ABOUT

The Brief:

Leading global producer, Accolade Wines has a rich and diverse portfolio of brands of different properties and personalities. Like the rest of the category, every September it meets with each of its retail customers across the EMEA markets, to present all the plans for its portfolio. It is vital that a good impression is made – over and above the competition – to secure new and existing listings for the months ahead. This year, we were asked to create an event for Accolade Wines to invite its customers to, which would be ground-breaking in format and impact.

Objective:

The event was required to showcase each brand, it’s performance and support plans. But more than that, it needed to inspire the visitors with Accolade Wines’ insights intelligence, digital sophistication and vision, demonstrating absolute category leadership.

The Audience:

The category buying teams from grocery, wholesale and wine retail chains across the EMEA markets. They want to understand not just what the brand and product ranges have to offer to delight their shoppers, but how Accolade Wines will help them leverage the opportunities of emerging trends in the market. Importantly the desire was to invite colleagues from parts of the business that were not directly involved in customer contact, plus partner organisations to equally impress them. And of course to help reinforce its position as leader of the category, Accolade Wines invited the key trade press to experience the House for themselves.

Our Role:

We created the event from scratch! First, we developed a range of potential concepts, then once the preferred idea was agreed, we planned and executed every aspect; venue selection, design, build, dressing, catering, full logistics and staffing. Included was the delivery of a full visitor communications plan; from event teaser and invitation to take-homes and follow-up, complete with a video capture.

Final Deliverable:

The House of Accolade was literally a 3D house that brought to life the wonderful world of Accolade Wines under one roof! It was built in a warehouse venue that provided the perfect blank canvas. Each room in the house was designed to provide an immersive experience for one of the brands in the portfolio; filling it with the brand’s personality and themed to bring to life the occasion that the wines are most perfectly enjoyed in. For example, visitors were invited to join the girls in the bathroom while they got ready for a night in with treats to eat and glasses of Echo Falls. They could take a deck chair in the garden to chat adventures with Mud House, perch between real trees to discuss sustainability innovation and sit back in the library to savour the host of fine wines.