Word: leafed
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...efforts have paid off in a rare, unfiltered glimpse into the inner workings of the family-owned Gallo empire, the country's largest vintner, with sales last year of $1.2 billion. Gallo's wines may vary in quality, but its marketing and distribution muscle is top shelf. Turning Leaf turns up everywhere, and with good reason. Aided by a series of confidential memos, Jackson's lawyers showed how Gallo executives, pressured by their demanding chairman Ernest Gallo, took careful aim at the leader of the popularly priced Chardonnay market. Gallo launched its new wine directly at Kendall-Jackson, propelled...
Kendall-Jackson, whose total ad budget is $1 million, never knew what hit it. By late 1995, after a heady decade of 15%-to-20% annual sales growth, Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay began to falter. Gallo's Turning Leaf, priced at $6, was cheaper than Kendall-Jackson's $10 bottle; but its packaging, from the flanged top, visible cork and thin, cigar-band neck wrapper down to its multicolored grape leaf, was strikingly similar...
When Turning Leaf hit the shelves in September 1995, the only hint of its origin was the Modesto, California, address; the word Gallo was nowhere to be found. Boosted by advertising, the wine sold 1.3 million cases in 1996, second to Kendall-Jackson. In April 1996, after hearing complaints that consumers thought Turning Leaf was his product, Jackson sued...
...court, Gallo officials insisted that Turning Leaf, with its lower price, was aimed at a different market from Vintner's Reserve. And they strenuously denied copying Kendall-Jackson or anyone else. They pointed to the dozens of bottles on exhibit--so many that the courtroom looked more like a tasting room than a legal chamber--to argue that Kendall-Jackson's look was neither unique nor distinctive...
...case is a toss-up. Me-too marketing happens in nearly every product category--think "ice" beer and "lite" everything. But there is a point when imitation becomes more than flattery. If Gallo is found guilty, it could be forced to redesign its Turning Leaf packaging and turn over millions in profits to Kendall-Jackson...