Toasting the greater good
By Canadian Packaging Staff
General Coding & Labeling Davis Glenn Davis Group Little Grape That CouldInnovative wine label design raising heartfelt awareness of worthwhile noble causes.
Charity and generosity come in many shapes and sizes, and The Little Grape That Could offers a compelling example of good things often coming in small packages—like 750-ml glass wine bottles used to package the upstart winemaker’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Torrontés varietals.
Raising a celebratory glass of wine is always a wonderful moment, but it is even more beautiful to raise a glass of wine that also helps others through fundraising, which is exactly what The Little Grape has managed to do with a little creative help from Davis, a renowned Canadian package design and branding services provider based in Mississauga, Ont.
Founded two years ago by a generous team of skilled big-hearted volunteers, The Little Grape that Could operates as a non-profit wine company that looks outside the traditional fundraising box to find new and innovative ways to raise money for charities.
According to company president and founder Brett Preston, the idea for this brand came out of a request from a leading charity organization to come up with an innovative way to raise money.
Why Not?
“After much brainstorming, a big idea was uncorked,” Preston relates. “Why fundraise for one single cause when there are so many worthy causes out there?
“Why not create a world-class wine with all profits going towards the charity of the purchaser’s choice?”
Now retailing across Ontario at a growing number of select LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) outlets, the Little Grape that Could offers wine-lovers a choice of “a beautifully balanced Cabernet Sauvignon or a refreshing Torrontés,” with the purchaser using embedded ‘smart’ codes on the bottles to allocate a set portion of their purchase to one of many charities listed on the www.thelittlegrapethatcould.com website.
According to Preston, 100 per cent of all profits from each bottle go directly to the charities and their respective worthy causes.
For example, the Toronto-based Second Harvest uses each dollar donated by The Little Grape that Could to fund two meals for the needy, with other well-known non-profit beneficiaries including the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada, Make a Wish Canada, War Child, Earth Rangers, Pro Bono Law Ontario and Toronto Cat Rescue, among many others.
To spread the message of these groups’ worthy causes among mainstream consumers, Davis designers set out to create a bright, dominant label that would serve as the main focal point on the bottle to draw consumer’s attention to the brand’s inspirational call-to-action to “make a difference,” according to Shirley Buchanan, communications director of the design agency’s parent company Glenn Davis Group.
The main marketing objective was to create a brand that would fit the criteria for an LCBO listing and draw attention to the brand as a world-class wine with heart.
“The charitable nature of the brand, including the hope and perseverance of those who wish to make the world better, needed to be captured in the branding and the instructions to consumers regarding how to direct profits to charity needed to be crystal clear,” Buchanan explains.
“Only then would consumers know for sure that with each purchase of The Little Grape that Could wine, they are able to choose a charity online and to direct all profits from their wine purchase to that charity.”
In addition, purchasers are also able to make the experience personal by making a toast to a person they select on the website to be named on the back of each bottle, as part of a custom limited-edition run of 100 bottles.
For the rest of the story, see the April 2013 issue of Canadian Packaging magazine out later this month.
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