Plonk: A sucker for cycling marketing

If you want me to buy your product, just link it with cycling in some way and it will probably end up in my shopping cart. I know, I know. It’s childish, stupid and impractical. But I can’t help it. On Sunday, I was in Cost Plus World Market and needed to pick up a bottle of table wine. Just some plonk that will go down with pasta.

I was reaching for a bottle of Penfolds Koonunga Hill shiraz-cabernet – a consistent wine I drank a lot in Hong Kong and is $5 cheaper in the U.S. – when something caught my eye. It was a drawing of a bike on a label on a bottle of the Chilean wine Cono Sur. The deal was sealed with my little reptile brain. I forgot about the Penfolds and put the Cono Sur in my basket. (The $8.99 price tag was another key selling point. I do love my fine wine!)

In a way, being suckered in by a cycling reference – especially one that’s not directly relevant to the product – isn’t all that silly and irrational. I guess I figure that the company could have put a billion other images on its wine label but it chose a bike. That could very likely mean it shares my passion for cycling. We have similar values. Our aesthetics – the appreciation of a bike’s beautiful lines – are the same. So why not try the wine? (By the way, it was only so-so.)

Of course, the bike on the label might also mean that the winery hired some crass marketing company, which advised the winemaker to use the logo because bikes are symbols for hipness now and appeal to a class of shoppers with a lot of disposable income (me excluded).

My budget will be in big trouble if Campagnolo starts selling a line of Chianti priced at $80 a bottle – $20 more than Shimano sake, of course.

(UPDATE: A few hours later, I decided to do some reporting. I committed a common sin in the blogosphere: First, write and ramble on and on. Then do some reporting and check the facts. Cono Sur has a decent Website that introduces the company’s bicycle series of wines. It seems the winemaker does share my values, according to their statement. The site says: “Our bicycle symbolizes our strong and passionate commitment to the environment when making top quality wines. That’s why amongst the lush vines, lots of bicycles can be found, resting against walls and propped up on the end of rows of vines. It’s the way our workers move around the vineyards every day, in order to protect the land where they work in. Relaxed, taking their time, enjoying the journey: sometimes returning to bicycle basics is all we need.”)