June 14 2006
Monologue from the movie "School of Rock" starring Jack Black
The Man
written by Mike White
Dewey Finn: You want me to teach you something? What? You want to learnsomething? Alright, here’s a useful lesson: Give up! Just quit! Because in thislife you can’t win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end your just gonna loose,BIG TIME! Because the world is run by the man!
Frankie (Angelo Massagli): Who?
Dewey: The man. Oh, you don’tknow the man? The man’s everywhere: in the White House, down the hall, MissMullins; she’s the man! And the man ruined the ozone, and he’s burning down theAmazon and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! Okay! And thereused to be a way to stick it to the man, it was called rock ‘n roll. But guesswhat? Oh no! The man had to ruin that too with a little thing called MTV! Sodon’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome ‘causethe man’s just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So doyourself a favor and just give up!
Despite Dewey’s intrepid submission to ‘The Man’ --from Foie Gras to South African wine, it’s amazing how quickly black, white and shades of gray can find an audience on the Internet.
http://www.southafricanwine.org/home
http://www.stopforcefeeding.com/page.php?module=home
These examples are all over the Internet, and the real point here is that communication no longer rolls down hill in a one way manner. It’s a conversation and the little guy is finding his voice. This is no more evident then in the world of wine where there are over 200 + blogs and 95% of them are by complete and utter rank amateurs with a voice on taste.
If you want to try and get your head around something, what about some of the people based wine engines like Cork’d or Logabottle that are like ‘American Idol’ meets the quaffable.
For a listen to an NPR radio segment on a the book, ‘An Army of Davids’ about the rise of the common man go here.
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June 13 2006
The blogging book Naked Conversationsby Robert Scoble and Shel Israel quote a German philosopher named Arthur Schopenhauerwho says:
Forresterresearch, as found on the Web 2.0 marketing guru Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasionsite, has aggregated a nice matrix of all of the various companies occupyingthe very real and very tangible ‘social networking’ space.
And,social networking, at its core, really means that we are meeting and creatingrelationships in
ways that are facilitated and enabled via the Internet.
Takefor example the Wellfed Network and Wine Sediments. Dayton, OH based news reporter and wine columnist, Mark Fisher,edits the site. Mark and I have arelationship. If I email him, he willanswer me and vice versa. We exchangecommunication probably three times a week on various and sundry things—he anacquaintance around a hobby of mine and I’ve found him to be a nice, warm,engaging chap. I likely have a betterand warmer digital relationship with Mark then I do with some real lifecolleagues whom I’ve worked with for the past four years. But, the rub is, I’ve never met Mark—inperson, or on the phone. I don’t knowhis voice and I might miss him on the street. There is a 98% likelihood that we would have never met in the real world.
Thesesorts of things are happening all around us and they are changing the way wework and play. While possible five orsix years ago via message boards and the like, and even really 10 years ago viaBBS’s, digital relationships are now coming to the forefront as center of gravityfor our life slowly moves around us.
Forthe blogosphere this is the third-stage—it’s self-evident to us.
But,the implications are much greater for wineries. Within the wine community, blogs probably aren’t evenridiculed—that presumes a level of understanding to create derision. I think blogs, for the most part, are metwith confused non-understanding or indifference.
AlderYarrow, a similarly nice chap whom I’ve also exchanged emails with, writes theseminal wine blog, Vinography. His sitelists approximately 22 wineries that have blogs. 22. There are at least5000 in the U.S. alone, according to Wine Business Monthly. Really, that’s a shame because asinformation breaks down the barriers of the Tower of Babel, you hope that morethan a handful of wineries seize the agenda to win new customers and grow theirreputation.
The conversation ishappening. It’s happening all aroundus. Are there any wineries, save for a handful,--the folks that desire and want new customers--listening?
For a twenty page, engaging, white paper look at this same topic, click here.
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May 21 2006
Cluetrain Manifesto #5 relates to #4, and an earlier post that can be found here.
#4 Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissentingarguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural,uncontrived.
#5 People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
I could go on and on about the discrepancy in wine marketing and those that receive the message. Dozens and dozens of sales training courses exist to help people communicate to their customers and prospects in a language that is understandable to their target.
Marketers exist to bridge this language gap. Yet, wine, and perhaps car buying remain the two mass consumables where there is a Golden Gate bridge size chasm that needs to be crossed in order to make customers raving fans of a wine label. Some have made the move, but nobody has made the leap.
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April 20 2006
I think three majorforces are taking shape in our lifestyles and media consumption that is goingto have a significant impact on the world of wine. I say that it is “going to” have an impact because the changesthat we see in popular culture, for the most part, haven’t yet penetrated theworld of wine as deeply as other consumer segments.
1) The Entertainment Economy
2) Fragmentation of Marketing/Word of mouthtakes off …
3) Blogging disintermediates the 4thestate
The EntertainmentEconomy
In our consumerlives, it is no longer enough for a store to sell us goods—they have tofacilitate an experience. It is now animmersion environment designed to appeal to our aesthetic and lifestylesensibility whereby that experience is manufactured for us. I call this the “Vegas-ificication” of ourlives.
Folks that shopat REI, the noted outdoor lifestyle store, are more likely to get into theirlate model SUV wearing a Patagonia jacket and head to Costco for food samplesthen they are to go camping and do weenies over a fire.
Las Vegasconducts adult fantasy camp everyday of every year and you can pick yourperceived lifestyle aspiration—Bellagio’s new money upscale; Venetian—faux internationaltravel to Italy; Wynn—a casino for those that shop out of (or aspire to) theDupont Registry; Harrah’s—faux New Orlean’s; and the list goes on and on …
Disney is,perhaps, the best example of this—they offer fully committed live theatreeveryday at their theme parks. Nobodybreaks character and we arrive to soak in their entertainment.
Fragmentation ofMarketing and the power of word of mouth
In our 200 cable channel/Internet/spam on cell phone world, the average consumer likely see's well
over 4000 advertising messages a day. According to David Shenk, in his book Data Smog, states that
the average American encountered 560 daily messages in 1971. By 1997 that number had increased to
over 3000 a day.
Imagine that--3000 messages a day before the Internet and cell phones gained widespread acceptance.
But, the truth is, we don't trust advertising. Not at all. Not even a little bit. In fact, we're wary of it.
What people are relying on it word of mouth--the oldest form of advertising--a first or second person
reference, sometimes framed within the construct of a story.
And, marketing is changing to account for the way we want to learn about things. Seth Godin, something
of a new age marketing yogi summarizes the proposition pretty succinctly on the dust jacket blurb to his
book, All Marketers are Liars:
Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes
better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior
to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our
feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true.
Successful marketers don’t talk aboutfeatures or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want tobelieve.
This is a book about doing whatconsumers demand-painting vivid pictures that they choose to believe. Everyorganization-from nonprofits to car companies, from political campaigns towineglass blowers-must understand that the rules have changed (again). In aneconomy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time tomake them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about tellingstories.
Marketers succeed when they tell us astory that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and thenshare with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPod.
Blogging disintermediates the 4thestate
It used to be that we got our messagesfrom the media with objectivity and from marketers with some level of trust--apitch, but, perhaps, a pitch with trusted intent.
We had filters on our messages,pre-screening from what we read and understood in terms of our reality and howwe were sold to. And, we werecommunicated to and marketed to in mass.
But, the Internet changes all ofthat. Instead, of a one-to-many mode ofoperation, we are now carrying on individual conversations and technologyenables somebody in Indianapolis, IN to have an influential opinion and socalled word of mouth marketing to somebody in the same affinity group thatlives in Tacoma, WA.
Dan Gillmor, an established journalistwrote the following in his influential book, We the Media regarding the eventson September 11, 2001:
But, something else, somethingprofound, was happening this time around: news was being produced by regular people who had something to say andshow, and not solely by the “official” news organizations that hadtraditionally decided how the first draft of history would look. This time, the first draft of history wasbeing written, in part, by the former audience. It was possible—it was inevitable—because of the new publishingtools available on the Internet.
This new sensibility is summarized froman excerpted blog posting from this site.
The thinking is: Hell - if theblogosphere can lead to the firing of major corporate executives, surely it canenlighten people to buy better wine. While this is certainly a fulfilling questfor the average wine blogger, is it not at best elitist and at worstintimidating to suggest there are wines consumers should enjoy? When I hold a winetasting the first thing I do is make sure everyone in the room speaks theirmind - giving the wine a personal score from 0-100. If there’s one thing thatis absolutely a given at each tasting, it’s that everybody rates the winedifferently.
The beauty of the winerevolution, it seems to me, is that wine is losing that perception ofrighteousness and snobbery that has accompanied it, especially in the UnitedStates, for hundreds of years. If someone wants to rate Yellow Tail a 95, I’mnot going to tell them their wrong or deluded by mass marketing gimmicks. Ifthat’s the wine they want to reach for when they shop, that’s great! The pointis that they are enjoying their wine. As bloggers, the best we can do is tointroduce new wine to people that might not otherwise find it. Let them decideif it fits the bill.
The trifecta of change is upon us:
1) The Entertainment Economy
2) Fragmentation of Marketing/Word of mouthtakes off …
3) Blogging disintermediates the 4thestate
And what does it all mean?
Wine is unique in that wine tastingrooms and the wine lifestyle already exist--people already aspire to secure theintrinsic value that wine offers. Theentertainment factor has existed for a long time.
Fragmentation of the marketing istaking place, frankly with a fragmentation of producer’s and marketers—there isso much wine out there.
Wine is also unique in that it is aheavily blogged category. Wine BlogWatch counts well over 100 wine related blogs of various perspectives, but theone undercurrent is they are all by the people and for the people.
If you look at the three change factorshierarchically the top is pushing down on the middle (Marketing Fragmentation)and the bottom is pushing up on the middle—but, unlike other industries, whathasn’t happened is a landmark groundswell in the middle whereby a word of mouthmechanism—something that speaks in a human conversational voice, uncontrivedwith a touch of humor makes a significant impact in the wine market. The human voice, for the majority of thewine drinking public has already derided the 100 point system as passé, butwhat the wine market is truly waiting for is our Guffman to arrive and to saveour theater troupe in the entertainment economy—somebody to give wine fanseverywhere true hope that their voice has been heard and it will continue on ina natural, relaxed fashion.
It will happen in the next five years,overthrowing current wine media and the way we buy wines.
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March 28 2006
A New Lingua Franca
Part 4 of 4
I could have also called this last post "The Age of Reason."
When talking about the Cluetrain and humans talking to humans in a normal voice--there’s a practicality that is arising that is manifesting itself as a new reason for a "new" wine language. I pin this on, generationally, a new audience coming to terms with the enjoyment of wine.
Atlas Shrugged might be the book most referenced in popular culture that nobody has read. Newspaper flaks say that the normal newspaper is written to be understood by a 4th grader. The New York Times is written to understood by an 8th grader.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is written to be understood by 3rd year philosophy majors.
Wine reviews are written to be understood by oblique men with a short finish in their 50’s.
At its core, according to Wikipedia, Atlas Shrugged is:
Independent, rational thought is the motor that powers the world. In the book, "men of the mind" go on strike,allowing the collapse of what only they hold together — a peacefulcohesiveness Rand claims that humans, particularly those whoseproductive work comes from mental effort, may create wherever forcefulhuman interference is absent. Given no alternative, they removethemselves from the "looters." The title is an analogy: the rationalmen, like the Greek god Atlas, hold the world on their shoulders; in the form of a strike, they have chosen to ‘shrug.’ The book is rooted in Objectivism, the philosophical system founded by Rand.
But, in practical terms, it can be argued that "Men of Mind"--wine consumers--are rising up from the tyranny of forceful human interference. But, instead of, perhaps, removing themselves from the interference, they are creating a new language that fits their rational mind.
That language is the new lingua franca. The movement was started by Joshua Wesson at his Best Cellars stores on the east coast.
The founders of Best Cellars have spent a total of 25 yearsworking in the wine business. We’ve written books and articles on wine andfood, won awards, spoken to tens of thousands of wine lovers at events aroundthe world, and wedged our noses into countless glasses of fermented grapejuice.
The idea for Best Cellars, however, didn’t come from us.
After years of conversations with wine lovers, we came to recognize that manypeople we met who liked drinking wine were put off by the "world ofwine;" its mysteries, rituals and often steep tariffs.
Everywhere we went, people asked us the same questions. How could they find outwhat a wine tastes like before buying? What could they do to better make senseof the dizzying number of countries, regions, grapes and labels? And mostimportantly, where could they shop for wine in an atmosphere that allowed themto feel comfortable making a purchase?
That’s why we say the idea for Best Cellars didn’t come from us.
It came from you.
Best Cellars has been around and this model has started to widely penetrate the consumer-end of the wine space, yet it hasn’t moved from the winemaker’s out to consumers. This intermediation is occuring based on need from retail.
This movement has really come to a head with the very, very good book Wine Styles: Using Your Senses to Explore and Enjoy Wine
WINE STYLE offers a new way of dealing with wine. Itdivides the white wines of the world into four taste categories and the redwines of the world into another four. What could be more important about a winethan how it tastes?
WINE STYLE helps you discover which taste category, or style, of winesuits you best, and enables you to ask for that style of wine when you buy winein a shop or a restaurant. It also helps you become a better wine taster. Itwill help bring you more enjoyment from every bottle! This book takes theemphasis away from the traditional wine lingo of grapes and regions, and placesit right where it belongs—on you and your taste. May it empower you to find alifetime of pleasure in wine!
What’s happening, really, is that people are dissatisfied with the way they are being spoken to. There’s a disconnect. In corporate speak--we are not in alignment on the issue. In corporate jargon, we are not singing from the same hymnal.
But, the difference from the corporate world and the consumer world is the people can rise up and create change--perhaps not as seismic or as quickly as can occur in other industries, but its happening nonetheless. People seek to understand. And, when they don’t they either disengage interest, or they ratchet up the change in order to have the situation fit their needs.
This human looking for human voice is occuring around us right now. We won’t need revisionist history in 10 years to account for the subtle changes that occurred around us with this new lingua franca. Atlas is Shrugging. It will be self-evident.
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