Request an audit

01Provenance

02Price logicthat survives a negotiation with a distributor

03A credible reason to believe

04Clarity

Wine brand strategy & audit

Your wine is ready to leave the region. Is your brand?

Most wineries that stall on export do not have a product problem. They have a positioning problem nobody has named out loud — and a brand story that stops working the moment it crosses a border.

Elena Merkulova — brand audit, positioning and go-to-market for wine. 15+ years as a marketing executive. Based in Jesi, Marche.

Request a brand audit See the work

ROOT Winery · Firmior

Brands built & rebuilt

  • Fanagoria

Featured in

Jury member

Effie Awards International, 2021

Export

Italy · EU · USA · Canada · Australia

  • 15+years leading marketing at executive levelCareer
  • 5export markets built from zeroROOT Winery
  • 131%return on marketing investment on under €200 of mediaROOT Lumen Zero
  • 35M+bottles a year — the producer I rebrandedFanagoria
  • $5.5M+annual marketing budget managedMafin
  • +38%brand awareness lift achieved in 12 monthsMafin

Selected work

Built from zero, or rebuilt after it stopped working.

Four projects that show the method rather than the résumé — a category invented, an experience turned into revenue, a micro-budget proof, and a rebrand that finally held.

01

Anticelebration

A category that did not exist until it was named.

CMO · 2022 – present · Italy & EU

20,000+ litres

of sparkling wine sprayed by racers every year

Source: ItaliaSquisita, 2023

Water for the celebration, wine for the drinking.

Celebration bottles are opened and water sprays across a woman holding one Celebration label: Non potabile, acqua spumante
CelebrationWater in a celebration bottle. Not for drinking. Made for spraying.
Necks of Anticelebration Cuvée II, I and III with their corks and cages
  • No spraying
  • No sabrage
Cuvée I–III, Verdicchio DOC, RoséMade for drinking.
Anticelebration: an after-party table with the bottle among glitter, roses and a disco ball
Anticelebration · the brand world
The problem
Sparkling wine is chained to the occasion — and at the occasion, half the bottle gets sprayed instead of drunk. Everyone was competing on which wine.
The move
Reposition the moment, not the liquid: water for the celebration, wine for the drinking. One reversal opened a category with no direct competitor.
Built
Concept, identity, EU trademark, commercial architecture and European launch — from zero, with no agency and no local network.
Featured in
Wine Meridian · SoWine · ItaliaSquisita

02

ROOT Winery

The visit became the product.

CMO · 2022 – present · Castelli di Jesi, Marche

The ROOT buggy parked by a tree on the hilltop, the hills of Maiolati Spontini at dusk and a picnic table laid under the tree
  1. 01Drive the vineyards by off-road buggy
  2. 02Arrive in the hills of Maiolati Spontini
  3. 03Reach the tasting table

ROOT Winery · buggy tour

One visit. Four returns.

The problem
A small winery with no marketing budget and no intermediaries. Word of mouth had to come from somewhere, and so did direct revenue.
The move
Guests drive the hills of Maiolati Spontini by off-road buggy, stop at the oldest parcels, and reach the tasting table already attached to the place.
Why it pays
One format feeds four things at once: direct sales, social content, influencer visits and press. Alongside it — five export markets and a Shopify DTC channel.

03

ROOT Lumen Zero

Under €200 of media. A 131% return.

Launch campaign · alcohol-free wine · Italy

  1. Media spendunder €200
  2. Impressions~54,000
  3. ≈ 7.4%of impressions became website sessions
  4. Website sessions4,005
  5. ≈ 0.47%of sessions became orders
  6. Orders fulfilled19
  7. Average order value€27.63
  8. Best single creative€55 → 21,300 views
  9. Return on marketing investment131%

Conversion rates calculated from the figures above.

ROOT Lumen Zero label: Bianco Dry, alcohol free
eresia.
The problem
Launching an alcohol-free wine in Italy — the one country where proposing such a thing borders on heresy.
The move
Shot in an abandoned 18th-century church in Le Marche, mixed with AI-generated visuals. Italians kept calling it eresia. That word became the headline.
How to read it
An average order of €27.63 is a deliberate purchase, not an impulse click. The point is not the small budget — it is proving the hypothesis before spending.

04

Fanagoria

35 million bottles, finally on a strategy.

Deputy CEO for Marketing · 2019 – 2020

35M+

bottles a year · 12,000+ hectares · every previous rebrand had failed to take

  1. No strategy before evidence, and no evidence borrowed from a deck.

    Qualitative research across categories and audiences — before a single label was touched.

    01

    Research

    The research came before anything was drawn.

  2. Fanagoria bottle with the white labelFanagoria bottle with the burgundy labelFanagoria bottle with the black label
    02

    Architecture

    Marketing and product architecture across the whole portfolio, with pricing and retail behind it.

  3. Fanagoria slogan Noblesse oblige with the new markA Fanagoria bottle with the new label held in the hand
    03

    Identity

    Identity last. This time the new look had something to hold on to.

Identity design: UtterDesign. Research, marketing strategy and product architecture: Elena Merkulova, Deputy CEO for Marketing, 2019–2020.

The problem
One of Europe's largest wine producers by volume — 35M+ bottles a year, 12,000+ hectares — where every previous rebrand had failed to take.
Why they failed
Each had been treated as visual style. No research underneath, no brand architecture, no product strategy. Nothing for the new look to hold on to.
The move
Research first, then marketing and product architecture, identity last. Plus full portfolio architecture, pricing, retail redesign and a PR function from scratch.

How we can work

Four engagements, and exactly what lands on your desk.

Every engagement is scoped as a project and runs end to end — from research to the first campaign in market.

01 · Audit

Brand audit & diagnosis

I map what the brand actually has: what is strong, what is noise, and what is quietly costing you sales. Strong parts get sharpened and made ownable. Weak ones get removed, not redecorated.

You receive

  • Written positioning audit
  • Competitive map of your category
  • Inventory of what is genuinely ownable
  • Prioritised list of what to stop doing

02 · Positioning

Positioning that holds in a crisis

Brand attributes buyers still reward when budgets tighten: clarity, provenance, a credible reason to believe, and price logic that survives a negotiation with a distributor.

You receive

  • Brand platform and attribute system
  • Reasons to believe, evidenced
  • Price architecture across the portfolio
  • Messaging your sales team can defend

03 · Growth

Growth points & high-margin launches

Where the margin actually is: a new category, a new occasion, a new format, an experience worth paying for. Enotourism included — done properly, the visit stops being a courtesy and becomes the product.

You receive

  • Growth-point analysis with sizing
  • Concept for the new format or occasion
  • Enotourism design: route, experience, pricing
  • Launch plan with a first-campaign brief

04 · Communication

Communication & social strategy

Built on test-and-learn rather than on a media plan written in advance: small focused experiments, clean signal, then budget behind whatever is already proven to work.

You receive

  • Message architecture and content pillars
  • Channel plan by market
  • Test-and-learn roadmap
  • Metrics that matter — ROMI, not impressions

Method

Identity comes last. That is the whole trick.

The reason earlier rebrands fail is almost always the same: somebody started with the label. Here is the order that works instead.

  1. 01Research

    Qualitative research across categories and audiences. No strategy before evidence, and no evidence borrowed from a deck.

  2. 02Architecture

    Brand and product architecture, price logic, portfolio structure — the load-bearing layer that any visual work has to sit on.

  3. 03Proof

    A small, cheap, deliberately provocative experiment. Clean signal extracted before serious money is committed anywhere.

  4. 04Scale

    Budget behind what is already proven, identity built as a system, and the sales team armed with something they can defend.

Before the vineyard

Fifteen years building marketing functions that did not exist yet.

Corporate scale, startup speed and international go-to-market — the discipline behind the wine work.

  1. 2012 – 2013

    Rekarto Group

    CMO, geo-service app · Singapore / Tokyo

    10countries at once

    Go-to-market across ten countries simultaneously, coordinating agencies in Europe and Asia from the Singapore HQ. Brand platform developed with Total Identity Group in Amsterdam.

  2. 2013 – 2017

    Gazprom Neft

    Head of Marketing · Moscow / St Petersburg

    Alternative fuelsa direction created from strategy to launch

    The multi-fuel station concept, methane branded as a consumer product, the first vehicle-conversion campaign, and a certified partner network.

  3. 2017 – 2019

    AlfaStrakhovanie-Life

    Marketing Director · Moscow

    1stomnichannel CDP in the country’s financial services

    Led the digital transformation of one of Russia's largest insurance groups from offline-first to data-driven omnichannel, plus CJM and NPS across every touchpoint.

  4. 2019 – 2020

    Fanagoria

    Deputy CEO for Marketing

    35M+bottles a year, 12,000+ hectares

    Every previous rebrand had failed to take. Research first, then marketing and product architecture, identity last.

  5. 2020 – 2021

    Mafin

    CMO · insurtech, Series A · Moscow

    25+people, $5.5M+ budget

    Built the whole marketing, advertising and PR function from zero. Mafin Media hit 20,000 visitors in month one; awareness rose 38% within twelve.

  6. 2022 – present

    ROOT Winery · Anticelebration

    CMO · Jesi, Marche · Italy & EU

    5export markets built from zero

    A category that did not exist until it was named, and a visit that became the product. Alongside it — a Shopify DTC channel.

Not a project — a role?

I am open to a CMO seat when the ambition justifies it.

Most of my work is scoped as projects: an audit, a repositioning, a launch. But if you are building something with genuinely ambitious goals — a brand meant to leave its region and compete on export markets — then the conversation worth having is a different one.

Tell me where you intend to take it.

How far is your brand meant to go?

  1. A local label→ a brand audit: what is strong, what is noise
  2. A national brand→ positioning that holds in a crisis
  3. An export brand→ growth points and a launch plan
  4. A brand meant to leave its region and compete on export markets→ a CMO conversation

Press and hold to fill the glass through four levels of ambition. The conversation button works without it.

Start a CMO conversation Executive CV

Get in touch

If the product is strong and the positioning is unclear, I want to hear about it.

The first conversation is short and free: what the brand is, where it is stuck, and whether an audit is even the right instrument.

Email
elena.merkulova.winery@gmail.com
LinkedIn
/in/elena-merkulova
Curriculum vitae
Executive CV (PDF)
Based in
Jesi, Marche — Italy
Working across Italy, the EU and export markets
Languages
English · Italian · Russian

Hello Elena, I’m writing about . We sell in and we’re stuck at . What I need is .

Opens your email app with the letter ready to send.