Hi, everyone. And welcome back to the show. Today we have in our studio two special guests, one of them you may still remember from our previous episodes on Prosecco.

So Matteo is from Italy. He's a wine expert and the senior manager in sales & marketing at the largest wine importer in China. He has extensive experience in the wine industry in promoting Italian wines, including prosecco in China as well.

Now another interesting fact is that he himself is from Veneto as some of you might know, that's one of the prosecco regions; and another guest, new guest, Daisy, she is an expert in brand promotion specializing in creating demands for foreign brands. Welcome to the show Matteo, Daisy.

Hi, Lulu. Hi Lulu.

So instead of promoting, let's say prosecco as a product on its own, you would promote perhaps the Italian lifestyle, the Italian culture and link it with other Italian products as well. Maybe Italian food, Italian sauces, and all that, I would like to get Daisy’s input on this because you're obviously expert in brand promotion. Does that happen a lot in your area of work that promoting a lifestyle or life scenario rather than a specific product?

So your question is about whether brands actually would market their products associating it with other aspects instead of just talking about the product itself?

It's more like lifestyle so you're promoting a lifestyle or like a scenario.

Yeah, definitely, I'll give you an example. So Starbucks for many years has been perceived as a very traditional company and they wanted to expand their audience base, to include a younger audience. Otherwise, their key customers are maybe over 35, and they want to reduce the age to maybe 25 or even 18.

So how do they do that? They have a lot of crossover brand collaboration with fashion brands.

I see.

Such as Marni, such as 上下 (Shangxi) which is part of the Hermès group. We once did a campaign with them and the visual would be very colorful and fashion oriented to play up the lifestyle association of Starbucks as a coffee brand. So coffee and crossing over to fashion.

So this is crossover.

And that campaign was very successful in attracting younger audience, because that's what their eyeballs are paying attention to.

You can actually see this with the Manner coffee. They did some cross collaboration with Louis Vuitton, I can’t remember it’s Louis Vuitton or Dior, I guess, some point not the brand like Manner coffee shop everywhere in China just a few shops, in +66 around there, and there was pretty interesting, because at the point I looked at the queue, it was probably 30, 40 minutes queue of people just queuing, in front of a coffee shop to get coffee, just because there was a Louis Vuitton collaboration.

The co-loving, the crossovers.

So how do you think, how do both of you think, that prosecco can be promoted and perhaps not crossing over with another brand necessarily, but how can we promote it not just as a product, but as part of something bigger, say, Italian culture, Italian cultural scene, Matteo?

I mean, usually this took my experience, whenever actually I need to use a prosecco, it can be an Italian product anyway. I try to identify the cultural aspects, the familiarity cost, cultural aspect that my target audience has. With prosecco it’s very easy because I just mentioned Venice. You can go with Marco polo, you can go with like food like carpaccio, for instance. This actually was made in Venice because of a very famous painter in the 1800s was named Carpaccio, for these uses of red colors and so on. Or we can go with the again lifestyle Veneto. You got a very like... we are famous for productivity, so kind of famous for working hard but also enjoying life. Part of that is going to the beach, going to the mountain.

So for this also, I kind of like try to first starting with culture, and then telling them this proceed for the histories, I know it’s very embedded with the Venice culture. Yeah, be valley music. So you explain the music, then you got the painting. So as I say Carpaccio. And then food, which is kind of parts of the food and then you get tiramisu. Altogether, you can literally create the wine tasting based on, the prosecco based on this kind of things, right?

That sounds interesting.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I’m organizing something like that in probably 3 months, but this actually would help the consumers to put the prosecco in the map even for people that don't know what is prosecco where they come from.

And then from there you can start then with the second year education levels, so to go through more like in brands so dividing the prosecco by brands, and then by brands then you go by regions and blah blah blah. But that's I think it's pretty interesting and a good way I think, to get the pursue to them.

Yeah, to get some attention at first, it's like what Daisy mentioned earlier. A lot of the consumers they are in different stages of their consumer journey, so maybe they don't know anything about Italian wine, but for sure they know Italy, a lot of great art rich history in art in music, in gastronomical things, so these kind of things.

I mean, you know, there is a Marco Polo statue in Hangzhou. That's Marco Polo was leaving them and died in Venice. So I have the feasibility of a connection usually. I try to joke say Marco polo used to drink a lot of, like really? it might be true to be honest.

Yeah, right, exactly.

As well, back then, but there was not the prosecco's name. But that would definitely drink wine. So it's a good connection.

That's a good place to start, to establish some common ground.

All right, and now I am going to ask both of you. So based on what you know at this current stage, what do you think are some of the successful marketing strategies employed by prosecco brands or prosecco region to attract Chinese consumers? Let's maybe direct this question first to Daisy.

I’ve seen very successful campaigns, but rather where prosecco is used as a key ingredient, for example, Aperol Spritz and Campari, they've done a very good job creating rather immerse events for brand promotion.

There's a lot of Proseccos use in this event. I’m not sure if that counts.

I think it counts in certain ways. I know it's not promoting prosecco on its own, but still you incorporate prosecco into this whole campaign, right?

Yeah.

What about Matteo? I you probably know have a little bit more firsthand experience in this.

We just implement a few strategies. One of them is like the one I told you before I’m working on and in this probably very interesting. But then the most important thing is to make the consumers trying the wine. So in terms of like I go more into some specifics in terms of channels, if you like for us entree t is very important when it comes to interact with our customers and their consumers. So I think one of the best strategies is the way to try to get a nice brunch, deal with the hotel.

Perfect brunch drink.

I will say ...yes, because and then I think is usually for brunch deals, people can try the prosecco that's... it's the option. Then usually I used to actually write down even if formations of the prosecco what is this? And usually at the opening of the season, the brunch season, and we do only the tasting events. We introduce the wines for hotels a little bit difficult because usually they have like 120 people coming. But for restaurants is very nice because you have like the customers book the place, you go there and before actually everything started, you can actually introduce the prosecco drinking, the chef, then introduce the food.

Then so usually also you get a lot connected to your customers. They actually can buy the wines that actually if they like it. These actually are pretty good things and the hotels and restaurants are the ones that I usually love to work with.

And then you need to be fun. So with the fun party goes into tasting or specific events, down in rooftops or specific like nice terrace, like I am actually doing, and I’m not doing just for prosecco to be clear, because I realize that you need to give people a good time, and if you have... so you can give them good time, and also some sort of like educational times behind that. They actually learn more about the brands, tell the brands that you are actually offering.

And then they especially if you have a photographer take good pictures actually that's they have a lot... Yes, they love the pictures. But then they remember the events the brands and especially you try to design specific cute souvenirs, like brass lids or stoppers or pins or anything that can help them to remember the day, the nights and they can take something at home.

Yeah.

And it's very very cute. That's kind of help.

I couldn't agree more. I think what you were talking about the fun experience with a little bit of knowledge on like new things. So because we have like 1.5 million following and our my audience base is more women, 75% women, may be between the age of 20 and 45. So they are really eager to try new things to experience new things.

And then I’m sure if they're in Shanghai, they would love to go to your rooftop tasting to get a little bit of knowledge about wine, but more importantly to enjoy the social aspect of it.

Yeah.

Definitely, I mean, that's, I’ve seen a lot of women enjoying wines. I met Daisy because of wine, and because of my company, but we hang out a few times, and everything was because we were like knowing each other but also knowing the wines that were drinking.

So wines is kind of like a social glue.

Definitely, it is a social glue, social lubricant.

Ok. so now we're coming to the last bit of our chat.

So looking forward, what kind of trends do you foresee for prosecco in terms of promoting it in a Chinese market? Especially through maybe some let's say newer medium, like say social media or the likes. Let's direct this question to Daisy, because you're the brand expert.

Right. When it comes to successful or effective marketing, there are two things to consider. Both two things actually point to the same direction, which is memory. It's based on repetition. So how is the frequency of the marketing effort when we are looking at something all McDonald Eventually let's say McDonald, McDonald, McDonald, like it appears within 1 hour of watching TV it appears 5 times in. Then somehow you kind of start thinking about McDonald's and next time you get hungry really about frequency, it's kind of like a brainwashing, sorry to use this word, but really advertising is really brainwashing.

Brainwashing.

And that's how our memory works.

Secondly, how can we create more word of mouth which is Free marketing? Otherwise, all the exposure you have to impressive a lot of money, a lot of capital to create the kind of awareness you might want. If you, it's a performance marketing we call it. So if your content or your event is so engaging and so interesting, so creative, people want to talk about it without you paying them to advertise for you.

Creating some Instagram of all moments.

Yeah, exactly. That's one a part of it. Or if you look into Thai advertising is hilarious once you see the ad and you feel this so funny, I have to share it with my friends. Or if it's something very beautiful, for example, Loewe did an exhibition in Shanghai exhibition center last for a few months, and every day there wasn't like why is that? Because it's something that is so special. It's out of our daily life.

Do we show up enough time so that people remember us? And then we can influence their choices.

Secondly, it's how strong and impact you create on the memory so strong that the people have to talk about. Then you create a lot of Free marketing for yourself.

Yeah, maybe I want to see what Daisy has to say about this, but I also realized that because we're in China, right? We have to deal with the translations of products. And someone actually made me realize something very interesting last night. I was at this a wine dinner. I can't mention any products. It's not an Italian product, but it's a very famous New Zealand product. They're like the Chinese love that wine, beside the wine, but because the wine in Chinese is the name is really beautiful. It kind of reminds me of like a cloudy, foggy but beautiful valley, green with cloud and fog. And it was like probably what I’m talking about anyway, but I’m like maybe, and I think maybe the Chinese translations of the name of products play an actually very important role for local to actually pick the product itself. So I don't know what do you think.

True. Yeah, to be honest I’ve because my background is in like translation and interpretation, so the power of language, I know the power of language, and I think actually there's a good example Coca Cola when it first came into China, had like a really weird translation, really weird name and it didn't really take and then they changed it into 可口可乐 right now, and then that is just so simple. But it just has a lot of positive connotation or relation to... in the language is just joy and happiness.

So this type of, I think that's definitely perhaps the next step when you're introducing specific prosecco brands into China, may be the localization of it, especially when it... in terms of names. I’m curious in knowing what Daisy has to say about this obviously from Chinese background as well and then doing marketing.

Yeah, absolutely. Naming is more important than most people think.

Yeah.

There is naming and then also the vocabulary you offer to your audience. I'll give you one example. We did an exercise with Nespresso for their new capsules, and it was impossible for the salespeople in the store, pronounce the Italian names of each capsule. For the customers, it was very intimidating to try and pronounce those Italian names. So Nespresso work with us to create nickname, Chinese nickname for their products.

That’s cute.

Interesting.

In this case, they feel these products are so funny and they sound so cute. Cuteness is one of the reason ....

That before they tell me yeah.

For Chinese, because it resonates just how the culture is. So naming the product, and secondly, given the vocabulary, Starbucks is such a classical case. They don't just call their coffee sizes small, medium, large. They call it venti and Grande, and they sound Italian. These are very simple words and after certain repetition you can pick it up quite easily.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And every time you buy something from Starbucks, they force you to use their own vocabulary. And this enhances their Italian names and also their icons of the brand.

Yeah, I have so many examples of very weird Chinese names that someone actually translated or tried to translate from wineries. And we got into trouble with the trademark on this market. We realized that some of them are not really good translations and they’re meaning something else very sensitive, literally.

As Daisy said, it’s probably one of the most important things you have to do.

Exactly.

It's fascinating for me these kinds of things.

Yeah. I mean that is part of the branding.

Naming is definitely a very powerful tool.

Okay. And thank you guys for coming to the studio. I think we're gonna wrap up here. We certainly have talked a lot about prosecco with the current situation, and what can be done to perhaps promote it to promote the product and also the region in the future. So for our listeners, if you guys have any question to ask about prosecco, be afraid to leave a comment in the comment section. And thank you Daisy. Thank you, Matteo, for coming to the show.

Thanks, Lulu.

Thank you, guys. Thank you, Lulu.