Ep 29: How Wine's Storytelling Obsession Became Its Most Expensive Delusion

Felicity and Lulie tear apart the wine industry's most cherished marketing belief: that the thing that will drive more sales and loyalty is better storytelling. Felicity, a guest lecturer in brand storytelling at the University of Cape Town Business School, argues that real storytelling — structured around stakes, reversals, and the narrative templates that have powered human communication since the savanna — is genuinely powerful. Lulie the marketer, armed with Ehrenberg-Bass, the work of Daniel Kahneman and a well-preserved 30-year-old Patagonia fleece, argues that storytelling is not only not a good method for building brand awareness and driving choice, but that it’s actively counterproductive.

Along the way there are detours through hunter-gatherer communities in the Philippines, the neurochemistry of charitable giving, Max Schubert making Penfolds Grange in secret while his employers told him to stop, and why the Widow Clicquot's entire legacy works as brand storytelling, even though almost nobody knows the mechanics of how it was assembled.

Meet Your Hosts:

Lulie Halstead founded and led international consumer research and strategy consultancy Wine Intelligence, and led it to a successful PE exit. Today she is a renowned global beverage alcohol and wine sector specialist, focused on consumer behaviour, strategy, retail and hospitality. An accomplished keynote speaker, she has spoken at more than 70 international events over the past 20 years.

Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor and content strategist. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly. Her Drinks Insider podcast won the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Audio.