Chile Oliva sought to establish Chilean olive oil as a premium category in international markets dominated by Mediterranean producers. The brand had to overcome limited awareness of Chile as an olive oil origin while competing against European brands with deep heritage narratives.
Vivaldi developed a market entry strategy that leveraged Chile's unique terroir and production advantages, emphasizing purity, modern production methods, and distinctive flavor profiles. A phased go-to-market approach identified priority channels and consumer segments, supported by education-focused marketing to build category credibility.
Chile Oliva entered target markets with a clear premium positioning and secured distribution in key specialty and retail channels. The strategy built awareness and trial among consumers seeking authentic, high-quality olive oil alternatives to traditional Mediterranean options.
Chile Oliva worked with Vivaldi to establish Chilean olive oil as a credible premium category in international markets where Mediterranean producers held the heritage narrative. Vivaldi built a market entry strategy that leveraged Chile’s Andean terroir, modern production methods, and distinctive flavor profiles, identifying priority channels and consumer segments and supporting trial with education-led marketing that secured distribution in specialty and retail outlets.
Vivaldi positioned Chilean olive oil with a clear premium framing rather than as a generic alternative to Italian or Spanish oils, and the strategy translated into distribution wins in priority specialty and retail channels. Trial among consumers seeking authentic, high-quality alternatives to Mediterranean defaults moved in the direction the category needed.
The strategy started from what Chile actually has that Mediterranean producers do not, the Andean terroir, the modern production methods, and a distinctive flavor profile, and made those the foundation rather than asking consumers to accept Chile as a substitute for Italy. The go-to-market plan was phased by channel and segment so that the limited marketing budget could build category credibility before it tried to build category scale.
Olive oil is one of the most heritage-coded categories in food, and consumers default to a small set of European origins as proxies for quality regardless of what the bottle actually contains. Any new-world producer therefore has to fight a heuristic before it fights a competitor, which is why the work cannot start with a price or a feature claim and has to start with a credible origin story that gives the consumer permission to consider it premium.
The transferable lesson is that new-world food categories do not break through by claiming parity with established origins, they break through by anchoring on what is actually different about their production. Phased channel entry through specialty before grocery is the second lesson, because category credibility built among curators of premium food is what unlocks the mainstream retailers later.
