April 25 2007
Josh at Pinotblogger was kind enough to tag me with a conversation thread making its way around the blogosphere around the topic of “Why I blog.”
It’s simple enough, and restated the question is: ‘Why the hell do you write stuff (essentially) for free on the internet.’
I got the idea to start blogging in February of ’05 as I read Business 2.0 magazine pool side in Naples, FLA while on vacation with some friends and my wife. The article was about a 20 year old kid who wrote a cell phone blog and was making $5000 bucks a month and I thought, ‘I can do that.’
At the same time, I was writing a business plan for a wine retail shop.
Ultimately, the wine business plan was front and center for my free time as I legitimately tried to get it off the ground.
When I realized (actually it was pointed out to me) that if you rub two nickels together you still only have 10 cents and that I didn’t have the financial wherewithal to start a business that was inventory intensive and required, by law, payment to suppliers within 15 days, I started looking at alternative outlets for my wine passion.
I came back to the blogging thing as a way feed the beast, so to speak; a way to express my ideas.
At the point I wanted to finally start a blog (September of ’05) I wasn’t terribly in tune with the blogging services aside from Blogger.com and I wanted to have greater control over the site than what Blogger afforded so I got stuck in a tangle of open source content management software review and chose a program called Mambo. Mambo, at the same time and unfortunately for me, had the open source project forked by its development team and they went off to create Joomla.
At the same time I couldn’t get the damn Mambo install to work and documentation was scarce. Nor, in fact, could a buddy of mine who is an administrator for a large-scale content management solution get it to work, either.
Having burned at least four months monkeying around with Mambo, I finally scrapped it for a TypePad account figuring that the most important thing was to just get started--which I did, finally, in January of ’06.
That’s the backstory to how I started blogging, but the real question is, ‘why do you blog?’
I blog because I have a tremendous passion for wine, it’s my #1 hobby, and I also have a lot of creative energy that needs an outlet. I can’t draw or do anything artistic even though I feel like I have an artistic sensibility. But, I can write a little bit. I had neglected this outlet for 10 years, not realizing that I needed to express myself creatively in some form. If I didn’t blog, I would probably start writing a book. It’s cathartic to me and a stress reliever to take ideas and put them together in ways that maybe haven’t been put together before.
I think it might be cliché to say so, but for me it’s the process of writing, it’s not the result. I don’t do it with any motives other than self-satisfaction.
My blogging is completely narcissistic and self-indulgent.
I really didn’t have any traffic at all for the first couple of months and if you check out some of my posts from early on you’ll see that my style hasn’t really changed in between doing it for myself without anybody checking it out and doing it today for a slightly larger audience. Blogging for me is really more about me getting stuff down on paper and mentally reconciling ideas than it is for other people’s enjoyment—which is why I write 500 – 1000 word posts when blog wisdom suggests that this is ridiculous. Nobody wants to slog through 900 words on a blog post, but I approach it like a newspaper columnist would – with context and a narrative where you have a beginning, a middle and an end with an opinion. And, I also write like a live rock show. One take. Everything I write is written in one stream of consciousness and one sit down session. Only, perhaps, three or four times have I ever written something and slept on it to come back to it. I like the immediacy of tapping a vein and then publishing it for permanence.
I redesigned the site professionally because I wanted the aesthetic to reflect the content, like a great cover to a book.
Ultimately, I blog for myself; it’s my hobby and is centered around something that I really enjoy—wine. If other people like the site than that’s great, and if they don’t that’s okay too, because I’d still do it. The original inspiration of a dude making $5000 a month is a moot point because I do it for free and that’s a part of the creative process and the purity of writing about ideas that amuse me.
I’m tagging Renee at Feed Me/Drink Me. Renee, why do you blog?
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April 20 2007
As a young sales buck, I was quickly exposed to the, “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with b.s.” school of selling.
This was quickly followed up with a quick tutorial in “tap dancing” school of sales when responding to a question that doesn’t have a good answer, or the answer that’s correct at the time.
Fortunately, shortly thereafter I learned that b.s. and/or dancing doesn’t work. Rarely to does the ‘dazzle ‘em’ part work, either.
Educated as a journalist (before I get any snarky comments or email about my grammar and English, let me be the first to say that I essentially went 10 years writing nothing more than emails and birthday cards, btw), I quickly fell back on simply asking good questions. Asking the five “W” questions is second nature to me. Who, what, why, when, and where. By virtue of my journalism education, I had designs to go into the advertising world and work for a large agency—you know, crafting the next Nike ad campaign and combining my perceived acumen in strategy and creativity.
This experience, in addition to building the ability to ask questions, also gave me educational experience in developing campaigns for brands. No Nike here, however. In fact, one professor took particular pleasure in making his students work on goofy projects like Vienna Sausages—his rational was that getting fired up about any brand you work with is important, so he was going to start the process for us with a bang. I spent a glorious semester working on an advertising campaign for mini sausages in a gelatinous goo in a small can.
The interesting thing is that advertising doesn’t start with an idea, it starts with research. So, off we trekked to the library to review this tome of a book that gave us information on where Vienna sausages were primarily consumed (the Carolinas), by whom, household incomes, high points for consumption in the year, so on and so forth.
This information gives a person strategic information in order to do a project charter to drive strategy for the creative folks to use as a jumping off point.
Running parallel to this and the point of this post is the recent launch of radio advertising for Rancho Zabacho Dancing Bull wines.
I’ve been in San Francisco, Miami and Indianapolis over the course of the last two weeks and have heard the same radio ads for Dancing Bull wine on the local market sports talk radio station in each market. I don’t listen to radio that many hours, so if I’m getting hit in three different markets it must’ve been a big media buy.
I find this very interesting, curious almost. I’m wondering what research the folks at Gallo did that justified what can be assumed to be a national media buy.
It seems like the entire campaign is ill conceived—starting with the tag line.
Curiously, the tag line for the wine—definitively geared towards men is, “Dancing Bull takes wine seriously so you don’t have to.”
Consider for a moment:
1) The wine comes from the Gallo label Rancho Zabacho with “Dancing Bull” as the secondary portion of the brand-- and it’s not immediately intuitive if you’re a wine layperson
2) There are no verbal cues in the ads that prompt the listener to look for any specific images associated with the label
3) Men, generally speaking, in most situations, wine included, act as if they know more about a given subject then they actually do making the simplification of wine a potential mis-step, especially to sports wonks that listen to talk radio thriving on knowledge in a particular subject
4) The tag line sounds like a re-worked version from a deodorant ad, “We fight odor and wetness, so you don’t have to.”
5) No mention whatsoever of the two varietals that make up the product lineup—Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc
6) If you search for “Dancing Bull Wine” on Google the first result takes you to the Rancho Zabacho site, creating potential confusion in brand integrity
7) There is *NO* mention on the web site related to sports fans or the radio advertising, so a radio listener can’t actually confirm that they might be at the right sight if they did happen to Google the wine.
I’m all for wine advertising to create more mindshare with non-core wine drinkers, but I think this attempt is too flawed to be successful for Gallo.
The questions I’m asking lead me to believe that Dancing Bull radio ads may well just be b.s or tap dancing, I can’t tell which and it doesn’t take a journalist to figure that out. Tune in to any sports talk radio station during drive time and tell me what you think.
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April 13 2007
I love it when Indiana and wine intersect. In fact, I never miss an opportunity to highlight the offbeat charm of my home state and ties to the wider wine world.
My favorite trivia question used to be, “What was the name of the team sponsor for the ‘Bad News Bears’” and now my favorite trivia is going to be, “What do funeral caskets, hospital beds and Monkey Bay wine have in common?”
The answer is Peter H. Soderberg, of course.
Mr. Soderberg, president of a company called Hillenbrand Industries based in Batesville, Indiana, was named to the Board of Directors at Constellation Brands, the #2 largest wine company in the country, this past week.
Now, to most people, the burial casket (not too mention hospital equipment) industry is completely foreign, but my father was in the funeral business for 35 years, so the name Batesville caskets, isn’t completely out of left field for me.
And Batesville is in the Ohio River Valley appellation, as the crow flies, southeast of Indianapolis on the way to Cincinnati.
Yet, anybody that pays attention to Board appointments would surely scratch their head at somebody with a business-to-business healthcare background like Soderberg being named to the board at a consumer brand company like Constellation. A quick search of the Internet indicates that Soderberg has a lengthy business history in New York before his relocation to Indiana in March of 2006 to run Hillenbrand Industries, so he likely made some long ago connections that are yielding results today.
We’ll assume that the Soderberg was hired for his overall business acumen and not his casket knowledge. Though, perhaps, Mr. Soderberg can help Constellation bury dead brands.
Another Indiana company, highlighted in the April 7th issue of the Indianapolis Business Journal, called Taliera is actually trying to resurrect dead or dying wine and spirits brands.
Started by J. Smoke Wallin, also the President of a technology company based in Indianapolis serving the wine industry called eSkye, Taliera recently pulled back from a “blank check” IPO due to “adverse market conditions.”
Basically, Wallin and some industry colleagues are trying to raise money in order to buy languishing brands and re-build them.
From the article in the Indianapolis Business Journal:
Taliera will focus on finding alcoholic beverage brands that your parents or grandparents once enjoyed, but that now languish. Wallin said regulations on alcohol advertising, particularly for liquor, make it much easier to reposition an older brand than to introduce a new one.
Interesting concept.
I’m not sure too many institutional investors (or individual investors) actually invest in an IPO based on the idea and only the idea of taking a sow’s ear and making silk but the idea has merit because there are some brands in wine that I think are ripe for re-marketing, particularly to younger generation steeped in nostalgia marketing.
From the article in the Indianapolis Business Journal:
Jonlee Andrews, a professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and director of IU’s Center for Brand Leadership, said there are many reasons why brands fall out of favor.
Sometimes they just don’t get enough attention or marketing money, and all it takes is a fresh idea to reinvigorate an established brand. Other times, the brand has developed a negative reputation that’s difficult to overcome. “Have consumers ever heard of it?” she asked. “Is it like Oldsmobile? Will it be hard to change the ‘Brand of your grandfather’ perception? Or is it like Ovaltine, and you just haven’t seen it in 30 years?”
Just two weeks ago, for example, California Coolers, an icon of the 80’s before being usurped by Bartles & Jaymes, was re-introduced to the market after a 15 year hiatus.
I would love to see brands that pre-date my drinking days, some of the icons of the 70’s like Italian Swiss Colony, Blue Nun, Cold Duck and Lancer’s picked up off the scrap heap and given a dose of cool.
Perhaps Taliera will do something interesting in the wine world, maybe not, regardless, having the opportunities come from Indiana is a good thing and certainly worthy of a toast.
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April 8 2007
I came of age professionally in the mid-1990’s, the wilderness years for technology, right around the same time that technology certifications became big business—especially big business for technology publishers like my employer at the time who was doing gangbusters business creating test preparation books based on certification curriculum from technology companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Novell, and a member association called CompTia.
Wine and technology have a lot in common in that then, as now, there are as many technology solutions are there are labels of wine.
Technology summarizes itself – loosely – by the number of layers in a technology or network stack. There are seven layers in a network protocol starting out with the physical layer and working its way up to the application layer.
I bring this up because wine, with just three layers, finds itself in a similar situation as technology a decade or so ago.
Essentially, these technology certifications have created an entire category of employment as people seek out the education and the certifications, driving prestige to their resume with an expectation level of compensation and renown for presumed expertise.
But, whereas technology was led in leadership by organization from large technology companies like Microsoft who viewed certification as a means to establish market-defining credibility around a solution, the large wine producers like E& J Gallo and Constellation seem to not recognize, appreciate or seize the same opportunity in wine.
My recent post about food, wine and the Food Network got me thinking about wine certifications and wine competitions—particularly the kind of testing that goes on in most Sommelier-related certifications.
I’ve seen enough Food Network sugar sculpture and cake-making competitions to last me for a while. In fact, I can mindlessly watch/listen to the Food Network for hours as I plink away on my computer EXCEPT for when these infernal cake competitions are on, almost making my ears bleed at the manufactured inanity and drama. This leads to two questions for me:
1) Why aren’t wine certifications more clearly well-defined with a sharper cachet for levels and attainment?
2) Why wouldn’t this make for some interesting and unfolding drama for programming on the Food Network?
The certification question is an interesting one because the certifications in the states are a jumbled mess of overlapping influence and assumption from the U.K.
The Court of Master Sommeliers, the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), the Society of Wine Educators has the Certified Specialist of Wine and Certified Wine Educator, Masters of Wine, something of the granddaddy of wine testing, has their own certification that builds off the WSET, and the American Wine Society has a certification for being a wine judge.
And, of course, I’m sure there are other variations and permutations of certifications that I’m missing.
The Society of Wine Educators has aligned with Gallo to introduce the Gallo Wine Academy, now in its second year, but based on mindshare in the industry, it has to be called, at best, a (very) modest success. The overall notion of the venture, based on an excerpt from the press release seems to be in the spirit of what I think is critically needed:
Committed to furthering wine education not only for its employees and customers but for the industry at large, in early 2004 the E. & J. Gallo Winery approached the Society of Wine Educators, the leading non-profit professional development and certification institution for the wine industry, to forge a strategic alliance to create these e-learning sites.
This new project will allow a significant body of the SWE Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) Exam study guide and syllabus, formerly only available in book form, to become available to a wider audience via the internet.
With wine in the very early stages of changing the landscape of America as an eating and drinking nation, I’m struck that, long-term, now is an exceptional time to treat education as a critically important marketing tool for all three-tiers and for consumers, as well.
You think Gen. Y with their Myspace.com pages and their penchant to enter the wine world as core consumers might not invest a little bit of time into a certification if for nothing else than bragging rights? I’m guessing the answer is a resounding “Yes.”
Now, given that most of these certifications are aimed at Sommeliers and there is frequently an in-person testing for Sommelier service. The Court of Master Sommelier diploma exam tests the following, for example, in front of a live panel:
• Discuss, recommend and serve aperitifs, displaying a sound knowledge of the products and the ability to serve them correctly.
• Select, prepare and position glassware necessary for the service of drinks in the lounge, restaurant, function room or private suite.
• Discuss menu content and wine list, recommending wines to accompany food, displaying a sound knowledge of the products, their vintages and characteristics.
• Present, offer, prepare, (decanting when necessary) and serve wines, demonstrating a high degree of efficiency and proficiency.
• Present, offer, prepare and serve brandies, liqueurs and cigars.
• Handle queries and complaints with skill and diplomacy.
• Discuss the sizes of measures that may be expected from each.
So, as a frequent and regular “armchair quarterback” for the world of wine, I’d like to see somebody step up and assume a leadership position in the industry in the category of certification that creates a wake and defines an as-of-now loosely defined category.
And, all the better if that leads to better Food Network programming by televising some of the participants in the testing process.
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April 1 2007
News Release: April 1, 2007
Wine Blogger To Become The Ninth “Oprah Friend” and Resident Wine Guru
Good Grape Inks Landmark Deal to be the Official Wine Blogger and Online Sales Outlet for The Oprah Winfrey Show, Joining eight other “Oprah Friends” in the Resource Panel Super Group
Chicago, IL—Plucked from obscurity, Jeff, the writer and mind behind the wine blog Good Grape.com has been hand selected to become the ninth “Oprah Friend” slated for regular re-occurring appearance on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Said Winfrey’s 2nd assistant public relations coordinator for interns, Tess Tickle, “It’s true, the date of today’s press release is no coincidence, Mr. Lefevere was the 4th person we contacted, the first person to respond, and unfortunately, our seventh choice. We decided to announce on 04/01/07 in homage to the incredible fickle finger of fate nature of his selection and also because, frankly, we’re embarrassed and hoped that we’d miss the news cycle by announcing on a Sunday.”
Tickle continued, “Oprah is interested in re-balancing the power of the wine world away from the Parker’s and the Wine Spectator’s of the world and give it back to the people while maybe taking a piece of the action if she can. Lefevere seemed willing, eager almost, to go déclassé for some money.”
Expected to join the show in months that have five weeks during leap years, Lefevere is expected to provide wine advice to the millions of dedicated viewers while accepting online orders at his web site, http://www.goodgrape.com in order to capitalize on “The Oprah Effect.”
Lefevere said, “When my wife was making me watch a Tivo’ed episode of ‘Oprah’s Favorite Things’ during the holiday season I couldn’t figure out why these seemingly normal women in the audience were going goofy out of their gourd for some free truffles and books, but I said to myself, ‘Self: how can I get a piece of this action.’ ”
“The Oprah Effect” is a selling phenomenon whereby an implicit endorsement by Winfrey on her show can drive record sales for the product.
Lefevere continued, “I couldn’t figure out how to get my piece of the Oprah action until I watched ‘The Secret’ episode and then watched sales of this book go through the roof. Pshaw … the premise of the book is, essentially, the Law of Attraction which simply says that you attract into your life whatever you think about. Your dominant thoughts will find a way to manifest. From that point on, I started mentally fixating on becoming incredibly wealthy selling wine online to Oprah fans. Ha. Can you believe it? Here I am.”
Lefevere is expected to help select wines, present them on the show and then sell them off of his web site to the legion of Oprah fans that eagerly buy anything she endorses, like helpless, slavish drones desperate for excitement in between a typical Tuesday and a normal “Consumer Saturday.”
Winfrey has been hunting for a wine expert since news reports in late 2006 heralded the health benefits of wine. Health experts Bob Greene and Dr. Mehmet Oz, both teetolers, endorsed the selection of Lefevere with Greene noting, “I guess he’s better than nothing, and since I don’t drink at least his limited reach with his blog will mean he won’t be overly competitive in taking away mindshare from the rest of us. That damn Gayle King is always getting first crack at the good projects and we don’t need any more competition.”
Lefevere responded in kind with, “I love Bob Greene and his book, ‘Be True to Your School’ it’s amazing to me that he was able to go from being a dumpy middle-aged author and a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and then completely come out of nowhere to turn himself into a fitness guru. I mean, he doesn’t even look like the same guy. I hope I can make the same transformation from wine blogger to multi-channel selling empire.”
Goodgrape.com is expected to be revamped to handle the expected site traffic and sales. Gone will be the current design replaced by a softer, more feminine site designed to appeal to oaky chardonnay drinkers.
Lefevere noted, “Hell yeah I’ll redesign my site to appeal to chicks and, to be honest, I can be bought. Heck, I’m even setting up a PO BOX for payola. Anybody that wants their wine to be considered for inclusion on the show segments or the web site should first send a query letter to the PO Box with bills in small denominations and then subsequently send me two cases of the wine for sampling.”
XXX
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