As I clean out my apartment, preparing to move out of it in a couple weeks so that I can move into my new condo, I’ve had to deal with an assortment of items that I’d rather forgotten about.
The wine bottle collection is something that I’m not looking forward to getting rid of, due to the sheer awkwardness of hauling all of them out of the living room.
When the sisterroommate up and left to become the sistertraveller, she left behind a rather impressive wine bottle collection that she had amassed over the years. Every wine bottle with an attractive or interesting label was added to her collection after it has been “emptied”. Amazingly, not a single bottle has broken over the past couple years, even though they are perched precariously under the mantelpiece. There have, however, been countless close-calls when the vacuum cleaner would threaten to knock the entire collection over, domino-style.
But despite the fact that I’ve always thought of the bottles as a group of bowling pins just waiting to be knocked over, the sistertraveller really liked her collection. It showed off her good taste in wine. And it showed off the clever and pretty labels that the wineries came up with.
My favourite kind of wine is Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon. It truly is a delicious wine, but it also has an adorable label of a jumping kangaroo. As I perused the MLCC earlier this week, I felt my gaze passing over the bottles with uninteresting labels. I picked up my customary bottle of Yellow Tail and then looked around for another wine to try.
I chose Little Penguin, with a label depicting- what else?- a cute, waddling penguin. I partly bought this bottle because I knew I’d tried it a year or so before (when, surprise surprise, the sistertraveller had picked it out), and partly because the label was difficult to resist. Truth be told, I didn’t remember how it tasted, but when I cracked the bottle open and had a drink, I found that it really didn’t taste that great. Even so, I had cast Little Penguin in a positive light in my memory because the label was fun.
We’re easily influenced by labels. Research shows that companies that have brands with “cute” characters on them, particularly animals, are often more successful than other products that taste equally good but have a lesser brand label. We are a culture of “cute”; we are immediately drawn to food products with images such as the Gerber baby. And really, who doesn’t think the Green Giant is creepy?
As it stands now I’m sticking with my Yellow Tail, and I’ll enjoy looking at its label as I savour the taste. But I think that next time I’m at the LC I’ll take a pass on the Little Penguin and try something else instead- possibly a bottle with an owl on the label.
What product brands do you find particularly appealing?