A conversation about marketing wine online with Paul Mabray of VinTank

“We make wine work online.” … Paul Mabray, VinTank Founder & Chief Strategy Officer

The Backstory

Against the background of the Wine Business Monthly lead story Tuesday, November 3rd, announcing ‘Wine Sales up 7% in October,’ is last weeks story of AmazonWine’s failure to launch. While the story of Amazon.com’s attempted entry into the online wine sales segment has been well documented, this quick summary will tend to facilitate the following discussion. The Financial Times reported on March 5th 2008 that Amazon.com planned to start selling wine online in the USA market. Amazon had in fact ventured down this path before, investing $30 million in return for a 45% equity stake in pioneer online wine marketer Wineshopper.com in 1999. But that investment evaporated as Wineshopper ceased operations within a year. And then continuing to keep their toes in the water through an association with the longstanding Wine.com selling gourmet food baskets without wine through Amazon.com. During the formative stages AmazonWine chose New Vine Logistics as it’s fulfillment partner, but this arrangement was endangered when NVL abruptly ceased operations on May 29th, 2009. Inertia Beverage Group stepped in purchasing NVL’s debt obligation from Silicon Valley Bank, and then via auction on July 27th acquired the assets of the financially stressed NVL. IBG initiated an integration of the NVL fulfillment business into their existing operations. On October 23, 2009 both New Vine Logistics and AmazonWine.com made announcements. NVL filed for Chapter 7 in the US Bankruptcy Court in Northern California, winding down the closure of the corporate entity; and, Dini Rao, Senior Account Manager at AmazonWine, sent an email to potential winery partners stating, “ we have recently decided not to resume shipping. As you know we were excited to work with you to build the AmazonWine business. For that, this was a very tough choice for us.”

In light of an apparent wine market uptick, the subsequent gnashing of teeth, and what to me was an overly pessimistic take by journalists and bloggers alike rang as an overreaction to the actual events. The collective ennui displayed by many in the wine industry seemed more reflective of recent difficult financial times, and of hopes unfulfilled. And, many of the comments tended to be colored by the respondents particular points-of-view based on their involvement and specific roles in the wine industry. To get a clear picture of the effects of the AmazonWine decision not to move forward, I reached out to experienced digital wine marketer, Paul Mabray of VinTank for his take on the wine industry’s ecommerce marketplace. What follows are key bits of wisdom from this conversation covering digital marketing and the online sale of wine in the United States.

The Conversation

TWM: What was the genesis of VinTank?
PM: After Inertia Beverage, I was looking for a way to continue to contribute to the wine business, to continue to add value, and I wanted to help wineries adopt an agile business process. The key idea was to provide thought leadership on the synergistic future between wine and technology, to keep innovating in the wine industry.

TWM: You have a significant background as one of the pioneers in winery e-commerce.
PM: I was lucky to work with some of the pioneers in DTT and DTC efforts at WineShopper.com/Wine.com, as a Beverage Industry Consultant with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, and as the Founder/CEO of Inertia Beverage Group, but as the saying goes, most of the pioneers died with arrows in their backs and those that survived became the guides to help settlers safely go westward.

TWM: This history is somewhat mirrored by your VinTank partners/team members.
PM: Having assembled a very strong team with collectively over 50 years experience in the wine and tech industries most notably eSkye, BevAccess, Inertia and Wine Trade Network, Vintank is now the recognized leader in online sales strategies and execution. The partners include Eric Hsu/Director, Creative Strategy, Patrick Angeles/Technology Strategy, Clay Wallin/Business Development/Operations and Ashley Bellview/Marketing and Social Media Associate.

TWM: Looking at the Wine Industry today what do you see?
PM: Now, looking at the wine industry VinTank sees a product category mired by antiquated laws, complex distribution paradigms, unique product qualifications and innumerable complexities. Through technology and innovative strategies, we are dedicated to finding solutions.

TWM: So, what are the challenges facing wine marketers?
PM: The wine industry is tremendously fragmented and insular. It also suffers from one of the most antiquated, regulated and complicated distribution paradigms. It is an extremely long tail product with approximately 250,000 individual SKUs entering the market annually with many remaining in the market from 3-10 years. Plus there has been a tremendous proliferation of brands with ever decreasing market access through traditional distribution channels. Mix this with technology and you have a lot of complicated puzzle pieces to cobble together to help make a frictionless transaction occur.

TWM: Is there a key to a successful ecommerce strategy?
PM: To be successful in the digital end of the wine business you have to focus on the right things, focus on a multi-channel strategy, focus on a direct business model, and make your strategy consumer centric.

TWM: I’m thinking that the disparity of compensation between traditional sales management and DTC sales management shows a lack of awareness by many wine businesses of the potential of online wine sales.
PM: The disparity in traditional sales management salaries and DTC management salaries is a sad reflection of the myopia of traditional wine beliefs. DIRECT in all its forms (marketing, consumer and B2B sales) is the most profitable and important channel for the majority of US wineries.

TWM: I’ve heard traditional marketers say sales is sales, so, is a different skill set required by ecommerce managers?
PM: Out of 6,000 plus wineries in the United States there are only 20 dedicated ecommerce managers. Wineries view their primary DTC efforts as their tasting room, or their wine club, but like the broad market with on and off-premises requiring different skill sets there are different segments in DTC. Tasting rooms are DTC’s on-premise and the Internet its off-premise, and they each require different skills. Ecommerce requires a new type of online sales channel expertise and relationships. It also requires a commitment to creating and growing online brand presence, and a dedicated online sales and marketing strategy.

TWM: Given the new construct, just who’s the most important customer at a winery?
PM: All customers are important but I’ve been told by most wineries that their most important customer is the one who visits the winery and buys wine during their visit. An important customer, but your winery’s most important customer is the one who Googles your wine and through your winery store, and inspite of paying what is most likely the highest MSRP, buys the wine.

TWM: The adoption and integration of DTC and DTT technology solutions for wineries seems to be slow and fragmented.
PM: The adoption and integration of applicable software technology including CRM/POS/Accounting is very clumsy. There are as many as 20 different systems that have to be integrated between hospitality, CRM, ecommerce, wine club, compliance and accounting. Unfortunately accounting system integration usually drives the process in a winery. My question is do you want an accounting centric system driving your business or a sales centric system…?

TWM: It seems that grape growing and production are years ahead of winery sales and marketing on the adoption of cutting edge technology solutions.
PM: We are a production centric industry. Viticulture and winery production departments utilize bleeding-edge technology and software. However software vendors for other functions have to deal with such a fragmented industry and slow technology adoption that they have to struggle to support themselves with such a small market share to divide (6K US wineries) that it causes lesser investment in R&D and artificially helps to create friction for innovation.

TWM: Can you identify the various DTC market segments?
PM: Online retailers, marketing agents, consumer marketing portals and direct to trade.

TWM: What does VinTank see as future trends in the wine industry?
PM: We think you’ll see more B2B marketplace attempts. The industry sorely needs alternative routes to market. We also think you’ll see more market agents explode once they get confident in understanding the ABC Regulatory Advisory. Finally we see mobile continuing to grow to be a stronger force that drives wine education and point of purchase decisions. Mind you all these items require wineries to lead the charge and adopt the alternative channels but in this current environment, they have all the advantages, they just need to commit the resources.

TWM: Do online wine sales have a future now that AmazonWine.com has failed to launch?
PM: We believe it does in a big way. Without demeaning the approach and choice of partners that Amazon made, it only saddens us that Amazon did not launch. Anything that would have help catalyze online wine buy activity we are 1000% behind.That being said there are many other companies succeeding online with wine (both retailers and marketing agents like Vinfolio, Winelibrary.com, K&L, Wall Street Journal Wine Club, Wine Tasting Network) despite sub-optimal conditions(regulatory environment and compliance especially). And yet we are still waiting for one of the giants to emerge that would make our industry comparable to other luxury good verticals. We think that time will be soon and there will be more than one winner (probably a few of the companies mentioned above). However, one of the key challenges is winery participation. Only by supporting and feeding an alternative channel can it become healthy and the rewards will benefit the industry. We believe in wine online and we hope wineries start believing too. The internet is the most powerful and ACCESSIBLE tool we have ever seen in our lifetime. We (the wine industry) should be using it better.

TWM: Can you recommend five must read books for digital wine marketers?
PM: Sorry, I couldn’t do just 5…

‘Purple Cow‘ and ‘Tribes‘ by Seth Godin

‘Free‘ and ‘The Long Tail‘ by Chris Anderson

‘Drilling Down‘ by Jim Nova

‘Wine Brands: Success Strategies for New Markets, New Consumers and New Trends‘ by Eve Resnick

‘The Cluetrain Manifesto‘ by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Wineberger and Mckee Jake

‘Trust Agents‘  by Chris Brogan

‘Crush It‘  by Gary Vaynerchuk

‘Wikinomics‘ by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

‘Good to Great‘ by Jim Collins

The Take Away

Four years ago, Smoke Wallin in his 2005 Wine Industry Technology Symposium keynote address said “The time is right for each of us in the industry to take a strategic review of our business practices and make sure we are optimizing the business using the most appropriate technology tools and strategies available.” Well, four years later that time is now. Paul Mabray and VinTank are moving the digital online wine bar forward and upward. If your winery is not yet diversifying its channel strategies, and/or maximizing its execution within the ecommerce channel, then this should be part of your 2010 brand plan. However, the execution of your DTC and/or DTT strategy will require the allocation of resources, both human and capital towards the establishment of an ecommerce platform management position, either as a direct hire or through a digital business development partnership. Contacts matter, relationships matter, and experience matters. The skill set required for online sales and marketing efforts, while exhibiting some crossover capabilities, are unique to the channel and should be valued as such. As Paul Mabray recently tweeted “Twitter is not a strategy. Facebook is not a strategy. Customer service and communications need to be core to your strategy.” So, while it is laudable that some winecos are now developing social capital and evolving into savvy communicators by incorporating Social Media Management into their core tactics, what may be necessary for long term wine brand success is the establishment and execution by your wineco of a viable online ecommerce sales and marketing program.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

The Conversation

“There are eight million stories, in the Naked City. This..has been one of them.” … Stirling Silliphant (The Naked City ABC TV series 1958-63)

The Rain

The sound of rain, and just not the sound of rain falling, but the sound of people talking about the rain at the end of what had may just have been the perfect vintage, seemed to divert attention away from the economy, at least for the time being. While the rain, and all the wine country conversations that the rain started, provided a welcome relief from the constant drone that it’s hard out there. It’s really not the time to take your eye off the ball and to forget the market challenges inherent since the onset of the ‘Great Recession.’ For each winery and each winegrower or vineyard owner there’s an unique story. The folks on the flats in mid-Napa Valley likely had a different take on this year’s growing season weather than the folks in Calistoga, Carneros, the Vaca or Mayacamas ranges, or in Western Sonoma County, Mendocino, the Willamette Valley, Walla Walla or in Santa Barbara. While each unique story suggest a similar outcome, this is a vintage that will unfold over the next several years. Perhaps the critics will pronounce estimates of Vintage of the Century or speculate that the rain has dashed all hopes for a positive result. Perhaps I lack the prescience or the hubris to judge the future of an entire vintage during harvest and crush, but I do have an understanding that a vintage is the sum of the individual experiences of each participant. And, I have an understanding that it’s in the telling of your story that will connect you to your customers.

The Bounce

In this brave new world of permission marketing, and in this time of growing consumer detachment and cynicism driven by the perceived systemic failure of our financial and governmental institutions, a review of your traditional marketing message methods has been necessitated, even as the mixed message on the state of the economy is being delivered by traditional mass media. A mention of the names Paulson, Geithner, and AIG tend to initiate a gag reflex in even the most jaded observer. However, today the Dow Jones Market Index reached a 12 month high and once again climbed above 10,000, in part driven by reports that Goldman Sachs made record profits in Q3. Also noted as a sign that the climb from the bottom is underway are stories in Ad Age Talent Works that Google is Hiring again; and The New York Times reporting that Apple profits are up 47% on Strong Mac Sales. The story on the state of the wine business is even more mixed. Like the citizens of the Naked City, each wine business has its own story, some up by 10%, some flat, and some down 30%. Many wineries are going through an extended period of stress. Vic Motto, Co-Founder, Chaiman and CEO of Global Wine Partners, a St Helena, CA wine industry iBank recognizes the industry wide stress; but, doesn’t see a significant long term dislocation in wine consumer’s buying behavior. Having heard the sea change story before, most recently with the prediction that Two Buck Chuck would drive consumers permanently away from luxury wines. Didn’t happen. It’s Mr Motto analysis that the American wine consumer is ‘aspirational’ and that wine is and will be viewed as an ‘affordable luxury.’ I’m also in the camp that believes wineries that survive this very tough period will likely, at some point, see a return to the pre-recessionary trends in buying patterns. In an October 15th Associated Press interview, Safeway CEO, Steve Burd sees signs of the turnaround in an uptick in the coffee sales mix and a move back to growth in the premium wines segment.

The Conversation

Technology has provisioned wine industry CMOs with a whole new marketing tool kit. Technology is a tool to be used and appreciated, but not one to be viewed as the long hoped for silver bullet. How we now communicate with our customers has dramatically changed with the development of the web, email, texting, blogs, video, Facebook and Twitter. And in this new paradigm there are three words that have become the mantra of this new technological world in which we all now communicate our stories: transparency, authenticity, credibility. I’d like to add one word, human. This commonsense point was first made in ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto,’ by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Wineberger, first online in 1999 then in print in 2001, Copyright © by Basic Books. BTW: a 10th Anniversary edition of this must read biz book is now available. While the 10 year timeframe has dated some of the jargon, the core concepts of the treatise remain, especially those listed in the seminal 95 THESES:

1. Markets are conversations
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice

The first five points in the “Cluetrain’ 95 THESES are a construct that is now an unavoidable communications directive for your consumer facing business. People grow your grapes. People make your wine. People sell your wine, and people buy your wine. Your story, while sharing traits with almost all others in wine’s corner of the CPG market, is unique to your circumstances.

The Case Study

It was harvest time in the fall of 1994. Mike Benziger came out of the winery office to check on the grapes to judge when to start picking on the Family’s Estate Vineyard, located in a collapsed caldera on the Sonoma Valley side of the old dormant Sonoma Mountain volcano. Times were good. The vineyard was always busy from the days of the Glen Ellen Winery start-up through the launch of the premium value tiered Benziger Family Winery. Wines that always over delivered. Mike should have been smiling, but instead he looked troubled. He cocked his head as he stood on the edge of the vineyard, puzzled that he heard nothing. Nothing at all. Just up the hill at his home in Jack London State Park, he remembered hearing birds chirping madly as the sun broke through the morning fog. But as he looked down the neatly groomed rows of vines, he noticed that there wasn’t a wild flower, a weed or a blade of grass on the bare dirt underneath the vines. As he walked the rows, Mike noticed that there were no bugs on the vines or flying through the air, no dragonflies, no butterflies. Stopping and reflecting he knew what was bothering him, the vineyard was no longer a living space. Mike thought a moment and considered his options. He knew that this wasn’t the way things should be. At that moment in time he vowed to change the way things had been done, to change the conventional wisdom of how things had always been done. This ancient bowl had supported life for millions of years, and in just a decade of intensive modern farming that had all changed. But, it wasn’t working any longer, and the Benziger farming practices needed to revert to the old ways, to the ways defined by closed system agriculture. Benziger Vineyards needed significant cultural change to recreate a new living farm. And change they did, after 3 years of concentrated study, a sustainable, biodynamic vineyard started to take shape. The first step was to establish biodiversity. So island gardens were established within the vineyard space to help support beneficial insects; and between every 10th vine row a bed of host plants and flowers were seeded to support a vineyard population of the good guys. Sheep and cows were introduced as natural lawn mowers, with their waste the base of a closed system compost program, so that no chemical fertilizers would ever be needed or would ever be used. Land that was dead just ten years ago was, in less than a decade, now a classic biodynamic closed system living farm. Earth, nature and man came together in a special place that happens to be in my backyard, just north of the town of Sonoma.

On Saturday, October 3, 2009 I had the opportunity, along with a group of wine blogger colleagues, to hit the Benziger Biodynamic Trail at the Benziger Family Winery on Jack London Ranch Rd, just up the hill from the village of Glen Ellen. Our tour group had the opportunity to interface with Mike Benziger, Kathy Benziger Threkeld, Colby Eirman, Director of Gardens, and Winemaker, Rodrigo Sotto. The passion in the delivery, even from the well practiced folks at Benziger, was  impressive, especially in close quarters over 3 hours. This was a one-on-one conversation and the telling of the story, starting with that moment of enlightenment in 1994. There wasn’t any ducking questions in the active exchange of ideas. We weren’t being sold on a story. We were being invited into an experience. This was a conversation between humans. A few points really stuck with me. The first was that ‘the wines weren’t necessarily better, but that they were different.’ That they reflected this place. The second point that hit a nerve with me was that ‘each year the wine was a time stamp of the vintage.’ Not once were scores mentioned as a descriptor of any of the Benziger grown and produced wines that we tasted that day, although the Rodrigo Sotto’s wines have gotten rave reviews and scores in the traditional wine press. My take away from the day with the Benziger Family and team members was one of transparency, authenticity, and credibility. A team that understood that their plan, in a world now dominated by pull marketing, was that by communicating in this human voice missionaries were created, replicating the message and influencing friends.

The grandchildren of the founder of Park Benziger & Company, and the children of the founder of Glen Ellen Winery, Bruno Benziger are well versed in the finer points of wine marketing. But, change must be in their DNA. First selling Glen Ellen, then converting a 200,000+ value brand to a slightly more than 110,000 case sustainable, biodynamic super-premium/luxury brand, while changing their farming practice as stewards of the land. In a time of declining circulation numbers and disappearing newspapers, an effort has been made to maintain contacts with the traditional press, in both the wine and consumer lifestyle focused print media arenas. The Benziger marketing team has fully embraced new media, including Twitter, and wine bloggers. Benziger POS is also available as an online deliverable, further enhancing the green story, while insuring the timely delivery of product sheets, neckers, sell sheets and cut case cards on an as needed by market basis. If you go to the Trade/Media section of the Benziger web site, you can download the Chris Benziger narrated video sales presentation which is a masters class in wine brand marketing. And, if you ever find yourself near Glen Ellen, stop-in and take the tour. As a small family wine marketer, you need to identify and mirror the success stories. The Benzigers have successfully differentiated their wine brands in this difficult, brand saturated market. And, by the way, their wines just aren’t different, the Benziger wines exhibit a specific point of view and IMHO are damn good.

The Story

The Benziger family and team recognized that their best path to the market was through their authentic story told in a human voice to groups of consumers, members of the trade, and to traditional and new media writers. A story that has been replicated to the point that in 2008 almost 175 million media impressions were created. Even though the Benzigers produce in their Demeter Certified Winery 1.32 million bottles of wine, the consumer impressions and strong word of mouth campaign along with a vibrant visitor center program help to create demand beyond the produced supply.  Through their objective mastery of pull marketing tactics, tactics based on an authentic and credible story, the Benzigers have been able to not only create an awareness envied by any enterprise wineco, but a model for any family wine business. The question that now begs to be answered: what’s your story and what are your winery’s marketing plans to maximize brand awareness and sales in what continues, even as the turnaround starts, to be a challenging marketplace?

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Revisiting Wine Marketing 101

“If you don’t get noticed, you don’t have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.” … Leo Burnett

Chicken Little

Yes indeed, the sky may be falling. The Great Recession, which in the 6 months from September 2008 through March 2009 stripped in excess of $6.6 trillion from USA personal wealth, may be with us for awhile. The access to credit that drove US consumer spending behavior and the economy has largely evaporated. Although consumers have paid down debt at a record pace, banks continue to reduce credit availability, expecting to retract an additional $1.5 trillion by lowering home equity loan access, consumer credit card limits and commercial lines of credit, restricting the ability of the US economy to recover recent spending patterns. Something lost in the swirl of marketing images from luxury consumer brands such as Panerai Watches, Hasselblad, Hermes, Ferrari, Tom Ford, Christian Louboutin, Michael Kors, et alia, is that under the aura of glitz America has been on sale for quite sometime. Just like disco, to many consumers the idea of the luxury brand may be dead, at least for the foreseeable future. Value has coexisted with the concept of brand as long as brand has existed. It’s the yin and yang of the retail continuum. Walmart created explosive growth in the 1990’s with the concept of everyday low prices, and then created significant competition to chain grocers with the introduction of consumables in both Walmart and Sam’s Club stores. Costco has been in the game for awhile, and has become a major factor in wine sales. Target introduced the idea of designer products at value pricing, and now will match Walmart pricing toy for toy this Christmas. And then there’s Amazon. Amazon is no longer just your bookstore, but now a major online retailer across several categories of consumer goods and electronics. And, as soon as the compliance situation, delayed by the well documented situation at New Vine Logistics, can be sorted Amazon will be a major factor in wine sales. Trader Joe’s introduced the concept of healthful foods at value pricing back in the 1970’s. With the latest US Labor Department statistics pegging the jobless rate at 9.8%, this is a dramatic understatement of the now real number that’s closer to 17% including people no longer actively looking for work and those now underemployed and working non-benefited minimum wage part-time jobs. It’s not surprising to see major retailers and grocers follow a strategy of value pricing. For anyone in this neck of the woods if you’ve been in Safeway recently the major merchandising theme is SAVE, and the yellow sale tags are inescapable. Lucky stores are following their philosophy of everyday low prices. And overriding this is a spirit of the new consumerism. It’s now cool to be frugal and save money.

The New Wine Consumer

As I worked my way to the Mission Street Garage traffic slowed to a crawl, in part due the rerouting of traffic away from Market Street. I was in the process of doing a NorCal broad market survey of grocery and independent package stores for a privately held family winery client, and it was time to break for lunch. Since my last two stops were in SoMa, I was headed to the food court in the Westfield Center, and to Charles Phan’s ‘Out the Door.’ Even though it was only 12:30 on an early October Friday, the joint was jumping. The food court was packed with shoppers, most holding multiple bags. The noise level sounded, well actually felt, like a low roar, creating a sense of excitement not present in the City’s shopping district for several years. One of my early retail lessons at Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Village, was to look for the bags in shoppers hands as an indicator of a good or bad day, and this looked like a good day. All of this economic activity seemed to be driven by the aggressive mark-downs and clearances in the stores in the Center. Pricing motivated by the need to make room for holiday merchandise, and these pricing strategies seemed to be working. Consumers have been on the sidelines, even during the recent back to school shopping period in August. But sharp advertising and in store media seemed effective at getting shoppers to reopen their wallets. The efficacy of the various campaigns will be reflected in each stores daily flash reports. The tide may be turning, however slowly, as consumer sentiment seems to be driven by value, with the economic thermostat having obviously been reset. An economy that now seems more driven by consumer needs rather than by wants. And the need for value seems to be paramount as a new inflection point in consumer purchasing behavior has been reached. So, in an age of cash for clunkers, extended unemployment benefits and tight credit what can we do as wine marketers to meet the contemporary challenges of the market. Let’s take a quick revisit to the basics of consumer packaged goods marketing (I’ll try not to be too wonky) by first asking the following questions:

• Who are the buyers?
• How much will the buyers pay for my wine?
• Where and how will the buyers purchase my wine?
• How do I create buying situations?
• Is the customer happy after purchasing my wine?

Marketing 101 Revisited

• Product - the want satisfying offering of your winery (branding, packaging, product features)
• Price – what you charge for your wines. Price is a measure of value. Price in the marketplace is a rough measure of how your consumers value your wines
• Promotion – the communication of information between your winery (the seller) and the potential buyer in a defined channel (Place) that tends to influence attitudes and behavior
• Place – making goods and services available in the right quantities and locations when your customers want them, resulting in the transfer of ownership from producer (your winery) to your customer/client, taking into account strategies and tactics applicable to any middlemen, brokers, marketing agents, wholesalers and retailers

Today most wineries are micro marketers. Even wineries in the WBM Top 30 approach the market on a segmented basis. Micro marketing is the ‘performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization’s (your winery) objectives (selling your wine on a timely basis) by anticipating customer or client needs (marketing research) and directing a flow of need satisfying goods (your wines) from producer (you) to customers/clients’ (via DTC, DTT, broad market).

It is important to understand that we are no longer in a wants period of aspirational or conspicuous consumption, but in period of meeting the specific identifiable needs of your targeted audience. Without entering the maze of Abraham Mazlow’s ‘hierarchy of human needs,’ here are the basic definitions of wants and needs and demands:

• Wants - desires for specific satisfiers of deeper needs; i.e., the particular choices (including types of products/specific brands) that consumers aspire to buy to satisfy perceived needs.
• Needs – a state of felt or real depravation of some basic satisfaction (the difference between a consumers actual condition and their desired condition).
• Demands – wants for specific products that are backed by an ability and willingness to pay for them.

So, as wine marketers it is important to understand that we don’t create needs. Needs preexist marketers and their brands. A marketers function is to influence wants. A good marketer takes the initiative in stimulating and facilitating commerce. A key part of this function is understanding the market and your consumer. So, how can one identify the best possible markets, and then influence consumer purchasing behavior? Engage your marketing research resources and ask:

• Who are the people with identified wants?
• Where are these people?
• What’s their purchasing power?
• What’s their buying behavior?

Having asked and answered the above questions, what degree of market exposure do you want, or more importantly can support with your production, allocations and resources, human and capital?

• Intensive (ubiquitous distribution for large production, enterprise wine companies)
• Selective (by channel for mid-sized winecos, or for products within an enterprise winco where price dictates targeted distribution)
• Exclusive (small- family winecos with limited channel distribution, or luxury brands model)

Having now identified your market and your desired level of targeted distribution, what sort of consumer behavior response do you want to engender – routinized response behavior or adoptive response behavior?

Routinized Response Behavior – the regular selection of a particular way of satisfying a need. This is typical of low involvement purchases, generics or purchases motivated by price or perception of price.

Adoptive Response Behavior – the demand for a specific product that meets, on a regular basis, the hierarchy of needs of a buyer, and the continued ability to purchase your wine(s). This is typical of high involvement purchases, usually of products (wines) within a consumer’s brand set.

As a marketer, if you plan to sell your wines in a saturated market based only on price, in essence creating a commodity and not a brand, in what has to be by nature a rapid depletion exit strategy, then the idea of routinized response behavior is the way to go, and pricing and display allowances will be your primary marketing tactics. However, if you want to build a brand even in this challenging market, then engage in marketing tactics that create adoptive response behavior within your identified consumer set.

Wine Consumer Adoption Process

Awareness – comes to know your wine(s) through your brand awareness plan that may include category specific magazine reviews, scores, story placement, newspapers, blogs, forums, and social media.

Interest – the ease of finding information on your web site, forums, blogs and traditional wine press. Events like Twitter Taste Live, open that Bottle Night or Tweet-ups.

Evaluations – providing information and access to your wine. In addition to the traditional wine press new points of information such as Cellar Tracker, AbleGrape, and approximately 800 wine bloggers are a resource that you need to identify and utilize.

Trial – the chance to try before committing. Wine by the Glass, in-store sampling, winery tasting rooms, winemaker dinners.

Decision – to adopt or reject. A whole set of modifiers come into play, such as varietal, pricing, packaging, where and when available to purchase.

Confirmation – the reinforcement that the decision is good. This can be in the form of availability or rarity, appealing to cultural values (sustainable or biodynamic wines), based on acclaim, reviews or a wine blog, or on the affirmation from friends or family.

The Game

Without a thorough grounding in classic CPG marketing fundamentals and a clear understanding of wine brand marketing concerning human motivations in regards to purchasing behaviors, success in today’s highly competitive and product saturated marketplace is not likely for your winery. This somewhat academic take, a departure from my usual ‘how-to’ articles was written to encourage you, your winery’s marketing officer, to think about your current brand plan. Concerning your brand – what is it that you do and why do you do it? Is it working? What would you do differently? What are you doing to differentiate your wines? It’s not a time for indecision in your consumer facing wine business. Faced with declining sales in his collection line Michael Kors quickly introduced a consumer approachable ready to wear line and is thriving in a brutal retail market. Yes, times are tough, and consumer behavior has been reset, but commerce moves on. It is important to be in the game, so sharpen your pencils and fire up your synapses. Preparation and planning = performance.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Does your winery have an effective OND plan?

“Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.”
… Dave Barry

The End of Innocence

Now that, according to Chairman Bernanke, we’re at the end of the recessionary crisis, don’t you feel like you’ve been a passenger on Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train,’ and at the end of the ride Axl Rose is welcoming you to the jungle. Well, if one’s to believe all the press, it has been a jungle out there. Consumer behavior has been difficult to predict, as trends in recent spending patterns have only now begun to make sense. Consumer credit card debt has been significantly reduced, and there’s been a concomitant raise in the rate of savings from less than 1% of income to more than 5% resulting in a noticeable drop in consumer spending. An example of the nationwide impact on dining-out is demonstrated in today’s Zagat Survey PR release ‘SF Bay Area Diners Adjust Habits in Response to Slow Economy.’ Wine sales and wine values as a result have been flat in the latest rolling 52 weeks report. Questions still remain as to the nature of any long term shifts in behavior, and if or when there will be a return to what was viewed as normal. Some of the analysis, even by those who’s insights we’ve come to value, of the situation have been somewhat myopic. Several of the changes in wine sales and marketing that we are now experiencing are fundamental structural shifts that were both exacerbated and accelerated by the recent hard times. There has been for some time a move from traditional white table cloth dinning to a more casual dinning environment, even with the increased sophistication of American cuisine . Guest check averages grew faster than the rate of inflation as business diners supported restaurants in urban MSAs. On-premises experiences have evolved and will continue to do so. Business expense accounts have been reigned-in as T&E budgets are rationalized to revenues. While its seems surprising that entertaining at home has increased, Faith Popcorn was talking about nesting for aging boomers a decade ago The effect that Chuck Williams, Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, Alice Waters, et alia had on the American domestic cook has now made home dining chic. The shift in sales channels for premium and artisan wines from on-sale to off-sale, while well documented, has been a shift that’s been occurring for some time. A change that in part has been driven by frequently changing (desktop publishing) and more focused wine lists, and a vibrant off sale market driven by groceries, chains, club stores and innovative independents.

Let’s Get it Started

It’s the last week in September marking the 1/3 point of the ’09 Crush. Now that some if not most of the Pinot and many of the white varietals are in-house, the seasonal harvest temperatures are starting to climb towards triple digits bringing smiles to the faces of vintners and growers throughout wine country. Most every year it’s a time of optimism, especially after what’s this year been referred to as an optimal growing season. Everybody at the winery seems busy in the pursuit of a zen-like perfection. Crews hovering over sorting tables that are now commonplace as all hands are on deck insuring that only optimal fruit makes it into the wine that you’ll be drinking in one to two years. Even if the hours are long and days-off are rare, it’s a vibrant time with midnight picking schedules, large farmer’s breakfasts, and plenty of beer at the end of the day. The economic panic of the last year, and the resulting decline in sales have been temporarily forgotten as all the physical and emotional energy is willingly put into the winemaking process . The intense process that is winemaking, as evidenced by the game faces displayed by winemakers, from Santa Barbara to Yakima and all the way to the North Fork of Long island, from the middle of August to the middle of December each year continues unabated until every lot is barreled down. The enthusiasm created by the annual wine grape harvest and the esprit de corps generated has often served as the launching vehicle for the important last quarter sales period. A period known within the beverage distribution industry as OND for the months of October, November and December.

Pump it Up

A late start to the upcoming holiday selling season has been forecasted by a number of beverage industry analysts. That may be the case, and we’ll all know soon enough. But hopefully, as the chief marketing officer your winery programing and promotions calendar is in place and ready to go on Thursday, October 1st. A reasoned look at the situation would seem to dictate that now is the time to get off your wallet and put on your seasonal game face. Differing sales channels will require unique tools structured to the idiosynchrocies of each. It will take innovative pricing structures to maximize your sales effort in Q4 of 2009. Christian Miller of Full Glass Research has shared that a recent survey of on-premises wine sales by the Wine Opinions Panel, revealed points of price sensitivity for list above $60/bottle, and $16/glass. So, depending on your resources it’s time to create programing for targeted restaurants accounts with this fact in mind. In addition to doing line-up tastings each working day at targeted restaurants, stick around for the early diners and offer an amuse bouches of a 1 oz pour of your listed or featured wine. As Chuck Willams said at the Maysonnave House this past week in Sonoma, ‘make the customer your friend.’ Also, spread your efforts across differing channels, hotels, catering, urban hot spots, large independents, ethnic cusine, entree specific and targeted lighthouse accounts. For off-sale, your POP materials, flow shelf talkers and back card should be pre-packed within the case. Provide high resolution, grabbable images on your winery web site for sell sheets, review talkers, labels bottle shots and tasting notes, etc. This will help to maximize ad placements and possible display activity. Discounting will be aggressive this OND, but you don’t have to compete with the big boys, be innovative in your tiered pricing, display allowances and use of coupons, including co-branding, non wine merchandise discounting, MIRs and occasional IRCs. Remember a basic rule in merchandising, hangers on 4-6 bottles, not on all 12 in a case. Oh, and Saturdays are great for in store tastings and/or bottle signings. If you’re relying on your tasting room and your wine club as your only DTC options, please consider the many other options available, such as third party wine clubs. This is a specific area in which sub-channel diversity will be the norm, but that’s not the case as yet. Assume the role this OND as a bleeding edge DTC leader.

Winter Song

I’ve been researching a series of articles written about the apparent market softness in the wine industry, and it seems that most of the noise is centered around the volumetric end of the business. As a small or mid-sized winery looking at flat as up, you can be much more innovative in your distribution strategy, and much more agile in the execution of your holiday marketing tactics. OND is your Crush time, so this selling season you should heed Warren Zevon’s words ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.’ The big boys aren’t sleeping at this time of year. Wineries in your competitive frame likely aren’t sleeping either. Go out there and shake a lot of hands, the hands of old and new friends. You can rest in January, at least for a few days.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Marketing by Pulling Corks

“No-one gets an iron-clad guarantee of success. Certainly, factors like opportunity, luck and timing are important. But the backbone of success is usually found in old-fashioned, basic concepts like hard work, determination, good planning and perseverance.”
… Mia Hamm

The Panic

This week marked the anniversary of the start of the panic of ’08-’09. After listening to the morning news shows rehash the events of the meltdown in the financial markets, I finally reached the point where I decided that the talking heads on the financial news networks had little or no idea that the system was and is badly broken. I took no solace in this moment of discovery. It nice to know where we’ve been, well ‘past is prologue,’ however an awareness that the financial panic that started one year ago with the demise of Lehman Brothers, and the failure of AIG has started to abate, provided a brief moment of pragmatic optimism. Almost no one in the United States has been untouched by the recession. Boomers experienced the rapid decline in the value of their 401k’s, X Gens saw their career aspirations flatten like unleavened bread and millennials experienced an evaporating job market. But, at this point in time, the bounce seems sustained. True, the stock market is just a forward indicator of economic recovery, and jobs tend to be a trailing indicator, but recovery is here albeit with a significant hangover. As anyone in the wine business knows, seasoned wine veterans and newbies alike, that the one channel most impacted by the panic has been the fine dinning segment. If your wine field brand marketing strategy is tied to the orthodoxy of conventional wisdom, then you’re now avoiding the on-premise restaurant channel in the same way that you’re avoiding friends and business associates unlucky enough to have contracted the H1N1 virus.

The Opportunity

Although it’s been anecdotally reported that there’s been a seismic segment shift away from wines on wine list selling for more than $100, sales above this apparent point of price sensitivity have indeed slowed but have not ceased. The quote that ‘stories of my death have been greatly exaggerated’ could have emanated from that bottle of 2005 Brunel les Cailloux Chateauneuf du Pape on the Bern’s Steak House wine list. There are a number of factors leading to reduced guest check averages, some related to the general economic morass, and some related to long term trends. For example, when was the last time that you had tableside service with rechaud prepared Steak Diane. I hear this is actually making a comeback…what old is new, again. And diminished sales efforts in the on-premise channel or tactics that include reallocating winery resources leading to channel specific abandonment seems to be mistimed. The on-premise channel is a complex mix of evolving differing business models that tend to adapt to the needs and wants of their intended consumer audiences. The restaurant business is a dynamic business with a significant rate of failure, but also meaningful rewards to the successful. It is a business that requires significant resources, both human and capital. The food service segment includes many different models including theme parks, hotels, institutional, educational, catering, stadium, white table cloth, family, casual, bistro, wine bar, sports bar,gastropubs, ethnic cuisine – Greek, Italian, Mexican, Thai, New American, Californian, Pacific Rim, entree specific as in Burger Bars, Fish and/or Steak House, et al. Restaurants may be part of a multi-unit enterprise or chain group, or may be single unit independents. It seems based on activity at retail, a visual survey of grocery/supermarket shelves and Club Stores that there’s been a rush to off-premise as the on premise market becomes more difficult and saturated. Many winecos based their distribution models on either a straight DTC model – for example: Goosecross, or Screaming Eagle – or a dual model of DTC and limited market on-premise sales. Two prime examples of this model are Cakebread and Duckhorn. With the recent sale of the Duckhorn Wine Company to the private investment management firm GI Partners, distribution has recently been expanded into multiple sales channels.

The Process

As more of your competitors rethink their single track broad market strategy, and as a result move resources away from food service, be aware that opportunity awaits your wine brand(s). To take advantage of the various opportunities, specific targets must be identified, qualified and developed. The wine business is still a handshake business, and nowhere is this truer than in the on-premise channel. And nowhere in the wine universe is the business being professionalized more than in the restaurant arena. And this is good thing. But, it means that you also have to raise your game by identifying, targeting qualifying, presenting and closing. The days of the cold call are over. For example a past market sales day with Churchill Distributors in Baltimore, where the sales manager arranged for my work-with to be with a district manager. Twelve lighthouse restaurant accounts were on the call sheet, none of which were doing business at the time with Churchill. One by one each restaurant put Mirassou on the list or on a wine by the glass program. Although we only sold 36 cases that day, 12 new A on-premise accounts were opened for Churchill and Mirassou, and then as a result Mirassou Vineyards was the talk of the halls in suburban Baltimore for quite some time. But from that day forward I planned all of my calls in advance of a visit to the market. Here is an example from a memo written several years ago to the sales manager for my winery at the time (for illustration only):

“Thanks for your call today re. market work schedules. Please note the following: I need and want to be in the market, but on a planned basis, and with the following goals in mind:”

“National Accounts — i.e.: Mortons; Palm; PF Changs; Roy’s; Red Lobster; Daily Grill; California Cafes-Napa Valley Grill; Olives; B.R. Guest; Ritz Carlton; Starwood; Four Seasons; Hyatt; Sams; Costco

Regional Accounts — i.e.: Capitol Grille; Legal Seafoods; Clyde’s Group (Clyde’s; 1789); Disney World(CA Grill; Flying Fish); ABC Liquors; Specs; Richards; Majestic/Red Coleman’s; Seigels; Bev Mo; Cost Plus;  Red Carpet; Beltramo’s; K&L; Applejacks; Total Wine; Marty’s; Yankee; Esquin, Dorn’s; etc.

Independent, Wine Steward, or Natural Foods Grocery –i.e.: Dean & Deluca; Oakville Grocery; Oliver’s; Molly Stones; Whole Foods; Trader Joe’s; Fresh Fields; Treasure Island; Harris Teeter; Larry’s; QFC; Fred Meyer

Local Market Makers — i.e.: Top 10 chef driven, American cusine destination key accounts in the following markets: Boston (Olives; Mistral; 75 Chestnut; Aujourd’hui; Jasper White’s, 29 Newbury); New York (Tribeca Grill; Verbena; Blue Ribbon; Gramercy Tavern; Thalia; American Place; Mesa Grill): NJ (Park&Orchard; Bernards Inn; Ryland’s Inn; The Dinning Room) D.C. (Citronelle,Vidalia; Nora’s; Kinkeads; Sam & Harry’s; Sonoma; Sequoia; The Inn @ Little Washington); Atlanta (Bacchanalia; Buckhead Dinner (Buckhead Life Group); Restaurant Eugene); Miami (Chef Allen’s; Mark’s Place);  Orlando (Roy’s, Emril’s; Dexter’s; Maison et Jardin; Le Coq au Vin; Authur’s 27 — Disney — Flying Fish; Victoria & Alberts; California Grill); Tampa(Restaurant BT Bern’s; Side Bern’s; Mise en Place; Michael’s on East; Colony Resort; South Seas Plantation; Ritz Carlton Naples); Chicago (Charlie Trotter’s; Shaw’s; Gibson’s; Bob Chinn’s); New Orleans (Emril’s, Nola; Bayona; Brennen’s; Brigtsen’s) Houston (Rainbow Lodge; Sierra Grill; ; River Oaks Grill; Cafe Annie; Greenbriar Chophouse); Dallas ( Chaparal Club; Nick & Sam’s; The Green Room; The Riviera; Maguire’s; Papas Bros Steak House; ); Austin (Eastside Cafe; Star Canyon; Central Market); Denver (Bravo; Trios Enoteca; Kevin Taylor’s) Phoenix (The Phoenician; Bistro 24; Mastro’s; Wright’s; Rancho Pinot Grill); San Diego (Greystone; Rainwater on Kettner; The Fish Market; Donavan’s); LA (Mr. Stox; Michael’s; Grace; Saddle Peak Lodge; Lawry’s; One Pico; Providence; Tantra; Grill on the Alley); San Francisco (Boulevard; Gary Danko; Town Hall; Spruce; Quince; Aqua; Zuni Cafe;  –wine country —  zazu; Sassafras; Cyrus; Dry Creek Kitchen; Lark Creek; AKA Bistro; Bouchon; Bistro Jeanty; Cook; Go Fish; Mustards); Portland (Wildwood; Higgin’s; Heathman; Bluehour; Park Kitchen) Seattle (Ray’s Boathouse; Rover’s; Palace Kitchen; Wild Ginger; McCormick & Schmick’s; Metropolitan Grill)”

“The above short list of accounts is for bracketing purposes only, and meant to be illustrative of the type of account in which I should be utilized. Other markets adjacent to the listed markets are important, such as NJ-Philadelphia; D.C.- Baltimore-NVA; CA-NV; Chicago-MSP, Denver-Ski-Country and work in key adjacent markets can be planned at the same time as Key Market work.”

As a believer in a multi-channel sales and distribution strategy, with an emphasis on-premises, it seems obvious that planning beats out the old traditional flying by the seat of your pants marketing methods. As a focused wine business it is suggested that you develop a by market, by account target list appropriate to your price points and product mix. Understand that you don’t need to be everywhere, but you should target everywhere that counts. There are approximately 20 markets in the United States that will deliver the majority of even an enterprise wine company’s planned broad market sales targets. This is a cut of a targeted account list developed some time ago for the Colorado Market. For each geographic area of distribution (i.e., Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, Twin Cities, Chicago, Boston New York, etc.) you should develop a list of targeted accounts for each probable point of distribution utilizing your current CRM tool. List the Account name. Address, Gatekeeper, Contact #, Contact e-mail, Cuisine Type, Targeted Placement, Achieved Placement. Success can not be achieved without planning and execution.

ACCOUNT NAME	ADDRESS	City	STATE	Zip Code	PHONE #	CONTACT PERSON	CUSINE
Brook’s	6538 S. Yosemite Circle	Greenwood Village	CO	80111	303-770-1177		Steakhouse
Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak	8100 E. Orchard Road	Greenwood Village	CO	80111	303-796-0100		Steakhouse
California Café Bar & Grill	8505 Park Meadows Center Zdrive	Littleton	CO	80124	303-649-1111		Regional American
Kevin Taylor	Hotel Teatro, 1106 14th St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-820-2600		New American
Marlowe’s	501 16th St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-595-3700		Regional American
Palace Arms	The Brown Palace Hotel, 321 17th St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-297-3111		Continental
Ruth’s Chris Steak House	1445 Market St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-446-2233		Steakhouse
The Broker Restaurant	821 17th St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-292-5065		Steakhouse
The Palm	Westin Hotel, 1672 Lawrence St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-825-7256		Steakhouse
Trios Enoteca	1730 Wynkoop St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-293-2877		New American
Vesta Dipping Grill	1822 Blake St.	Denver	CO	80202	303-296-1970		Eclectic
Watercourse Foods	206 E. 13th Ave.	Denver	CO	80203	303-832-7313		New Age Vegetarian
Barolo Grill	3030 E. Sixth St.	Denver	CO	80206	303-393-1040		Northern Italian
Fourth Story Restaurant & Bar	2955 E. First Ave.	Denver	CO	80206	303-322-1824		New American
Manhattan Grill	231 Milwaukee St.	Denver	CO	80206	303-333-6444		Steakhouse
Mel’s Bar & Grill	235 Filmore St.	Denver	CO	80206	303-333-3979		New American
Michael’s of Cherry Creek	2710 E. Third Ave.	Denver	CO	80206	303-321-2324		New American
Papillon Café	250 josephine St.	Denver	CO	80206	303-333-7166		Modern French
Radex	100 E. Ninth Ave.	Denver	CO	80206	303-861-7999		New American
Highlands Garden Café	3927 W. 32nd Ave.	Denver	CO	80212	303-458-5920		New American
Beehive	606 Corona St.	Denver	CO	80218	303-832-5766		New American
Jax Fish House	1539 17th St.	Denver	CO	80218	303-292-5767		Seafood
Potager	1109 Ogden St.	Denver	CO	80218	303-832-5788		New American
Strings	1700 Humbolt St.	Denver	CO	80218	303-831-7310		New American
Roy’s	Cherry Creek Center, 3000 E. First Ave.	Denver	CO	80220	303-333-9300		Pacific Rim
Rue Cler	5575 E. Third Ave.	Denver	CO	80220	303-355-3775		Eclectic
Sacre Bleu	410 E. Seventh St.	Denver	CO	80220	303-832-6614		New American
Tante Louise	4900 E. Colfax Ave.	Denver	CO	80220	303-355-4488		Modern French
240 Union	240 Union Blvd.	Lakewood	CO	80228	303-989-3562		New American
Boulder Cork	3295 30th St.	Boulder	CO	80301	303-443-9505		American
Dandelion	1011 Walnut St.	Boulder	CO	80302	303-443-6700		New American
Dolan’s	2319 Arapahoe	Boulder	CO	80302	303-444-8758		Seafood
Flagstaff House Restaurant	1138 Flagstaff Road	Boulder	CO	80302	303-442-4640		American/French
Q’s Restaurant	Hotel Boulderado, 2115 13th St.	Boulder	CO	80302	303-442-4880		New American
The Greenbriar Inn	8735 N. Foothills Hwy.	Boulder	CO	80302	303-440-7979		American
Trios Grille & Wine Bar	1155 Canyon Blvd.	Boulder	CO	80302	303-442-8400		New America

The Plan – Marketing by Pulling Corks

While nothing beats the hands-on market knowledge gained from spending significant time on the streets, pulling corks and sampling gatekeepers at the best lighthouse restaurant accounts, significant low cost resources exist for identifying targeted restaurants within your winery’s areas of distribution. Wine & Spirits Magazine has published the results of its Restaurant Poll for 20 years. The Wine Spectator publishes the world wide results for the best restaurant wine lists annually. Zagat list the best wine restaurants by metropolitan area in the USA market. Restaurants & Institutions Magazine has just published the annual list of the 400 largest chain restaurants, and the 100 largest single unit independents by $ volume. If it’s within your brand marketing plan to generate national account on-premise business, I would suggest purchasing the Chain Store Guide. Once you’ve established a functional targeted list put approximately 65% of your broad market resources, time and energy into securing on-premises account placements by:

- Qualifying accounts according to needs and wants
- Planning your visits focused on the goal of a specific placement
- Communicate key points of differentiation and value
- Pull Corks
- Taste
- Secure WBTG or Wine Listing
- Close

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Wine Brand Building Focus

“The older I get, the more I see a straight path where I want to go. If you’re going to hunt elephants, don’t get off the trail for a rabbit.” … T. Boone Pickens

The Conversation

A significant portion of my current business life is involved in managing the art of conversation. I’m often talking with someone that a casual reader of the Wine Spectator or the Wine Enthusiast might consider a star in the world of wine. I don’t see this as interactions with celebrities du vin, but tend to view them as talks with friends, colleagues and/or possible business associates. These conversations often take the form of a verbal dance with the initiating party trying to elicit at no cost a magic bullet that will help their business, and I’m trying to extract what I call the ‘essential truths.’ One of my clients referred to this process as ‘dancing with the stars.’ The stars in this case are the workable ideas and probable solutions that are sometimes extracted in this dance process. It is likely that if these conversations were to be viewed by an uninterested third party, they would possibly be seen as some sort of Dos Passosian stream of consciousness dialog exercise at the Actors Studio. But, in fact, these oral exchanges of ideas are neither arcane nor obtuse but a defined process that has long been codified in the halls of serious business. Go back to those late night college ‘bull sessions,’ but add two decades of experience and an identifiable targeted outcome, and you’ll get the idea.

I’m not the contact at the top of most wineries CRM vendor contact lists. I’m the person that’s often called a little late to the party. Called to the party after the steam has gone out of the celebration, and the party is headed south. I’m not the expert, I’m listed after the expert. By the way, a wine business contact had a great comment in regards to ‘experts:’ “If someone tells you that they’re an expert, run the other way.” I’m the person who has gone through several business cycles. The ups, downs and the exigencies inherent in our complex and brand saturated corner of the greater CPG universe. My current conversations seem to reflect these difficult times. Often it’s about a decline in general revenues or net contribution, that’s most often attributable to increased discounting and or promotional expenditures necessitated by a soft market or aggressive competition. But becoming more common are conversations relating to a specific line item. And this is usually about a line item that was previously in balance with market demand, but production was dramatically increased on an aspirational or preferential whim. In the recent, but now past, halcyon days of conspicuous consumption, this ersatz strategy often worked, but those days are now a vague memory. This all too common wine business story never conformed to Consumer Packaged Goods marketing best practices, and has resulted to a lake of unconsumed wines. What? You hadn’t noticed. Well, vintages are starting to back-up, and your winery’s SIP (sales, inventory, production) report is starting to read like the fiction of Bernie Madoff’s trade confirmations. And, well like it or not, this is the lake in which we all now all find ourselves. There are obvious steps that can be taken, such as the movement of unbottled wine to bulk sales, consideration of significantly reduced FOB sales to developing markets such as China, a reduction in the amount of wine produced in the near term, lowering domestic FOB prices and increasing promotional spend, diversifying distribution channels or calling Paul Mabray at VinTank for help in focusing on effective DTC initiatives. But, the real challenge in this broad marketplace, one not only figuratively but literally flooded with wine choices, is how to create and maintain a viable wine brand given the realities of today’s economy or the new outlook for a reshaped business world. Sound business decisions are based on good market intelligence and not on whim. The attributes of passion and vision can be the fuel to start a business, but a sound, flexible business plan is the basis for ongoing viability.

A Brief Wine Marketing Focus Case Study

Most large wineries have highly diversified product portfolios, but a few of the largest built a foundation over time by focusing on a specific niche or even a single varietal. In 1982 San Francisco based land use attorney and part time Lake County grape grower Jess Jackson found that his long time Chardonnay buyer Fetzer Vineyards had no need for his grapes. The US economy had been in decline since the 1979 energy crisis, and a significant drop in real estate values driven by a banking crisis in the saving & loan sector hit home in this time frame. Interest rates topped out at 22% driving down the value of the dollar and making imports cheeper than ever. On top of that the 1982 California wine grape crop came in at record levels, creating an instant oversupply. Jess had no home for his grapes. Lake County based winemaker Jed Steele was contracted to make 2,000 cases of Chardonnay, but there were problems and the fermentation was stuck at .5% RS. Jess liked the wine and decided to sell it. The Chardonnay market was small at the time. Most consumers had little experience with California Chardonnay, but Jess felt that he could sell the 2,000 cases and recoup his cost. He came up with the name Chateau du Lac, but found little interest with his presell efforts, Wine Marketer Dennis Canning was brought on board and decided to use the last names of Jess and his then wife, ergo Kendall-Jackson. In a stroke of marketing kismet the modifier ‘Vintner’s Reserve’, was added to the label. Dennis & Jess took the now labeled Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay to the market, store by store, restaurant by restaurant and quickly sold the 2,000 cases. Jess was now in the wine business selling Chardonnay. By 1987 the winery was selling 57,000 cases of Chardonnay  and Kendall Jackson was named the Wine & Spirits magazine Winery of the Year. By 1992 Kendall Jackson now one of Americas largest and most successful wine companies, sold more than one million cases of Chardonnay. The focus from the beginning was Chardonnay, and it remains the core of the current K-J driving acquisitions, growth, capital improvements line and brand expansions that were made possible by this laser-like focus on Chardonnay. This is a story that was preceded in time by Trinchero Family Estates basing it’s success on White Zinfandel, and Ridge, Ravenswood and Rosenblum’s focus on Zinfandel. Silver Oak set the mark with a focus on Cabernet Sauvignon, Dehlinger with Pinot Noir, Zaca Mesa with Syrah, ad infinitum. Focus works.

Order out of Chaos

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” … Bill Cosby

Based on a significant number of wine business conversations over the last three months, permit me to suggest some topics for you to consider for your next management meeting. Some very difficult decisions likely have to be made by you and your team, now. These are decisions that will perhaps determine the long term viability of you wine business. It’s not the time to waffle. If you have to take a financial hit, take it now, and then stop the bleeding. First, a plan to move excess inventory should be developed and enacted. The wine business is now primarily a push market. The pull market that may have previously driven your brand no longer exists. General discount strategies employed by major regional and national retailers have put a semi-permanent kink in the idea of wine pricing elasticity, and removed the wine consumer’s sense of urgency in purchasing your brand now that every wine is on discount. Rethink your entire strategy. Rethink your varietal line-up. Understand the uniqueness of each channel. And don’t harbor the expectation that the broad market will absorb product from your softening DTC sales. And, look at what you do best. If you make really good Pinot Noir do you really need to make that Syrah? Build your brand strategy around a point of focus. Spend time in maximizing your brand reputation and sales around this varietal, and if you have the drive maybe, just maybe, you can be a financially successful wine business.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Dispatches from Wine Country

The Blessing of the Grapes

“God is in the details.” … Ludwig Miles van der Rohe

It’s late August in Northern California wine country, and the annual wine grape harvest has once again started. At most wineries in North America it’s long shifts and no days-off time for the next several months, as full attention to the details of wine production are the primary focus of each winemaking team. In spite of all the inevitable hard work ahead, the first load of wine grapes is always met with anticipation, and the arrival of the first bins are often celebrated by the staffs at the various winery. It’s a ritual that likely goes back to the historical agricultural origins of grape growing and winemaking in recognition of the cycles of nature, and the task of hand crafting what was once just sunlight on new plant growth into a wine that one day will be opened in celebration of some special moment in time. This past Tuesday, August 18th I had the opportunity to witness the ‘Blessing of the Grapes’ at Schramsberg Vineyards. The first load of Pinot Noir from the Napa/Carneros based Richburg Vineyard was pristine. Small berries on small clusters of deeply colored fruit on bright green, yet to lignify, stems. Based on the early returns, 2009 looks like a spectacular vintage, at least for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. As a bonus I had the opportunity to meet iconic National Geographic and now famed wine country photographer Charles O’Rear, who’s work I’ve long admired. I also had the chance to meet Samantha Brown who was filming segments for her Travel Channel show. More importantly I got to meet and talk to Hugh Davies, his wife Monique and their childern, a few of the Schramsberg board members and a proud grandfather. This ceremony wasn’t just a celebration of Crush, but it was about heritage, continuity, and being a member of a wine making family. It was a seminal bonding experience for family, staff and crew. While Schramsberg Vineyards PR & Marketing Manager Matt Levy had the press bases covered, this was not a publicity event, but a timeless ceremony that for me reconfirmed Ben Franklin’s pantheistic beliefs that nature is god.

***

Boot Scooting BBQ

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel, a boutique,
And a swinging hot spot.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”   …. Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

With the smells of wine harvest filling the air in the flatlands and hillsides in the Napa Valley, and rising seasonal temperatures in what the locals refer to as Crush weather, it was time for the annual Land Trust of Napa County fundraiser. The great thing about attending a non-profit fundraiser in wine country is that you know that the wine and food are going to be something special, and the ‘Boot Scooting BBQ’ at the Scully Ranch on Mt. Veeder didn’t disappoint. The Land Trust of Napa County, like all non-profits in these challenging economic times is facing a funding crisis, and this event was an effort to refill their depleted coffers. The LTNC is permanently protecting more than 55,000 acres of agricultural and open space lands throughout Napa County. More acreage than currently planted to wine grapes. Protecting the natural lands, scenic and open spaces and the agricultural heritage benefits all the inhabitants of wine country – residents, visitors, businesses and wildlife alike. And through fundraisers, like the Saturday event at Scully Ranch, will continue to do so for future generations. Thanks to organizations like the Land Trust of Napa County, they haven’t ‘paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.’ BTW: The perfect smoked traditional Texas BBQ from world BBQ champion chef Ray Green was a smash hit. And my table rediscovered a fondness for Saintsbury’s Carneros Chardonnay and Carneros Garnett Pinot Noir, both the right weight and style for a warm evening and full plates of Ray Green’s BBQ. All of the volunteers worked so hard, and deserve a hand-up. So if you live here, visit here or sell wine from this area of the world, click on this link and send in a few bucks. It’s needed, it will be appreciated, and it will help to continue the preservation of this special corner of the wine world.

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So You Want to be a Wine Marketer?

“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.” … Walt Disney

One of the attributes that I always look for in someone who tells me that they’re a wine marketeer or that they want to be a wine marketer is an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Oh, not just being a wine geek. Truthfully, that’s not going to cut-it in these hyper competitive times. You really have to have an unrelenting curiosity about life, about culture, and about others. When I used to move around a lot a skill that I developed, one that has served me well in my career in wine marketing, is what they call in the armed services ‘living on the economy.’ This basically means immersing yourself wholeheartedly and without reservation in the circumstance of the culture in which you live. It’s dropping your fears and embracing life. It means reading newspapers, magazines, books, news feeds, and not just wine industry based materials. It means listening to music, seeing plays and movies, engaging and talking to people of all ages. Well, basically living life, but paying attention while you do. Really good actors are able to observe those around them in their daily lives for cues on perhaps a current or future performance. This is a necessary skill for any good marketer. Years ago while making a sales call at Duck Blind Liquors on Montana in Santa Monica, I noticed a small, unshaven and rather unkempt man intently watching me as I made my pitch to the store owner. Thinking that the man wanted to make a purchase I offered to step aside to facilitate a possible sale. The man demurred and said that he was writing something, and was just imagining a scene. After the man left, the store owner identified the customer as playwright David Mamet, who was drawing information from the encounter. Well, as wine marketers we should always be doing the same thing. Informing ourselves about the circumstances of our culture. Here are a few articles and links that I felt informed me as to what’s transpiring out there in the greater universe which will now tend to help shape my future marketing decisions.

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Please note that although the following links have good useable information, a few may require free registration or may time-out after being up for seven days:

‘Word-of-Mouth Gains Volume’ article from Brandweek re. contrary to other ad categories increased WOM ad spend

Better wines in groceries due to fine dinning slowdown now followed by availability of prime beef (may require free registration)

Timely WSJ article ‘The New, Faster Face of InnovationThanks to technology, change has never been so easy—or so cheap’

Interesting must read on ‘Wine and Global Warming: An Open Letter to the President’ (via environmental attorney, Charles Becker)

An article from Restaurants & Institution ‘Social-Media Marketing for Restaurants: 10 Tips’ – can apply to wineries

Interesting article re anonymity of food critics

A good read re. ‘New Orleans’ Chefs remembering Julia Child’ in context of Julie & Julia movie  BTW: Loved the movie!

Be involved and be aware. You never know when or where you’ll find that next big idea. Be inquisitive. Ask Questions, and then sit back and listen to the answers. Stay intellectually curious. It’s the engine that drives the effective, creative wine marketer. And that’s you, right? The innovative, creative, effective wine marketer?

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Think Different

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” … according to Apple legend, written by Steve Jobs

The News

No doubt that there’s been little in the way of positive news in print, on radio or via telemedia in the last 18 months. If we were to give credence to all the naysayers, then I’m thinking that we would all be building underground bunkers in our backyards. But clearly that’s not the case. In fact a few of my friends with large holes behind their homes insist that’s just for their new pools. Umm hun! I just ran into a friend at the local 7-11. He was buying a couple of quick pick Lotto tickets, and after the purchase he held them up and said, ‘this is my new 401 K. Yikes! And he’s the CEO of a very successful wine business. Well here’s how the eyes of a ‘seasoned wine veteran’ see this world in these transformative times.

Sign of the Times

Yes, the times and consumer behaviors have indeed changed. Millennials seem to be still experimenting with their beverage choices, and have recently migrated back to gastropubs and craft beers, and are driving a movement to more casual dinning. Boomers have seen a tsunami-like movement in their retirement account charts, a devaluation of their housing assets, and a lowering of their credit lines, and as a result their rate of savings has increased from less than 1% to more than 5% of income. Credit card debt is being retired at record rates, and credit use has declined significantly. Eating-in has become the new cool, as white table cloth restaurant rethink their formulas and presentations. Businesses are enacting what my UK friends refer to as redundancies and T&E budgets have been slashed, all impacting the sale of wines above $50. So, just what are you the winery’s chief marketing officer to do? Actually, all is not lost. Yes, the economic thermostat has been reset. Reset to perhaps a more realistic temperature. The case for the return of the great depression has been somewhat overstated as we focus on the greed and hubris of the worst in the financial marketplace. The rebound seems to have started even as we assess our individual spending behaviors.

Today’s conspicuous consumption may be met with significant societal approbation, but perhaps there is identifiable pent-up demand in the marketplace. Some signs point to this. Even though the restaurant segment of the fine wine market has been in decline in this period, data seems to support the continued consumption of fine wines, albeit at home with wine purchased in a local wine store or where legal in a grocery, at price points obviously lower than wine list pricing. Smart sommeliers are constructing more diversified lists with wines from lesser known varietals and/or regions, creating opportunity for new brands by engendering consumer exposure and trial. This idea of creating trial has been around for quite sometime. One of the primary tactics was to participate in wine tastings. But as the wine marketplace has become brand saturated and wine tastings have indeed become grand, what is the best way to now engage potential wine consumers, and to convert them to customers and then to be loyal clients. It’s time to rethink this experience, and to now, as Steve Jobs once compelled us, think different.

Open Your Eyes

Like the young girl at the end of the Apple ‘Think Different” television commercials, are you ready to open your eyes and see the possibilities, to lead and create change for your brand(s)? While there may be political motivation behind the participation of wineries in large tastings that attract crowds in the thousands, the question remains, ‘what’s in it for your winery.’ In these challenging times, the need to imbue your events calendar with a healthy dose of pragmatism seems obvious, and the necessity to ask just this question – ‘what’s my desired outcome for my participation in this event?’ Awareness could be an answer, but is that possible at a tasting with hundreds of wineries multiplied by 3, 4 or more wines per table? Your interaction is minimized. Your ability to capture names rendered impractical by the crowds and short interaction intervals. And, if a consumer has difficulty remembering the name of that wine they had at La Toque in Napa for their anniversary while shopping just down the street at JV’s, do you expect them to remember your wine days later after a 30 second tasting? Marketing research tells us that the average wine consumer has a limited set of brands in their personal brand set, somewhere between 5-7 unique brands. More often than not this preference is overridden by merchandizing techniques within the store. So, Don Sebastiani or David Mirassou spending a Saturday standing in a store somewhere in America signing bottles from an end-cap display while talking to customers on a one-to-one basis, forming an emotional bond between vintner and end consumer, seems to be a more efficacious use of resources and time, then standing in a pavilion at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center with 250+ other wineries. Well, an end-cap display was sold into the store in advance of the tasting. Lift and velocity (increased sales/depletions) over normal shelf placement was achieved, leading to future display activity and perhaps additional shelf facings.

A Few Short Case Studies to Get You Thinking

Eric Sussman of Radio-Coteau has a rustic facility (think Aloxe-Corton 30 years ago) on the edge of Sebastopol, in the Green Valley not quite guest ready. Eric’s artisan production Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is limited, and more than 50% of this production is sold on a DTC basis. Like all wines with retails in the $50 range, broad market sales, while still strong, have at times required more of Eric’s presence in the market. Eric has a good understanding of creating and forming relationships with key lighthouse accounts in the broad market. And he has an understanding that large wine events are not a good use of his small wine company’s resources. In an effort to maintain his visibility and to grow his relationship with Four Seasons Hotels he elected to participate in the Four Season San Francisco’s Second Wine Maker Series. On August 4th, supported by a Facebook post, and an email blast to Radio-Coteau’s local mailing list members, the Radio-Coteau event turned out to be the most successful tasting in this summer’s series. The relationship with the Four Seasons was solidified, revenue was created for the account, and depletions were created for Radio-Coteau. As a side-note, executives from Facebook HQ saw the Facebook post and drove up from the Peninsula, and are now new R-C mailing list members.

Someone who’s mantra must be ‘think different’ is Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyards in Santa Cruz. Randall has been an innovator and an agent of change in the wine industry from day one. When I think of Randall, at least my first impression,  is his persona as wine’s philosopher king. He chose to make wine out of Rhone varietals, when only a few were and no real market existed for the wine. And then Reisling from the Pacific Northwest, when the category was shrinking. He valued his customers and refused to talk down to them by elevating the conversation while attracting a loyal set of passionate clients. Randall and Bonny Doon have had many iterations, and I’m not sure what version this is, but I know it seems to be working. By chance I sat at Randall’s table for the Hospice du Rhone Taste Live Event at Estate Sonoma, where he talked about the necessity for his increased presence in the market. I next saw Randall at the Wine Bloggers Conference pouring his wines and conducting one on one conversations with those that could replicate his message. Randall is on Twitter, and I follow his in-market travels. His communications are a masters class in wine marketing. He gets it and holds conversations in the ether and engages those of us in the wine trade in meaningful dialog. Randall’s micro-posts also happen to be literate and quite funny. Randall is renewing old friendships and winning fans and clients one at a time. What’s old is now new again.

“I want to put a ding in the universe!” … Steve Jobs

So you’re not Don, David, Eric or Randall, but if it was ever time in our wine business lives to be creative innovators that time is now. Jeff Stai of Twisted Oak has found a way. Lisa de Bruin of Hahn Family Wines has found a way. Chris Donatiello at C. Donatiello has found a way. David Simpson at the Mendocino Wine Company has found a way, and so have many other of our peers. Find your own example and then mirror them, or better yet use your innate talent and think of new ways to identify and capture customers through an insightful strategic analysis of your event strategy. Spend your human and capital resources wisely, and with specific expectations of a tangible return on the investment of your time. The rote way of marketing your wines, engaging in group think, or repeating activities because ‘we’ve always done it this way’ no longer seems to be effective. Make your mark. Think Different.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

CRUVEE Names Think Wine Marketing Founder to BOA

The Appointment

Having written and proposed the adoption of a number of available useful technological advances for wine business marketing departments seeking to optimize their efficacy, I have an announcement to make concerning my recent involvement with one new wine business technology company. On August 13, 2009 I accepted an appointment  to the Board of Advisors at Cruvee. In this past week, Cruvee.com CEO Evan Cover named Michael Wangbickler and John Corcoran, Think Wine Marketing Founder and Chief Marketing Officer to the Cruvee BOA. As a wine industry participant, I have been a tireless supporter of the wine industry’s adoption of technology under the mantras of  ’best practices’ and ‘utilize every tool available.’ I look forward to working with Evan, Michael and the BOA at Cruvee in an effort to increase the adoption of this timely and critical wine marketing intelligence platform.

As a note to new and regular readers

Also, having previously written about Social Media with occasional Cruvee mentions as part of the story line, I felt that I should update my readers regarding my new appointment to the Cruvee BOA. This seems important to me, and hopefully to you, the reader, within my personal ethos of transparency. Please also note that this is a quick post and that my regular weekly Think Piece article will be posted this Thursday Evening 8/20. So, stay tuned! The intent of any Think Piece post is an effort to create  a discussion revolving around identifiable current wine marketing issues. Your involvement and comments are a critical part of the process. This is meant to be a conversation and not a lecture. I’m gratified that to date I’ve received more than 250 comments in my first series of Think Pieces. Many of my post have been the result of ‘what-if’ questions from friends and contacts in the wine business, sometimes on the phone but often over a glass of wine, or possibly a local craft brew. Hopefully the content has been helpful to some, and of value to many, but that determination will be made by you, the reader. Please feel free to contact me by commenting on this blog, or please click on the blog contact page to call or email me directly. Looking forward to a robust discussion on the topics over the next  six months

The Cruvee PR Release

Pioneer in social media intelligence for the wine industry, announced today the appointment of two wine business experts to their Board of Advisors

08.13.2009 – Napa, CA, August 12, 2009 – Cruvee, the pioneer in social media intelligence for the wine industry, announced today the appointment of two wine business experts to their Board of Advisors (BOA) selected to assist and advise the company in strategic developments, marketing and outreach within the wine community.

Cruvee’s BOA will thoughtfully work to advance Cruvee as the leader in social media monitoring and information aggregation for all online conversations surrounding wine and wine brands. And in order to do so, Cruvee will look to these two recognized leaders and innovators in the wine industry to draw from their experience bolstering Cruvee’s mission and aspirations.

Founder and Chief Executive officer, Evan Cover, asserted, “It is an honor and absolute privilege to have these forward thinking wine business leaders as part of Cruvee. They bring so much passion and knowledge to our company that will undoubtedly aide in our success.”

The two initial appointees to the BOA are:

Michael Wangbickler is the Executive Director of the Academy of Wine Communications and currently holds the position of PR manager at Balzac Communications and Marketing in Napa, California. Prior to that he was at Franciscan Estates (part of Constellations Wines U.S.) where he was a wine educator/program specialist with responsibilities for trade relations and special events. His credentials include the Diploma in Wine & Spirits from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, Sommelier Certificate from the Court of Master Sommeliers, and is a Certified Wine Educator. He has been a judge for various wine competitions, and has taught courses on wine and wine marketing.

John Corcoran is the Owner & Chief Marketing Officer of Think Wine Marketing where he works to assist wine businesses maximize market awareness through market modeling, strategic planning, promotions and digital strategic initiatives. John has been in the wine industry for over 25 years focusing on marketing and sales. He is an active voice online through his blog and social media participation, extending his reach as a well-respected resource for insights into wine business.

Cruvee’s BOA will consists of four total members. They will be announcing two additional members comprised of thought leaders and veterans within the technology industry soon.

About Cruvee

Cruvee is a customer acquisition vehicle that is designed for wineries to connect with consumers through social media monitoring services. It aggregates all the conversations and tasting notes from around the web including:

• Over 19 Million blog posts with over 1,000 dedicated wine bloggers

• Over 15,000 forums – both wine related and non-wine related

• Over 3 million tweets a day

• 100’s of social networking sites and wine groups

• Major wine related tasting note sites

This tool helps to promote and protect a wineries brand by effectively monitoring, measuring and interpreting the online chatter, clutter and its inherent viral effect. They help their clients leverage this consumer-generated media as a competitive advantage in today’s online marketplace. Cruvee not only gives wineries a unique view of their brands public perception in near real-time, but they also enable wineries to engage consumers to continue brand loyalty and sales efforts.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.

Yes We Can

“The key to change… is to let go of fear” … Rosanne Cash

Change, Change, Change

Anyone who has lived through the last 3 years, has an awareness that in these transformative times fundamental social change has occurred. You were along for the ride whether you wanted to be or not. Oh, this isn’t the Woodstock Nation’s form of radical social change, or, even the Brown vs The Board of Education emotionally charged social change. In this current period symbols of change were not as visible. No long haired flower children in strange colorful clothes, no angry mobs, no Lester Maddox with his ax handle, and no burning streets. The agents of change fit-in as well as ‘The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit’ fit into his era. Most likely you woke up one day and saw that significant cultural change had occurred. Buried in the details of your daily existence, the greed and hubris of those that created the current economic conditions driving this period of change went largely unnoticed until the meltdown. The meltdown which hit as quickly and as surely as those planes hitting the TwinTowers on 9/11. And, as this was happening an evolution of just how it is we communicate concepts, ideas and beliefs rapidly evolved. Into the void stepped a political marketing machine whose brand plan was considered revolutionary, and was widely disregarded by most professional political pundits. It was an often repeated Sunday broadcast network news analysis that the candidate and his team using these new symbols and social media platforms had no idea what they were doing. And then came the Iowa Caucus. Without regard to your personal set of political beliefs, it seems to be obvious that you as a wine marketer should be studying the observable lessons of the Obama Presidential campaign marketing tactics and the campaign’s use of new media tools with the understanding that how we as wine MarCom managers now communicate and market brand has fundamentally changed.

A Short Case Study in Contemporary Brand Management

In any brand marketing campaign, the essence and essential truths of the brand must be distilled into a viable message. The message must be replicated and repeated through the use of images, words and symbols. Through the message a visceral connection must be made between the brand and the targeted audience for success to be achieved. In an effort to achieve this success, through effective marketing research, the campaign was able to identify a target audience based on demographics and attitudinal predisposition. A significant portion of this identified audience had a presence on social media. The Obama campaign was an early adopter/implementer of social media platforms. MySpace was dominant in the social media space at the beginning of the campaign, and so an Obama fan page was created, and interested individuals rushed to join the club. As Facebook and then Twitter gained traction, accounts were created to engage voters, and as the number of fans grew so did the channels for communication and a pool for fund raising was established. Individuals who contributed to the campaign were given an opt-in choice to receive important updates about the campaign and election. YouTube was also a major factor with numerous short videos featuring endorsements, narrative story lines and music like the Will.i. am. ‘Yes We Can’ video featuring the mantra of the ‘Change’ message for the campaign.The iconic Obama ‘HOPE’ poster was created by street artist Shepard Fairey, and became instantly recognized as the visual image of the campaign. Third party endorsements, utilizing the ideas of co-branding and borrowed interest, were achieved, with Oprah’s endorsement gaining worldwide press coverage for the Obama campaign. A masterful use of message, image, social media, endorsement and third party advocacy. There was significant push-back against this campaign, but the execution of an integrated brand management plan through the fidelity to the perceived authenticity of message, the engagement and involvement of the many, and a transparency of the process, insured the successful conclusion of stated goals. So, are you to going to mirror this model and move your brand(s) forward towards the adoption by your targeted audience resulting in purchase?

An Even Shorter Conclusion

As I stood in line at the local Safeway this morning the three customers ahead of me all paid by personal check, and I’m thinking ‘people still use checks?’ If you want to live on a cash basis, haven’t ATM cards been around all of our adult lives. This slow adoption of tools made available through technology, even in this technologically sophisticated area of the country, seems to be endemic in the marketing arena of the wine business. I’m not sure if this is ego, uncertainty, or fear of the unknown. But I am sure that those that are frozen by fear will likely not survive in these uncertain economic conditions, or have a chance of thriving in a turnaround. Given the vision allowed by the distance of time and with my apolitical marketing mind-set, I can see the clarity of vision of the Obama presidential campaign, and their effective use of all the current tools available to even wine marketers. Ones that are available for use without the necessity to build a war chest on the scale of a political campaign. Difficult times should light the fires of our creative marketing imaginations. At this time in history, we have to be thinking better, faster and cheaper. One of the key lessons to be learned is that ubiquity doesn’t trump authenticity. The basic idea that I’ve learned sometime in my marketing experience is that while political skills matter there are no magic bullets, or one size fits all solutions for today’s wine marketing challenges. But, identifying, targeting and engaging your consumer audience before, during and after the sale is essential, essential to conceiving and executing your winning wine marketing brand plan.

Note: Copyright © 2009 Think Wine Marketing® All rights reserved.