While US wine consumption witnessed a sustained (yet uninspired) YOY growth of 2% in 2017, Treasury Wine Estates’ biggest varietal, masstige red wine, grew by less than 1%.

Furthermore, the growing trend of premiumization, combined with shifting demographics, has cost us our most loyal and engaged drinkers as reliable Baby Boomer consumers began to age out of the category.

TWE needed to gain relevance among a new, millennial demographic by sharing its brand stories at shelf. But with "clean store" policies that forbid in-store advertising, we knew that we couldn’t rely on traditional retail channels to do so.

Our Challenge: Overcome a category plateau, a confusing and crowded wine aisle, and clean-store policies to connect with a new generation of low-engagement, low-loyalty wine consumers.

Objectives: Deliver 7% brand awareness, 3% consideration, 3% depletion rate, 10K downloads, 20K brand experiences, $1MN in earned media, and create trade & retailer excitement.

Living Wine Labels is the wine category’s first-ever multi-brand AR experience. This downloadable mobile app transforms our packaging into brand storytelling devices; by scanning our bottle labels with a smartphone, shoppers can ‘bring the label to life’ – animating over 50 unique AR experiences that share the stories behind the wines. Developed to disrupt the crowded wine aisle, LWL provides content-hungry millennials a compelling and shareable reason to pick up a bottle.

As a platform for 11 wine brands within the Treasury Wine Estates portfolio (and counting!), LWL is a new and highly shareable channel for brand storytelling, reaching our millennial shoppers wherever they are – at home, in store, or on premise.

Target Audience: Adventurous, millennial drinkers who seek shareable experiences and have relatively low engagement and loyalty within the category. As early adopters of new technology, they see their smartphones as their lifeline, and look for brands that help them appear in-the-know and bring value to their social circle.

Research revealed that for this target audience, the choice between brands is made in-aisle — closer to the point of purchase than any other category — and is often accompanied by a quick mobile search at shelf. Besides price point, label design is the most important factor in their decision.

If we could capture the imagination and excitement of this audience — and do it with only their smartphone and our labels — then we could compel them to not only pick up our bottle and try the wine, but also share it with their cohort as a brand advocate.

The Living Wine Labels mobile app was launched in over 75 countries as a free download through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store as Living Wine Labels on Jan. 5, 2018, and animates select Treasury Wine Estates labels via Augmented Reality experiences.

AR-enabled SKUs were released with capsules featuring the LWL logo — signaling the stories to be discovered throughout the wine aisle. We supported the launch with POS, sampling events and demos at select major retailers, where users could try the app on a range of TWE brands, and as well as posts to our owned channels on social and PR support via local mass media outlets. With a limited budget, WOM (and ensuing viral videos) proved essential in generating buzz among our target audience.

Living Wine Labels drove YOY increases of: 55% in awareness, 125% in consideration, 95% in sales (85% above key competitor and 93% above category norm), and 47% in depletions (44% above industry benchmark) — reaching 98% depletions nationally.

With over 3MM downloads, 6MM brand experiences and an average session duration of 3:39, LWL ranked in the top 50 non-paid Food/Beverage apps for iOS.

On social media, LWL drove a 412% increase in engagement, 88% organic community growth, and 200k+ user-generated YouTube videos.

In addition to 385MM earned media impressions, LWL earned 19MM views through a user-generated viral video.