Coppola Winery Is Using Music Festivals to Educate Consumers About Its Canned Wines

August 3, 2018

In recent years, canned wine has become ubiquitous. The convenience of a can, coupled with clever packaging and more approachable messaging, has helped marketers grow millennials’ interest in drinking wine. For the Coppola Winery, the trick isn’t to suddenly start making canned wine—the winery has been doing so since the early 2000s—but to educate consumers about its canned wine offerings.

To do just that, the Coppola Winery has partnered with internet radio company TuneIn to sponsor three music festivals: the Newport Folk Festival, Newport Jazz Festival and Outside Lands. The point? To introduce their canned wine, specifically the Diamond Collection cans that include pinot noir, chardonnay, pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc wines, to a younger consumer demographic.

“The Diamond Collection is a well-established brand that resonates more with the older consumer base, so bringing the wine in a can to the younger consumer base at events like this is very important,” explained Gabriela Becker, Coppola’s vp of marketing.

Becker continued, “We were the first ones to do [canned wine] and, at the time, it was just like, ‘Why would you ever put wine [in a can]? It’s supposed to be in a bottle with a cork.”

Now, with the growth of the canned wine category and interest in premium canned wine options on the rise again, the Coppola Winery wants to “get the message across that we were the first ones” and that “you can enjoy a great wine in a can,” Becker noted.

The marketing strategy isn’t just about being on the ground at the music festivals—though, that is a big part of it, as the Coppola Winery wines were the only wines served at both the Newport Folk Festival last weekend and this weekend’s Newport Jazz Festival. But by working with TuneIn, the winery is able to get the word out about its wines to consumers interested in the festivals’ music offerings who weren’t able to make it to Rhode Island (for the Newport festivals) or California (for Outside Lands).

Fans interested in the music from the Newport Folk, Newport Jazz or Outside Lands festivals can either stream the music live from the festival or listen to it after the fact at DiamondAdventure.com or using the TuneIn app, thanks to the Coppola Winery sponsorship.

“When we can lean into things we know our audience likes, like Newport Folk, we can launch Newport Folk radio with a brand sponsor that understands it and what these stations sound like,” said Charles Raggio, head of music partnerships and branded content at TuneIn, who noted that TuneIn has 25 million listeners per month in the U.S.

Raggio added, “These are not algorithmic playlists, these are human-hosted, human-curated stations that exist on TuneIn and then we promote them through targeted promotion to the audiences we know would like it.”

As part of the partnership, the companies have also created a new podcast series, Sense of Adventure, featuring interviews with artists Borns and Margo Price.