Mateus Rosé

Mateus Rosé | McDonald’s | The Economist

Sogrape, a Portuguese wine producer, developed a ground breaking strategy for Mateus Rosé: more than raising awareness it was crucial to enhance consumption opportunities, by positioning Mateus as a refreshing drink, competing not only with wines, but other beverages as well.

Understanding how these changes affected sales became crucial and econometric modelling as a way of truly understanding and quantifying each factor driving the business became part of the solution.

Background
In Portugal the wine market is very traditional and particularly challenging, being populated by numerous brands from different regions and producers. Advertising tends to play a somewhat secondary role, with outdoor and press being the only media used. Mateus Rosé, the leader of the niche Rosé wine category, developed
a strategy in which advertising and specifically to break away from the norm, TV, played a very important role.

What did Sogrape learn?
Through modelling Sogrape gained a better understanding of how advertising worked: ROI and decay rates were quantified for TV and Outdoor, allowing for better planning.

Additionally, there were also valuable insights into distribution, promotion, pricing effects and competition across two key sales channels: supermarkets and hypermarkets. Among the key findings, Sogrape learned that hypermarket consumers are likely to be more loyal to the Mateus Rosé brand, with higher repeat purchase rates, whereas supermarket sales are far more price sensitive. Through demand curve analysis it was also established that Mateus Rosé is the strongest brand among its competitors, even with signs of increasing price sensitivity.

How was the knowledge used?
The results were applied to the campaigns in terms of timing and specific media planning, allowing for different scenarios to be evaluated. The key learnings on how TV and Outdoor were driving sales and at what level were used specifically to gain an advantage during media negotiations.