What happens if you give two wine-loving nerds a $25 million investment from Blue Sky Venture Capital? Well it turns it out they catch a plane to NZ, rope in renowned industry gurus and film an epic TV ad.
It’s the age old business cliche – get a big investment and blow it on a big above the line campaign, but is it the recipe for success or one almighty mistake for Australia’s fastest growing online wine retailer, Vinomofo?
Exploring the concept of DECIDE and the much deeper note of ‘what is it in life that defines us’, Vinomofo’s first large-scale above the line campaign is positioned around making good decisions. From the small decisions like getting up to go for a run when your alarm goes off and it’s cold and raining outside through to the really big, life changing decisions like the students who stood against the tanks in Tiananmen Square or where you stand on the marriage equality debate.
Co-Founder and joint CEO, Andre Eikmeier said, “People who try Vinomofo tend to like it, and tell their friends about us, and yet there are still so many wine lovers who haven’t heard about us. We wanted to introduce ourselves to the world in a big way, find every person who loves wine in a mofo way and show them what they’ve been missing.
“So we decided to make a big ad, which is a little scary for two guys who five years ago were sitting in their garage hand-packing wine boxes for their first eleven mofos.”
A huge milestone for Vinomofo
Investing more than $4.5 million on a multi platform strategy between now and the end of the year, DECIDE is the largest above the line campaign the company has ever done. Previously Vinomofo relied on an always on social media and digital marketing as the foundation for their advertising and acquisition of new customers.
“Now everyone tells us that TV, cinema, billboards and a big digital campaign is what we need to reach everyone we want to reach. We hope they’re right, but really we won’t know until we know, right?” said Eikmeier.
“But what we do know is that we love the campaign we’ve made. We think it stands for what we stand for and makes us laugh, and we had a lot of fun making it.”
Launching globally on Sunday, 16 October, Vinomofo has employed a multi-tier media buy covering off free to air and pay TV in both Australia and New Zealand, open-air outdoor advertising spaces nationally, cinema and an aggressive acquisition campaign across digital and social platforms.
Growing in leaps and bounds
Co-Founders Andre Eikmeier and Justin Dry started Vinomofo in 2011. Since then the pair have literally turned zero into a $50 million annual revenue and 500,000 members in just five years. In April this year, Vinomofo secured a $25 million investment from Blue Sky Venture Capital with the aim to bolster rapid domestic growth and support operations in new markets. In 2016 the company launched internally into the New Zealand market, with plans to expand further internationally into Singapore, HK, UK, USA and China over the next two years.
Vinomofo’s DECIDE campaign is the first large-scale domestic campaign aimed at growing brand awareness and acquisition of new members within Australia and New Zealand. Vinomofo is not just a retailer, it’s a wine experience that gives consumers an unparalleled offer on curation and value. A hyper-focused quality product selection sourced direct from the best producers in the world enables the company to harness the buying power of their 500,000 strong wine-loving tribe to secure exceptional deals.