AUGUST 2025
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‘I’m very strict on our integrity and who we supply to, and there’s no bullsh*t in what we say’ DAVID BLACKMORE
menu over his shoulder. “I thought it was a good idea because nobody had their own private brand on the menu, then Neil Perry started doing it at Rockpool too, and pretty soon we encouraged all of our chefs to do the same, calling it Blackmore Wagyu and that’s how the brand name was created,” he says. “We’ve never spent a dollar on advertising, but we have been continually marketing. And the marketing we do is to tell our story. I’m very strict on our integrity and who we supply to, and there’s no bullshit in what we say. What we say is what we do. We produce the best-quality product and we do it consistently. Our brand’s reputation is based on our worst carcass, not our best one. We keep things small, we are very hands on, and we are very personal. “I wanted to have a niche product that was respected for the quality of the product.” B RAND specialist and chairman of Kidder Williams, David Williams, has advised major Australian companies on how to establish brands for decades. He famously helped bring Vegemite back into Australian ownership when he worked with Bega Cheese on the purchase of the brand from its international owner.
Williams is passionate about the potential of Australian farmers to turn commodity products into sustainable, super- premium brands and says David Blackmore, along with Peter Gago, chief winemaker at Penfolds, are stellar examples of how it can be done. “David Blackmore totally controls his brand, he chooses who he sells to and the quantity he sells, and he has earned the trust of his customers, and Peter Gago has almost single- handedly built Australia’s only true super-brand on par with Louis Vuitton and Veuve Clicquot, and it’s not just Penfold’s Grange but their whole range,” Williams says. “Buying a bottle of Penfold’s Grange is no different to buying a Louis Vuitton handbag. If you have a high-value product, you pick and choose who you are going to sell it to, and you control it, you ration it. Penfold’s released a new wine recently, their Grange La Chapelle 2021, it’s $3500 a bottle and it sold out in two days. That’s incredible.” Williams says you don’t need a million-dollar marketing budget to establish a brand, and insists smaller producers who create niche or boutique products, with the advantage of being more agile in the market, can do just as well. “If you can brand water, you can brand anything, and
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