Bottle Boutique brings Boost for Bottle Promotions

When you walk down the wines and spirits aisle in your local supermarket you will occasionally see a bottle with a promotional product hanging from the bottleneck or maybe the bottle has something wrapped around its neck like a collar. These bottle promotions are known as bottle tags, bottle collars and bottle hangers. You will have seen them countless times but how many times has a bottle promotion really stood out and caught your eye?

You might think that advertisers would believe that the attention-grabbing qualities of the bottle media would be paramount to the success of the bottle promotion and yet there doesn’t seem to be anything on the wines and spirits bottle shelves that shouts out “look at me”.

Also, the promotional products always seem so small. The “small print” on the back of a bottle collar really is printed very small. Bottle promotions need to be bigger not only from the point of view of visibility on the shelves but also to give the consumer some proper information regarding the promotion.

Bottle media is no different from any other form of supermarket advertising inasmuch as it has to be seen in order for it to work. In the case of on-bottle marketing there is another requisite step if the promotion is to be a success and that is for the consumer to actually participate. This could mean that the consumer has to complete and send off an entry form printed on the back of the bottle collar to enter a competition. It could be that a voucher is printed on the bottle tag for redemption by the consumer at the time of a later purchase. It could be that the bottle hanger has an offer that clicks in only when the consumer replies by email.

In each of these instances it strikes me that the promotion might be incidental to the bottle purchase if the consumer wasn’t particularly drawn to the promotion in the first place. Surely, if the bottle promotion had a greater visual attraction then the casual consumer might be persuaded to choose that bottle of red wine over the other 50 varieties of red wines in the same section. Furthermore, if the bottle promotion was easier to read and contained lots of information then that might provide the consumer with a greater enticement to join in the promotion. This seems to me to be good marketing idea and a big step forward for the advertiser.

The big question is this, with a bottleneck seemingly offering such a limited amount of space, how can the visual display and the print area be increased in order to achieve these desirable goals? We have taken up the gauntlet on behalf of beleaguered designers by launching a range of new bottle media called The Bottle Boutique which includes new products such as bottle bows, bottle banners and bottle balls. Taking the idea of bottle collars one step further, we have even come up with a bottle collar and tie. Maybe advertisers will take note and add some new life to the supermarket shelves.