Once cheap and nasty wine brand Queen Adelaide has re-launched on to the Australia market. It’s not as cheap as it was, and the Queen Adelaide crew reckons it’s not as nasty either.

Sophie Hicks, the brand manager of Queen Adelaide, ran Marketing magazine through the long process of the relaunch.

“Vok Beverages went in to a joint venture with Foster’s Treasury Wine Estate starting last year, there were 13 brands in the venture,” she tells Marketing magazine. “This brand was in decline by 40%, so Queen Adelaide became a big priority.

We started basically from nothing and re-did it all again. We got a company called Wine Intelligence out from the UK, they focussed on Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane markets. We wanted to find out who was drinking it, what they thought of it, what brand values there were with the current format. We got a great analysis of the target market that was drinking Queen Adelaide.”

It was a comprehensive and insightful report, but it was one most brands would probably prefer to do without.

“People hated the brand it’s in existing format,” Hicks says. “They brought it purely on price, they weren’t brand loyal at all. There was a strong dislike to the packaging. People thought it resembled an old fat lady and thought why ‘would I buy that’.

The report recognised an opportunity. Queen Adelaides’ primary market of 45 to 55 year-olds was not loyal and had tainted perceptions about the brand that would be hard to rectify. So Queen Adelaide went after a bigger, richer market.

“There was the opportunity of 1.2 million younger people aged between 35 and 45, and they were not involved in the category,” Hicks says. “So they didn’t have the baggage of the existing brand, so now we’re targeting a younger market with higher disposable income.”

After more extensive testing of new concepts, Queen Adelaide arrived with a pretty attractive bottle that brought the brand into the 21st century. 

“We brought colour in to the package,” Hicks says. “The consumers at this price point don’t know a lot about wine. They won’t remember the variety, but they’ll remember colour. They’ll say ‘I like the red one’.

“The price has gone up, we were basically in the bargain bin basement. It was an unprofitable segment for us. The price has increased by two dollars, but the quality of the juice has gone up too.”

The great bottle and better taste is looking promising for Queen Adelaide and the roll out has already begun. But first Queen Adelaide needs to get rid of its old stock…and you know where youll find that.

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