Wolf Blass is back on board as the official wine sponsor of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Now in its third year as a sponsor, Wolf Blass will have its biggest activations at the festival’s opening and closing nights. At the opening night gala, Wolf Blass is bringing back its popular photo booth that allows partygoers to have their photo taken and share it through Facebook and Twitter. On closing night, the brand will have a wine bar and lounge area at Roy Thompson Hall.
Angela Lyons, the brand’s business director at Treasury Wine Estates, said it isn’t aligned with film festivals in other international markets, but it works for Canada. “There’s been sports sponsorships in some markets, but in Canada we felt that film was a great fit for the wine,” she said. “[Some theatres] are now licensed to serve wine as people watch a movie, so there are a lot of unique elements to the Canadian market that helped drive us towards staying with film in all of our activations this year.”
As wine sponsor, Wolf Blass will supply wine at various events during the festival and is collaborating with other co-sponsors, such as the wine bar it will run near L’Oreal’s pop-up beauty lounge.
The brand has also partnered with Jeremy Gutsche, the founder of TrendHunter.com, to uncover what’s hot in wine. Wolf Blass was set to host a suite Wednesday where Gutsche shared the top 10 trends in wine while Wolf Blass premiered its new Yellow Label Limited Edition blend.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Wolf Blass is also taking its film/wine pairing across Canada with a new campaign called “Paint the Town Yellow.”
“Our sponsorship of TIFF last year created a lot of awareness within the Greater Toronto Area,” said Lyons. “But being in our third year, one of the biggest challenges we had was to find a way to expand the film platform beyond the excitement here in Toronto and share some of that excitement with a broader group of wine enthusiasts.”
As part of the campaign, select Wolf Blass bottles will have special stickers that can be peeled off. Each contains a PIN that be entered at WinWithWolfBlass.com for the chance to win one of 30,000 movie tickets or grand prizes like “Paint the Town Yellow” nights on the town, which include dinner and a limo for four.
The campaign also includes out-of-home advertising, urban projections, cinema ads and digital advertising on sites such as WineAlign.com. A Twitter campaign invites people to share their wine experiences with the hashtag #hadablass with the chance to score an invitation to a special dinner in the Chatelaine test kitchen on Oct. 24.
Read more of our ongoing coverage of Toronto International Film Festival sponsorships and activations at MarketingMag.ca’s TIFF Sponsor Spotlight.
