Vinexposium’s V d’Or Awards will give wine and spirits businesses the chance to show why they are best in class across six categories. Find out more below and by clicking here.
Tell us about Vinexposium’s Business Awards, the V d’Or – why have you introduced them?
Vinexposium has a high-quality offer of international trade events all year round and a range of content, services, and business solutions available worldwide and 24/7 through our digital platform Vinexposium Connect. Being a major partner to the wine and spirits industry puts us in a unique position to highlight and celebrate the many remarkable achievements of our profession from a neutral point of view. The V d’Or are also a way to say thank you and well done to the global wine and spirits community.
Which aspects of business performance are you most looking to shine the light on and pick out the best performers?
There are two criteria we will look at closely: ambition and sustainability. We need genuine ambition more than ever in our fast-changing world, not in a greedy way but in a creative way. The other aspect is sustainability. What we develop now needs to use the earth’s resources in a sensible and clever way more than ever and those are the initiatives we’ll aim to reward.
What sort of categories are there?
The V d’Or are divided into 6 categories:
- Best Export Strategy: it looks to rewards the strategy behind the best launch on one or more new market or growth on existing markets.
- Best New Business Solution: to highlight a new service, tool, or digital offering that disrupts the market.
- Best Joint Initiative: how a group of stakeholders – appellation, region, or other collective – have come together to promote a winegrowing region or other collective project.
- Best Brand Experience: how a marketing or brand strategy has helped give the target consumer a memorable experience.
- Best Eco-friendly Market Launch: looks to identify the most innovative, eco-friendly initiatives surrounding the launch of a product: packaging, merchandising, retail, etc.
- Best Heritage Initiative: rewards initiatives which allow the sharing of expertise, be it a skill, a process, or even a domain.
Why have you chosen those specific categories, as they are not your usual wine-specific or company-specific awards categories?
We didn’t want to replicate existing competitions and we wanted to create a competition which would be true to the two principles we had defined: ambition/excellence and sustainability. Those six categories enable us to explore achievements which will deliver highly in both respects.
What are the key criteria you will use to determine high performance?
Vinexposium’s chief executive Rodolphe Lameyse says it wanted to create a new awards programme focused on rewarding ambition, excellence and sustainability
All entries will be judged according to five criteria, scored on a scale of one to four and giving each entry a score out of 20. Four out of the five criteria are category specific but the CSR impact of the initiative will be assessed for all entries.
For “Best export strategy”, the four criteria are:
- Understanding of the market
- Boldness of the export strategy
- Effectiveness
- Visibility
For “Best brand experience”, the four criteria are:
- Innovative quality and originality of the brand experience
- Coherence of the experience with the brand personality
- Quality of execution
- Visibility
For “Best new business solution”, the four criteria are:
- Relevance
- Improvement of the customer experience
- Impact on the wine and spirits sector
- Viability of the business model
For “Best eco-friendly market launch”, the four criteria are:
- Coherence of the project with the brand personality
- Innovative quality and originality
- Eco-friendly vision over the entire value chain
- Educational approach
For “Best collective initiative”, the four criteria are:
- Consistency between the goals of the project and its execution
- Innovative quality and originality
- Collective element
- Visibility
For “Best knowledge-sharing initiative”, the four criteria are:
- Dynamic between stakeholders
- Impact of the initiative on the heritage in question
- Promotion
- Visibility
You are also looking to reward supply chain and joint initiatives – can you explain the thinking behind that?
The V d’Or Awards are a further step Vinexposium has taken to show it is a true partner for the wine and spirits industry and should not be seen as a pure events organiser
Our industry is a global ecosystem where all stakeholders have important roles to play, and none are dispensable. The pandemic showed us how crucial previously discounted aspects of our business such as the supply chain are. We want initiatives in those fields to be properly highlighted and rewarded.
When it comes to joint initiatives, I suppose this is where we are trying to inject a bit of idealism into the process. No man is an island, and we are stronger together, kind of thinking. This is true of most businesses but may be even more true of ours, where we are so dependent on nature and other stakeholders.
Who is on your judging panel and how have you chosen them?
Entries will be judged by a panel made up of wine and spirits professionals. Anyone from the following professional categories can apply to join the panel: producers, retail or importation agency buyers, employees of collective organisations in the wine and spirits industry, technical or scientific and economics or marketing industry experts.
What sort of businesses do you hope will enter?
We hope to attract entries from all sectors of the industry from producers to retailers and third-party suppliers. The idea is to foster this sense of community I was alluding to earlier without the hierarchy of old.
Is this part of your wider strategy for Vinexposium to be seen as a core business partner in wine and spirits and not just seen as trade event organiser?
Spot on. We’ve never seen ourselves as just a trade event organiser and now less than ever. We are an integral part of the wine and spirits business community.
- To find out more and enter the V d’Or awards click here. Entries close on September 22.
- The winners will be announced on February 11 2024 before the next Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris.
- Closing date for entries is September 22.
