necessarily better.

In some cases, communicating through usage of pictures and symbols is both efficient and necessary. Airports serve as a classic example of how symbols are used to quickly and efficiently guide travelers through foreign territory. Another example is street signage such as stop signs, streetlights and crossings which advise caution and direct drivers through traffic. Both airport symbols and street signage are strong examples which demonstrate effective usage of visuals.

In addition to communicating simple instructions, pictures and symbols also evoke emotion. Photographs have the power the create stopping action and stir feelings, but how do you transform sympathy into empathy to raise a real response? While visuals can be used to create an initial reaction, an extra step must be taken to form a deeper layer of understanding and meaning to your communication.

The traditional formula for an ad consists of:
1. photograph
2. headline
3. body copy
4, product branding (i.e. logo)

As simple and straightforward as this formula may seem, it has evolved over time to become as barren as:
1. photograph
2. product branding (i.e. logo)

Is the written word fading out of sight? Are we in danger of heading towards a society which no longer has a demand for professional copywriters? Will any available passerby be casually delegated as the new “copy provider”?

At home, resting in the corner of my desk is a retired “All-in-One” desktop product which collects dust. Supposedly, it’s promised to print, copy, scan and fax but in reality it requires so much effort on my part to get it to do ANY of those tasks, that I usually give up before I start and resort to other means. Why do I keep it? It’s all I got. Will the new generation of writers be like my “All-in-One”? Able to do a lot of things but inadequately? Relied upon but only because it’s the last available resource?

I grew up on a healthy appetite of written words. Many of my childhood memories include a backdrop of the neighborhood public library. My favorite stories revolves around a glorified hero who struggles to overcome a problem. Like these stories, do as Ogilvy would advise you and make your product the hero of its own story. Support it with detailed facts and information stating why its obviously glorious.

While pictures and symbols will inevitably continue to play a major role in grabbing your audience’s attention, there are still deeper levels of communication which photographs alone cannot capture. Words are magical because they have the power to create and explain the intangible. Words transform an idea into solid reality that you can see, hear and smell.

Whether it be a Silverstein or Steinbeck approach, use the written word to tell your product’s story and make every word count.

A website is a calling card for many companies, opening windows to a wider world.
Many businesses choose to invest in the development of websites to build and spread brand awareness, increase sales, provide improved customer support and to save money. Within your website, it is important to consider the marriage between image and information. In an article by Business Link, it was suggested that while your primary concern may be about the aesthetics of your website, your users most likely care more about how quickly and easily they can access information. In an effort to maximize the results of your website design, I am providing a brief summary of a few of the most important features of an effective website.

Homepage
Your homepage is your most website’s “virtual showroom.” It is considered the most important page because it will receive more hits than any other page within your website. We recommend placing your most important information above the fold at 800 X 600 resolution (The MUG Center). Although approximately 88% of Internet users are now using resolution at 1024 X 768, we still recommend “playing it safe” with 800 X 600 until the gap between users is filled. When sorting the content of your website, the general rule of thumb is “the higher on the page, the better.” Moreover, your homepage should download in 10 seconds or less at the prevalent connection speed. In a survey conducted by Minnesota State University, the mean download time of 60 high profile home pages averaged to 2.8 seconds (WebSiteOptimization.com).

Consistency
Consistency is one of the primary characteristics of an effective website. A consistent header and logo are highly recommended, in addition to easy-to-use, consistent navigation. It is also suggested that repeating information (such as the header, logo and navigation) use no more than 33% of available browser window space.

Balance
While one of the primary purposes of most websites is to educate and provide information it is also important to consider the overall balance and visual effect of your website. Comfortable balance between text, graphics and white space are highly recommended. So, although it may be tempting to fit in as much information “per square pixel” you will actually maximize the effectiveness of your content if you balance your information with images and supporting graphics within a healthy area of white space.

Typography
In addition to maintaining balance, another tip to increase readership is good typography. World-renowned advertiser, David Ogilvy, gives the simple definition of good typography as “easy to read” (Ogilvy). Creating contrast between text and background is essential in making your information readable. While reverse text (white text on black background) is sometimes critical in maintaining the “look and feel” of your brand identity, studies have repeatedly revealed that positive text (black text on white background) is more legible (Ogilvy). When color is involved, we advise using text and background colors which have strong color contrast. An example of this would be deep purple text on pale yellow background. Aside from color contrast, good typography is also large enough to read. The size of your website’s body copy should fall somewhere between 11-13 px depending on whether you are using a serif or san serif font. Web serif fonts such as Georgia and Times should be displayed at 12-13 px. San serif fonts such as Verdana and Arial should be displayed at 11 px. Including white space around your text will also help to increase legibility. You can create this by increasing the leading, the spacing between lines of type. In CSS, leading is achieved through the line-height property. Moreover, tracking, the uniform increasing/decreasing in letterspacing of text, can be achieved in CSS through the letter-spacing property. Kerning, the adjustment of space between two characters, is not currently possible in HTML or CSS. However, in many cases it is not needed as digital fonts contain their own built-in kerning tables (Bringhurst).

Navigation
As mentioned earlier, consistent navigation is essential to making your website user-friendly. Navigation should be legible and concise. We recommend using no more than two levels of navigation as the attention span of the majority of Internet users’ does not exceed two clicks to reach a desired destination. On every page, we also recommend including e-commerce navigation including cart, my account and sign in. Furthermore, a page footer also helps users navigate through your website as it is available on every page allowing users to quickly jump to your most important pages. We include copyright information, RSS feeds (our current RSS feeds include News, Events and Products), site map and contact links. In addition, if you are involved in Direct-to-Trade, we also include a link for trade as well as a Direct-to-Trade button located in the page footer area. Among all of the best practices in web design I have come across, effective navigation is consistently rated as one of the most important features of a website (Morris).

Works Cited
“Best Practice In Web Design.” Business Link. 9 July 2007.

Bringhurst, Robert. “The Elements of Typographic Style.” 9 July 2007.

Chuck. “User Group Best Practices: Web Site Tips.” The MUG Center. 1 July 2007. 9
July 2007.

“Home Page Usability and Credibility Survey.” WebSiteOptimization.com. 5 July 2007. 9 July 2007.

Morris, Terry. “Web Design Best Practices Checklist.” Terry Morris Web Design & Instructional Technology. 9 July 2007. 9 July 2007.

Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy On Advertising. New York: Random House, 1983.