The precipitous decline of two icons of the Australian wine business has been well documented. In addition to losing A$ 1 billion in the couple of years after their merger, in the UK, the able folks at Penfolds/Rosemount were able to also decimate what had been two of the strongest franchises in the wine market. Despite Fosters having taken them over, the brands are still mere shadows of their glorious past.

In more desperate moves to counter US market leader, Yellow Tail, the folks at Penfolds came up with what they considered to be their answer: Little Penguin. The label bears, as you would expect, a little colourful penguin, and epitomizes what has become to be known as “Critter Labels”. I haven’t had the wine, so I cannot comment on the quality.

It seems that the folks at Penfolds/Fosters have not progressed much. They have created what some lame marketing type might actually believe could become a viral, and I was spammed yesterday with the following message from stefenp84@yahoo.com.

Hi,

Little Penguin is at it again! If you ever feel like
you’ve done something stupid at a party then you’ll
find this site really funny!

Check out http://penguinpartyfowl.com/index2.html
The ‘sneezing’ clip is my favourite!!

Steffenie

The lame-asses at Penfolds must have also slept through the web 101 class on permission marketing.

I am not really sure as to why I am so annoyed, I guess it is because these global wine companies have huge resources and should be doing amazing marketing, but they seem to most often wind up doing either elitist twaddle or lowest-common-denominator crap.

Guys, as a supposed global leader in the drinks business, you should know that it is not best practice to spam people from anonymous yahoo accounts. But, second thought, it seems to work for the Viagra guys… so, maybe I’ve got it all wrong.