JKR

Veuve Clicquot

'La Grande Dame' Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin pioneered modern champagne. Widowed at the age of 27, she ran the Clicquot business herself, employing entrepreneurial skills and knowledge to transform Veuve into the global brand it is today.

In honour of this legacy, Madame Clicquot’s portrait graces Veuve’s muselet (the fiddly wire bit to you and I) – as portraits go it’s, ahem, no oil painting. Her stalwart image is arguably at odds with the brand’s stylish ‘designer’ personality. But a design lesson one might take is that style will only carry you so far. Substance is the thing.

Without sight of a strategy document I can only presume that the brand’s relentless energy for quality design editions, fashion house collaborations etc. reflects a targeting of women. And men who love design - but then we are just big girls anyway.

Where champagnes would once have played to a world of masculine status, Veuve Clicquot has moved with the times. But this isn’t femininity with a bow on it – it’s design with élan. And the Grande Dame’s continued presence is the grit that makes the pearl. Someone to be admired as a true pioneer by a female audience and with broad shoulders on which all the brand’s contemporary, stylistic innovations can stand – she offers a foundation of authenticity. Many brands airbrush and polish their equities, or smooth off the interesting but rough edges. Great ones do not.

A friend’s father-in-law once accused him of having ‘champagne taste and beer money’. Veuve Clicquot has spent champagne sized budgets on champagne quality design, both on and off pack.  This affords them a champagne standard of identity. As the lady herself said “One quality only, the finest." Penny pinchers take note.

By Silas Amos, Creative Director, jkr. For the full article, see this week's copy of Marketing magazine.