China: the Beijing ICE plan to conquer China with wine

Closing the gap of the competitors in front of us on the Chinese wine market will be difficult, but not at all impossible, mainly and especially due to the activity that has set up a two million euro promotion campaign, signed Ice-Ita Italian Trade Agency, financed by the Ministry of Economic Development, in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in China, the wine trade associations (Federvini, UIV and Federdoc) and Vinitaly. It is called “ITAlian Wines: Taste the passion”, and it will be officially launched on September 6th. Amedeo Scarpa, the director of ICE in Beijing, explained to WineNews that it “will be unveiled in an evening linking the activity ICE has carried out over the last two years, “I love Italian Wines”, and the new campaign, counting 70 journalists and 20 key opinion leaders, some of whom will be in live streaming, for a target of 20 million people. The new visual campaign, which is centered on the value assets of Italian wine, will be launched on that occasion, and the next day the promotional video will be shown in shopping centers and the squares of large cities. Starting on September 9th, the day dedicated to wine in China, there will be a series of online games to engage the public, and the prizes will be bottles of Italian wine”. The goal is to reach “230 million contacts on the web, and the plan is for 75% digital, which will also be supported by events and activities in Beijing, Shanghai, Canton and Chengdu. The target is not really that much different from other markets; that is, Millennials, Generation X, medium and high spenders representing the drivers of demand, including their profiles on the main Chinese social networks, namely WeChat and Weibo”. The campaign will focus primarily on images and imagery, but also on Chinese cultural identity, which is “stronger than anywhere else in the world. We will focus on happiness, as well as on lifestyle and sustainability”, said the director of ICE in Beijing. We definitely have an ambitious goal, “France is impregnable, so Italian wine must position itself on a price level higher than Spain, work well with importers and learn to relate to e-commerce, which in China”, Amedeo Scarpa said, “invoices as much as the USA and Europe combined, but it also presents numerous risks”.