BLIND TRUST — Secrets of a Strong Brand and Strong Marriage
My love for all things wine comes naturally. With French roots and having married a “mezzo Italiano” (half-Italian), it’s in my blood. So, it should come as no surprise that when Michael popped the question, our engagement photoshoot would occur in a vineyard.
We chose the Okanagan vineyards for photos, where we passed winery after winery in short succession. “Such interesting winery and wine names”, I thought to myself as each conjured certain imagery: Ruby Tuesdays (reminiscent of Michael’s first true love who broke up with him as she stated “I’m breaking up with you now so that we can be together in the future”—which never happened, btw); Dirty Laundry (reminiscent of my first marriage – don’t want to air that here); and a wine from a winery called “Blind Trust” (foretelling of the pending marriage—open to interpretation).
Across the hills through back roads, we stopped at what we thought was a quiet pear grove. We got pears, and as a bonus, two people fornicating under a pear tree.
Managing to escape that situation undetected, we crossed back toward the Naramata Bench. Settling into a bottle of wine to help with the endless poses, our photographer insisted that she wanted to capture our true essence: our story. Briefly, I reminisced about how I met Michael: two misfits in the law who may have had better luck as professional travellers or “garagiste” winemakers. Both lovers of the quirky, eccentric and strange, perhaps it is not shocking that it was the wineries with great names and stories which caught our attention. I began to wonder, in a region with so many wines to choose from, how does a winery stick out from the bunch?
Let’s start with the basics. A great business or product starts with a great name, or rather, a great trademark. If played well, a trademark and its surrounding brand may extend further; and the farther it reaches, typically the more successful a business becomes. So, how do you stretch a brand and its influence? Storytelling.
Of course, as I said, a great trademark is a must and the starting point in building a brand; however, it is the relatable stories about life experiences that matter to your audience and influence the overall impression of one’s business. This is how you create strong emotional connections with your target customers. You see, the human brain is wired to respond to a well-crafted narrative—neuroscientific research proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention and bake information into their memories (#ifckinglovescience).
Hence, your audience is programmed to crave and seek out great stories—especially ones they feel a part of. So why not become a storyteller and keep your audience captive? Your task then is to consistently make your customer, brand and products part of a larger story, where your social media, packaging, trademark portfolio, marketing and product launches are all ways and touchpoints where you can add to your brand’s story. And, as you weave the stories together, you create a brand experience that gains momentum to attract new customers, while continuing to build loyalty amongst current customers. The result: a strong, attractive brand with a cult following, resulting in a stronger bottom line.
So, with this, let’s do a little case study on the value of a strong trademark scaling into a robust brand through storytelling. Here’s the story of a winery called “Laughing Stock”.
The founders, David and Cynthia Enns, were investment bankers. Tired from slogging away in a job that crushed their souls, the Enns left the financial industry and turned to crushing grapes. Their safe, suburban colleagues warned of the risks of putting everything on the line. Many called the Enns “fiscally irresponsible”. The consensus amongst their colleagues was that the Enns were going to become the “laughing stocks”, because who leaves a lucrative career to put all their stock into what may only amount to garage winemaking?
Everyone loves a story about an underdog with a good ending, because we have all been the underdog at some point in our lives (#relatable).
Following the launch of Laughing Stock wines, the team worked hard on their brand and story. Perhaps the most notable story is of their flagship wine called “Blind Trust”. Their website explains as follows: “Blind trust is a financial trust in which the executors have full discretion over the assets, and the trust beneficiaries have no knowledge of the holdings of the trust. In this case, our Blind Trust is a wine in which the winemaker has full discretion over the blend, so you’ll just have to trust us”.
So, while the exact blend may be a mystery upon first glance, I challenge you to a fun weekend activity: blind taste the Blind Trust and try to guess the varietals and percentages of each. After completing that activity, peel away the foil at the top of the bottle for a little insider knowledge! Cool party trick, I know.
Additional fun facts:
The winery’s bottles have stock exchange listing motifs (think rolling screens at the NYSE) with the stock index name of “LFNG”;
One vineyard is named “hedge vineyard”, playing on “hedge fund” terminology;
The winery’s slogan is “how liquid are your assets?”;
Its wine club is called the “Preferred Share”;
One blend of wine sold as “Portfolio” is advertised as follows: “just like a finely balanced stock portfolio, putting together a blended wine takes finesse and judgement so that the experience of the whole will be greater than the sum of the individual parts.”
The branding is brilliant because the story is relatable and consistent. In fact, the once “garagiste” winemakers were so successful at storytelling and creating a cohesive brand, that, in 2017, they were acquired by Arterra Wines Canada, Inc., Canada’s leading producer and marketer of award-winning, globally recognized Canadian and imported wines. Laughing Stock Vineyards was acquired at an “undisclosed sum” (read, BIG MONEY). So, who’s laughing now? The Enns are. Laughing all the way to the bank.
