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March 28 2006

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice—Cluetrain Ma

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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March 26 2006

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice—Cluetrain Ma

Barbarians at the Gate
Pt. 3 of 4

In 1991 a band from Seattle, Washington heralded in Generation X withthe lyric from their anthem, “Smells like Teen Spirit.”

“Here we are now, Entertain us.”  

Five years later the Internet entered into the public consciousnessnot as the “Information Superhighway,” but as something that was usable andreal.

 In a society where information is transparent, changeimmediate and value nebulous, many believe that we are entering a period wheretwo consumer paths emerge—commoditization and value-added services. 

Certainly to the 40 + million members of Generation X andthe 70 + million of Generation Y, time is measured in moments and memories and “what’sin it for me?”

In order to make conversations amongst human’s sound human,it’s not enough to sell wine based on price or selection. And, especially in the age of informationtransparency, it’s not enough to have that knowledge embedded in humans in theform of service—at least in the world or wine, we know that human voicesfrequently don’t sound human, at least to the majority of the rest of the wineconsumers. 

To paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, “It’s theEntertainment, Stupid.” 

The world of retail is changing around us. Winery tasting rooms, who sell an experience,who tell a story certainly know this, as some estimates put purchase capturerates for visiting customers at better then 90%.

From the Book, The Entertainment Economy:

Increasingly, businesses will have to incorporate what hecalls the ‘E-factor’ (entertainment factor) into their offerings, be they goodsor services, in order to be competitive. Wolf calls this "hedonomics"­ the science of understanding the ‘fun-focused consumer’. Fundamental to thisis his notion that society’s concept of time has changed. The pressures ofwork, family, social obligations, etc., have forced us to compartmentalize ourlives into a series of highly segmented boxes of time. And, just as natureabhors a vacuum, we don’t like to have any of those boxes unfilled (or’wasted’). So we turn to entertainment to fill the unscheduled portions of ourday. This societal change, plus the development of distribution technologiessuch as the Internet, has fueled the tremendous growth of the entertainmentindustry. 

Grocer’s will still capture their share of the market, buttraditional rust belt wine shops that haven’t updated their shop in 20 yearsleeching an aging customer base dry with dusty bottles and sales on 1999 vintageswill soon be as relevant as the Dewey Decimal System is to ninth grader’swriting a term paper.  

Trader Joe’s knows this. That’s why a grocer with stores in just 20 states captured the nationalconsciouness with the $2 Buck Chuck wine and has states lobbying for itsarrival.

It’s fun to shop at Trader Joe’s. And, they merchandise well, which means thevoice they use to communicate with me might not be person to person, but itshuman because it helps me navigate the wine aisle and buy, predominantlyprivate-label wine, that I’ve never heard of before and will soon be pleasedwith.

Excerpt from this magazine:

As legend has it, he was sitting on a beach contemplating the future of anew retail landscape when he came to the conclusion that people were usuallymore at ease and more receptive to new things when they were on vacation.

This was long before the term "retail anthropology" was coined.But Coulombe knew instinctively that everything depended on understandingconsumers. As such, his vision for Trader Joe’s was to offer shoppers a littleadventure by stocking items they couldn’t find elsewhere at prices thatwouldn’t empty their wallets.

It was then he decided on a tropical theme for the stores-right down to theloud print shirts on employees, fishing nets on the walls and a thatched roofbar in the back for sampling that looks like something out of a 1960s"B" beach movie.

All together, these are the elements that make a trip toTrader Joe’s a unique and fun experience for consumers who often think ofsupermarket shopping as exciting as a trip to the dry cleaner or the dentist. 

Some observers question whether Trader Joe’s will maintainthe same philosophy as it continues to grow across the U.S. and becomes a more noticeable competitor to conventional supermarkets. Theanswer seems to be yes. As one industry observer put it: "This is a chainthat has succeeded simply by being itself."

Or, if you’re a member of Generation X & Y, legions ofpeople that have grown to distrust advertising, Trader Joe’s is simplyauthentic.   

In the world of wine,Trader Joe’s sells a lot of wine, but what’s their secret sauce in the wineaisle? It’s value prices, yes. But, more then anything, it’s the entertainmentfactor combined with the human voice they use to communicate with customers oneon one because they merchandise with sales copy virtually every wine that isshelved.

People like the fun value in Trader Joe’s and they like thatthey walk out of the store knowing a little something about what they justbought. 

According to Law student Sayuri Sharper, in a recent SanJose Mercury News article,

“Albertson’s is like a real chore,” said Sarper, who pausedlast week to sample some pineapple cherry upside down cake at the Los AltosTrader Joe’s. “This is a lot more fun.”

Hmm … maybe there’s something here for somebody bringing anew wine retail model to market—make it authentic, and make it fun … or, inother words, speak in a human voice to other humans—not just provide a serviceto a customer, in a traditional retail model.  But, really speak authentically,conscientiously and with passion to somebody else and above all else speak alanguage and in a voice that they understand.  The Barbarians are at the Gate and not likely waiting for anybody to welcome them in.

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March 26 2006

New World

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March 24 2006

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice—Cluetrain Ma

The Derision Decision.   Pt 2 of 4

The Emperor of Wine

I’d like to suggest that in the consumer lifecycle there isalways a point in time when our champions become our scapegoats … when ourfavorite son’s unwittingly take on the black hat; the point at whichpopularity, widespread popularity, turns against you and you become the objectof scorn.

This is frequently seen in the music—Hootie and theBlowfish, Alanis Morrisette and even Britney Spears have gone from publicdarlings to the close-out bin.

Robert Parker, esteemed wine critic, tastemaker and titan ofthe industry for better then 20 years seems to be experiencing his own versionof the derision decision. 

This phenomena can’t be isolated to a single event—thedocumentary Mondovino, the influence he wields in sell-thru with consumers, anda thirsty new public that doesn’t know who he is, and nor do they care.

This from the New York Times on March 22^nd:

It has been a difficult couple of years for Robert M. Parker Jr., the winewriter who has famously been labeled the most influential critic of any kind inthe world. Though Mr. Parker has gotten used to living with a big fat targetpainted on his back, the most recent series of attacks was especially gallingto him.

Jonathan Nossiter’s documentary "Mondovino," released in the United States in 2005, juxtaposed Mr. Parker with aBurger King sign and portrayed him as an emblem of opulent globalized wine andan enemy of diversity, terroir and nuance. A 2005 biography, "The Emperorof Wine" by Elin McCoy (Ecco), expressed concern about a world dominatedby "the tyranny of one palate."

In this article on Decanter.com on March 23rd, Parker had this to say:

’People who are leaders in any field are copied,’ he said. ‘There’s a reasonwhy every wine newsletter tends to look like mine. They see someone who’s beensuccessful, so they sort of copy the same ideas.’‘When somebody wants to write an article attacking a scoring system or theinfluence of wine writers, who’s right in the cross hairs? It’s me,’ he said.

Parker went on to say that his palate was much more complex than the’simplistic view’ that he likes big, extracted, so-called fruit-bomb stylewines and rates them highly in tastings.

Despite his complaints, the wine critic, who publishes his bimonthlynewsletter, The Wine Advocate, also boasted of his  success.

Or this from MSNBC.com from the summer of 2005:

It is hard to drink wine without running into RobertParker.

With his often-imitated gradingsystem, Parker is indisputably the world’s most powerful wine critic.  Hisinfluence within the wine industry is akin to Alan Greenspan’s sway overfinancial markets: When Parker talks, wine people tend to listen.

With the wine tiger eatingits young and a new, young generation embodied as the gaping maw with no regardfor hidebound tradition, who is going to step into the fray and become thevoice that connects with other humans that speak a different language?

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March 24 2006

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice—Cluetrain Ma

Part 1 of 4

The most intrepid of travelers felt intimidated, nervous even,the first time they ventured to a country where their native and only tongue, English,was not the primary language spoken.

Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and The Wine Advocate havea combined subscriber base of less than 2 million people, but there are over 25million people nationally that drink wine at least once a week—making up a fastgrowing group of consumers called “Core” wine drinkers.

 Simple math indicates that just 8% of serious wine consumersread magazines that largely drive the marketing of the U.S. wine industry. Authors Kirby Moulton andJames Lapsley, in their book, Successful Wine Marketing say, “(Wineries) are facinga market where 80% of consumers are waiting for an efficient and relevantmessage.”

That quote is taken from their book published in 2001—five yearsago. In that time, what have we foundout? Generation Y, a generationalsegment that represents 70 million people has only just begun to exhibit thelong-term consumption habits that will shape our consumable society for atleast the next 10-20 years. Oh, and bythe way, according to Wine Market Council research 39% of them are drinkingwine—most of them coming online as “Core” wine drinkers.

Everyday a new generation of wine drinkers is accepting wineas a beverage of choice, yet their native tongue doesn’t speak the language of “wine.”

And, yet, wineries are still facing a market where 80% ofconsumers (and growing) are waiting for an efficient and relevant message.

The challenge is, the new generation, Generation Y, theso-called Millenials, is different. They’rewired. They are agent provocateurs. Theyhave grown up consuming media since birth.

In my estimation, there are at least three converging trendsthat are all interrelated to how people interact with and want to interact withwine i.e. how wine media and marketers don’t connect with wine consumers—at retail,or elsewhere—essentially how the voice of the wine marketing isn’t human, atleast in the context of the human on the receiving end.

1) TheDerision Decision

2) Barbariansat the Gate

3) Anew lingua franca

Each of these intersect—the old guard is being challenged, a younger set of customers challenge authority and the way we buy; there is a new langugage being spoken.

In order—at least in the world of wine—for humans to have a conversation that sounds human somethings got to give.

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