To be successful one must sometimes break with the traditions of the past.

A good example is Yellowtail wine. Casella Wines wanted to break in to the important US market but to do so had to first smash a few wine industry preconceptions.

First the wine market is complex. Casella decided to keep things simple by offering just one red and one white with no grape varieties and no vintages.

Secondly, people buy with their eyes so it was decided to use a label that was instantly recognisable. At first people said that putting an image of a rock wallaby was wrong – after all, who puts cute pictures of animals on bottled wines?

But it worked. So too did the name, which used lower case and brackets and looked a bit like email, which perhaps appealed to younger buyers.

As a result of this unconventional thinking, Yellow Tail grew from zero to over 7.5 million cases in the US in just five years and its Shiraz is now the #1 selling red wine in America. It’s enough to turn other Australian wine makers green with envy.