The Plenary of the Control Board of the D.O. Ca. Rioja has approved the new budget for the coming year 2018, setting a figure of 16,581,798 euros. The aim is to keep up the level of investment of the winemaking sector of the appellation both in the area of promotion, which receives over 65.5% of the complete budget, and in improvements in the quality control processes. In this way continuity is assured in the commitment assumed by the different associations in the sector to maintain the ambitious level of investment achieved in the two previous years.
The sector’s goal is simply to continue to improve the positioning of Rioja wines in the main markets and to continue to collaborate in the development of the region’s wine tourism so as to continue to add value to the appellation as a whole. To this end, over the last years a coherent strategy has been developed towards this goal, backed by the necessary solidity and continuity to ensure results are achieved in the medium and long term, something which the positive evolution of the value of sales in the last tax year allows us to continue to view with optimism.
This is the case in the behaviour of the Spanish market which has become, along with the United States, the priority focus of investment in promotion, with 2.77 and 2.74 million euros respectively, due to the importance and high expectations for growth that they offer. Another ten foreign markets, two of them, Denmark and Holland, new in the Rioja strategic plan, constitute the target of the Control Board’s campaigns, whether with the aim of increasing the value of exports in the case of the “mature markets” where Rioja wines’ presence is a tradition, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, Ireland, Canada and Switzerland, or for the purpose of a greater inclusion of the appellation in emerging markets such as china and Russia. The budgets for the campaigns in China and Switzerland have been increased for next year after analysing the sales performance in the different categories of Rioja over the last year.
In 2018 the Control Board – through the advertising and public relations companies responsible for promotion in the different rioja markets – will implement a new brand communication strategy in their campaigns with a global message and values, redefined following a strategic repositioning study which the D.O. Ca. Rioja has conducted with Interbrand and Shackleton, consultancy companies specialised in the fields of image consultancy and advertising creativity. Consequently, over the coming months, the Control Board will be undertaking an updating of the creative concept as well as a new web design and development project at an international level.
A special focus will be given to publicising white wines, as has been the case in recent years, with very positive performance noted in the sales figures, as well as to the new geographical categories; in addition, wine tourism will continue to play a leading role with the development of global projects with the recent incorporation of the Control Board into the Great Wine Capitals network or the launch of the third cohort of the international ambassador training programme of “Official Rioja Educators”, an initiative whose aim is to find collaborators who can bring dissemination of the culture and values of Rioja wine, both within and beyond our national borders, which already has a total of nearly 60 accredited “ambassadors”.
The allotment of the Expenditure Budget for 2018 will involve the bodegas bearing 57.4% of the cost and the growers the remaining 42.6%.
Once community contributions received for co-funding advertising investment in third-party countries are deducted, the budget is entirely borne by the sector itself.
