Luretta is an award-winning winery located in the Colli Piacentini region in Northern Italy. Characterized by its innovative style of wine-making, which blends international and local flavours, Luretta is a well-established company that has been operating in Italy for over three decades. Praised by the press for its creative approach to naming wines, the winery has gathered around its brand a large number of loyal enthusiasts and important prizes.
The Colli Piacentini area may not be as famous as other wine regions of Italy, but Luretta had managed to carve a space for itself in the competitive wine market by establishing a network of restaurants, distributors, and specialized shops both within the national borders and abroad. However, when it came to their digital presence Luretta felt they were far behind competition. By relying entirely on its network of physical distributors, the company lacked a digital outlet to make its brand known online.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the importance of having both an online presence and a direct-to-consumer sales channel became clear. This is where Mowgli entered the scene: Luretta contacted us for a complete overhaul of their brand, the development of a communication strategy that would attract new customers, and the design of an e-commerce store to reach final consumers directly.
The initial request concerned primarily a rebranding strategy to attract new international distributors. Their typical way of working involved travelling to wine fairs, exchanging contacts with potential business partners and nurturing their leads over long periods of time, hoping for a sale.
Luretta wanted to create an online platform that would tell the story of the winery in an intriguing way and get distributors interested in the brand. The company was looking to change its dark, moody, mysterious image into something fresher and more modern. Plus, they needed to develop a storytelling concept that would make the brand stand out from the crowd both locally and internationally.
As we were starting to work on the project, the pandemic hit. Restaurants closed and the whole hospitality industry came to a halt. Plans changed and so did our strategy: instead of focusing on international distributors, we had to quickly set up an e-commerce store from scratch, in order to allow Luretta to reach its loyal customers.
Since then we have been working with Luretta in two separate contexts: the long-term branding strategy to expand the brand’s attractiveness and the day-to-day communication with existing final consumers through email marketing, social media, and advertising.
As mentioned, the Luretta project involved two different operations, long-term branding and short-term direct-to-consumer sales. Each part of the project had its own goals, so we approached them separately.
The re-branding of Luretta began with the definition of the target audience. We conducted a series of interviews with international distributors, restaurateurs, and experts in the wine market to understand what a wine professional looks for when looking for a wine to add on their catalogue or menu. After understanding the current trends, the best communication channels to reach international distributors, and the key factors that make a wine stand out from the crowd, we set out to define the positioning of the brand and a storytelling concept.
The concept revolved around the innovative character of the brand. Rather than putting emphasis on tradition, terroir, and family as most Italian wineries seemed to do, we focused on international influences, the mystery surrounding the wine names, and the experience of discovering new flavours. We drew connections with contemporary art and literature. We portray Luretta’s wines not only as beverage products but also as cultural objects.
To put the story of Luretta at the centre of our branding strategy we took inspiration from a vast array of creative projects, ranging from Japanese alcohol brands to travel-related photography. We developed a series of mood boards, which would represent the brand’s organic production, its artisanal approach, and its modern attitude.
Through a series of weekly meetings with the owners, we connected the dots and began putting the story to practice, structuring the new website and mapping out how each product could be represented in a way that would highlight its unique selling point and its connection to the general project.
Before we could complete the rebranding project the COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe and the U.S., leading us to develop an alternative plan to help Luretta get through this difficult period. With all restaurants shutting down, Luretta lost all of its sales overnight. They were not used to selling directly to final consumers online and despite having a good customer base they had no way of reaching their customers effectively
Within a week we opened a new website and set up a WooCommerce e-commerce store, which people could use to order the wines and have them delivered at their homes in two to five days. The e-commerce was simple and functional, exactly what Luretta needed to manage orders without getting lost in technicalities.
Clearly, setting up an e-commerce store isn’t enough to start selling products. People didn’t know that the store existed and it became necessary to create a communication plan to reach both the existing customer base and new wine enthusiasts who are ready to try Luretta. Our strategy was quite comprehensive, covering email marketing, photography, and social media advertising for both final consumers and business partners.
Luretta already had a contact list of over 4,000 emails, but newsletters were sent irregularly and often without a call to action. We agreed to send a bi-monthly newsletter to all customers in which we introduced new products, awards, and initiatives. Additionally, we set up a series of email automations via Mailchimp that would lead online buyers to make a second purchase. Our automations included a welcome series, an abandoned cart notification, and a purchase follow up where we asked customers for feedback. Almost immediately, the automated emails created revenue that would have been lost without this added communication channel.
At the same time, we started shooting a series of new images for social media. The pictures Luretta were using on its website were all standard product photographs, which were lacking the personality the brand deserved. After capturing an initial set of images, one of our team members flew to Piacenza to see the winery in person and collect more photographs to tell the story of the place. With the images ready, we set out to build an editorial calendar for social media
New content was developed for Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin and all three channels grew steadily over the course of the following months.
The main channel for paid advertising campaigns was Facebook. We run regular campaigns directed both at people who already visited the shop by using a retargeting strategy and at users who did not know the brand in regions Luretta wanted to reach. By analyzing the sales information coming from the e-commerce store, we realized that some Italian regions offered the potential for expansion. Luretta was already well known in the Emilia-Romagna region, but thanks to target advertising we managed to reach new customers in Lombardy, Veneto, and Piedmont, as well as other northern Italian cities.
Once the e-commerce site was up and running, we got back to designing Luretta’s primary website. This website was essential for all B2B communication both nationally and internationally. We developed a platform that would focus on storytelling, presenting each product through a set of emotional and experiential associations, rather than typical wine definitions.
Our designer developed a series of templates following the mood board and concept we had initially created, starting from the product pages and building up to the home page. As the templates were approved we created each page on WordPress using Elementor.
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Luretta didn’t have an e-commerce store when we started working with them, but as soon as we installed the shop, sales started rolling in. Many loyal customers who were stuck at home because of the lockdown ordered wine to their homes. The cost of the e-commerce store was covered within one month through online sales, becoming profitable after just thirty days.
Our email newsletters reached a 40%+ open rate over the course of 2020 and Luretta’s subscriber list keeps growing steadily month after month. On top of that, the social presence results have been great: on Instagram only, Luretta’s audience has grown organically by 253% and impressions have gone from approximately 30,000 in 2019 to over 200,000 in 2020, with minimum advertisement spend. Similar results can be seen on Facebook, with engagement growing by 380% compared to the previous year and likes increasing by 61%.
Our brand awareness campaign is still ongoing and we develop our storytelling in both Italian and English, we expect to see Luretta’s sales and online presence growing stronger over the course of 2021.
