Visual codes on French wine labels for cross-cultural marketing in China and Australia

Abstract

This paper examines visual codes on French wine labels that rely on the cognitive connections between the source and the target that are usually accessible only to culturally specific market segments. These strategies therefore draw on cross-cultural marketing in particularly innovative ways, demonstrating a complicity or cross-cultural understanding inherent in the symbolic content of their visual codes. Two examples of French wine labels have been selected to display these cross-cultural strategies in different price brackets (premium and low-cost) and contexts (Asian and Western): Château Lafite in China and Arrogant Frog in Australia. Focusing on these wine labels, this paper analyses t..