Writing in Just Drinks earlier this week, Chris Losh describes the struggle to create an image for SA wine overseas after being welcomed back to international forums with open arms and wallets as “ten years of failure.” Four years ago “variety is in our nature” was the slogan, a campaign that “failed” as it depended on plants and Chris reckons no-one outside the Cape “knows or gives a damn” about the Cape Floral Kingdom. Sorry Kirstenbosch!

Four years down the track and a new campaign was showcased as the Mega Tasting in London earlier this month. Called “DNA SA – a brand blueprint for SA wine” it is based on four cornerstones: sustainable farming and biodiversity; geography; history and culture. Chris is not too mad about it, either.

SA wine marketer Charles Back & his traditional weapon

For starters, it’s too unfocused. Punters don’t want a Wikipedia entry on SA – they want something “simple, memorable and, preferably, sexy.” Of the four stones, only culture rocks Chris and he suggests a campaign “focused on the myriad faces and races within the country. On everything from tribal dances to chi-chi Jo-burg restaurants. On Cape Dutch architecture and modern art. On Zulu choirs, jazz and rap. On wildlife and street-life.”

Which may sound great to a coke-crazed copywriter in Chelsea but less so to anyone who has been to SA who will quickly pick up that tribal dancers and Zulu choirs don’t do wine, Mageu is the muti. Neither do jazz hip-cats who prefer Jack, and rappers who do boom. Street-life prefers glue, wildlife down Johnnie Black and Amarula and Jo-burg restaurants are more rip-off than chi-chi; for chi-chi, try Franschhoek.

But the lowest blow is contradicting the assumption that “SA is recognized world-wide as producing premium quality, interesting and distinctive wines.” Chris begs to differ. “This simply isn’t true. The wine producers in the Cape might like to believe it, but it’s not the case either in the trade or among the consumers pretty much anywhere else in the world. The country’s few big brands are unremarkable at best, and there is a dearth of trade-up wines. The on-trade, meanwhile, is a dead zone.”

He offers a sober assessment of the task faced by anyone wishing to craft an SA marketing strategy. “The public (both inside and outside the trade) really don’t know much (or even care much) about SA wine – and guess what, not all the wines are great.” If you really need to do diversity, the campaign “still needs to have a clear point of focus, and that focus needs to be visceral, aspirational and sexy.”

Like the Goats do Roam sales storm that conquered the USA for Charles Back, for example? Now that Bordeaux has declared war on World Wine as they tenaciously defend sales in their traditional markets, who better to save SA wine exports than the man who toyi-toyi’d with his farm workers outside the Residence of the French Ambassador in Bishops Court when French bureaucrats tried to outlaw the Goats do Roam brand. Selling SA wine to les rosbifs should be a doddle for Chas, a figure who is visceral, aspirational, sexy and above all, funny.

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