Wine marketing hokus pokus from Treasury Wine Estates

Look, I know Treasury Wine Estates CEO Michael Clarke has a tough gig. Selling branded products in this age when major retailers can, and do, make their own is a difficult, perhaps even an impossible, task. But the task is not made easier by forgetting that you are a wine company and succumbing to marketing madness.
To take an example. Treasury, Mr Clarke announced along with some dismal profit figures last week, is "at the start of our transition from being an order-taking, agricultural company to a brand-led marketing organisation." And what does a brand-led marketing organisation do? Accelerate efforts to establish Treasury brands in the premium and masstige segments of the market and continue to “pull through’’ sales.
No mention there of the quest for quality. Just "masstige" - mass prestige marketing that saw Penfolds sell 12,000 wine fridges in Australia and more in other markets through a discounted offer to Penfolds wine buyers last year. The current masstige effort is offering $900 plasma televisions to buyers who spend $200 on Wolf Blass Wines as promotion for its sponsorship of the Cricket World Cup now under way in Australia and New Zealand.
To give you an idea of the effectiveness of that kind of marketing I can do no better than direct you to The Story of Penfolds Wine Storage Cabinets and Old Fashioned Discounting that my brother David posted on his Glug website in September last year.
Here's brother David's conclusion but I recommend you read the whole thing.

After the release of Treasury financials we were told this: "At the end of the latest financial year Treasury had total inventories (at cost) of $1.23 billion, slightly up on the previous year's $1.16bn. About 90 per cent of those inventories are masstige and luxury wines: 42 per cent, or $517m, are luxury wines and about 42 per cent ($525m) of the total inventories are classified as 'non-current'".
Stephen Bartholomeusz, Australian, Business Spectator, 21st August, 2014.
This large horde of premium red wine, most destined to be Penfolds, was built up by the previous CEO Mr Dearie. Some see it as a future pot of gold but whatever the outcome it was a bold gamble.
And consider this; we do not know the global size of the warm climate shiraz market. The Treasury method of selling premium and prestige wines is in its infancy while rivals such as those selling the cooler climate reds of Bordeaux use very different methods well removed from the grips of chain supermarkets and local auction houses.
What if Treasury cannot sell its pile of reds at luxury prices?

What indeed.