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New Bordeaux and California campaigns

'Bordeaux. Always worth the visit' is a 650,000, M&C Saatchi-designed drive that rolls out through the UK until December. The audience is 3.4 million ABC1-category adults over the age of 30, targeted through promotional activity in newspapers and magazines as well as on London Underground and National Rail station platforms.

According to Pascal Loridon, marketing director for the generic trade body Conseil Interprofessionel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB), the programme begins in three countries - the UK as well as France and Germany - and focuses on 'lightening up Bordeaux's image, while underlining its reputation for quality, value-for-money wines'.

The word 'chteau' is prominently communicated in all the materials, as preliminary research with positioning statements in all three European markets showed the term to be synonymous with Bordeaux and the impression of quality.

Meanwhile, rival wine-producing 'nation' California is embarking on its first consumer advertising campaign in the UK for more than a decade. Initial activity will test the waters in 'foodie' titles such as Waitrose Food Illustrated, Sainsbury's magazine and Delicious over Christmas and New Year. Based on results, a more concerted effort will follow later in 2007.

'Generic advertising is a notoriously challenging area,' says John McLaren of the Wine Institute of California's London office, 'because the necessary vagueness of the message often has no significant impact or resonance with the consumer. However, California evokes nothing but positive imagery in the consumer's mind.'

Even so, he adds, people have 'hazy perceptions of the wines themselves', so this campaign needs to build 'confidence in the category as a whole, and by extension the individual wines which make up that whole'.

California's new UK campaign follows from a successful ad run in Canada, the state's second-largest export market

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