Hype or Saturation?

Key Insight

50% of people don’t understand the hype or value of natural wine.

When 100% of people say they drink wine, but half of them aren’t so sure about the type of wine you’re branding for, you know you have your work cut out for you. In addition to this audience data point, there was another insight that caught our eye during market research.

What do greek yogurt, athleisure, and kombucha have in common? They grew from million-dollar categories to billion dollar categories in a matter of years. We’ve all seen it happen before–something new pops up on the market, people are unsure about it, some people give it a try. The word starts to spread and that something becomes bigger. In some cases, it becomes so big you look back and wonder how your world existed without it.

Don’t Bring Down the Vibe
We knew that we needed to serve those early, more curious consumers, while also ensuring that we didn’t alienate the ones that may follow behind. From the audience data that we gathered during the Discovery Phase, we were able to segment the different mental states potential customers could be coming from:

Brand Fan

it’s an addiction

Cool Guy

what are my friends doing?

Commitment Phobe

opposite of a brand loyalist

Doesn't Know How He Got Here

stumbles into new markets

Given the range, we knew we wanted the brand to be first and foremost, likable. The kind of brand that even if you definitely didn’t like natural wine, you’d still want to hang around to see what they had to say about it. In other words:

Be the Jon Hamm of natural wines.

Because Jon Hamm is:

Relatable
Understated icon
Wry and playful
Household name
Sophisticated

Since it’s not easy building legitimacy in a newer market while still being relatable, we developed a brand that could balance both.

Tactic 1

Loosen Them Up

Meaning

Always lead with making the customer feel good so they care to know more.

Tactic 2

Beg the Question

Meaning

Create curiosity in order for people to want to know more.

Tactic 3

Legitimize, Diplomatically

Meaning

Focus on legitimizing natural wines, rather than demystifying traditional ones.

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Action and Intrigue

Our tagline for Light Years may be the most succinct summation of these tactics. We wanted it to have energy, get people’s attention and make a diplomatic splash.

Keep Wine Alive

First, it’s a call to action around the process of natural wines: growing and picking grapes, and then turning it into wine through fermentation. It doubles as a nod to one of natural wine’s most intriguing aspects–it’s alive. While conventional winemakers will de-gas wine, natural wine still has its carbon dioxide, which is a natural by-product of fermentation.

Classic and Current

At its heart, Light Years celebrates how wine-making began, completely unaltered. So at the heart of the brand we wanted the logo to hit on that traditional feeling.

Given that natural wines don’t fall into the commercialized categories that most people have learned to identify wine by, we wanted to proactively eliminate the intimidation factor and make sure that customers didn’t have to be natural wine experts to find a wine they like. To do this, we designed a visual system that the Light Years team could use to easily communicate things about the wine—from the color of the grape to the overall vibe it evokes.