June 28 2006
Stormhoekand their wines continue to be a more than significant thread in the wineblogging community and soon to be the wine business community in the U.K.
Hughat Gapingvoid has created a 16-page marketing guide that will be inserted intocopies of The Drinks Business magazine in the U.K.
ThePDF is available for download and you can find it here. I recommend checking it out.
It’sa mix of Hugh’s trademark cartoons and pithy insights on blogging and new economymarketing.
Willthis be provocative in a business-to-business magazine with the Brits? Likely. And, it will probably be met with some confusion, too—which is okaybecause confusion at least invites a question that can then be answered.
Thegenesis for the organic marketing effort is, of course, Stormhoek wines. The basis for the content, to a certaindegree, is blog digerati/Internet Nobel Laureate, Robert Scoble—ex Microsoftemployee and one of the 20 or so bloggers online that garner incredible mindshareand traffic amongst bloggers and those that read blogs.
WhileI think the Stormhoek marketing launch in the U.S. is a brilliant idea I’m verycurious to see what the net result will be.
Apart of me says that in the U.S., with such a cluttered and confusing consumerenvironment, they will need much more in order to break in and gain mindshare. Or, at the least, that marketing should be targeting a specific demographic, separate from wine drinkers and wine bloggers proper.
Meanwhile,I’m surely interested in their wine and thankful they sent me eightbottles--which, to date, are still queued up to be drunk at a TBD date with alocal wine shop (the wine shop itself and the owner is somewhat difficult topeg down, but it’s completely understandable when you consider the concept ofwine blogging, free wine from a S. African winery that just secured an importerin the states and the fact that said wine shop has a horrible web site). I don’t think he completely gets the wholething—or what a blog is, for that matter.
Overall, youhave to give credit to Stormhoek and Hugh for breaking new ground.
Hughhas some recent thoughts on the wine biz and the ongoing debate about customers and wine marketing that areinteresting. Jamie Goode, author andnascent U.K. wine expert, commented around the customer wine and customerexperience in the comments to that post noting:
Ifyou make wine, your best hope is to create a strong brand that the retailers’need’. Otherwise, you’re always negotiating from a position of weakness,because they have what you need - customers.
Coincidentally,I touched on this in a post earlier today.
Really,I disagree with Jamie. This is a topic for anentirely different post, but that opinion is the "Wal-mart-ization" opinion thatholds "he who has the customer has the keys," but, that’s for mass markets and allindicators in the world talk about markets being conversations within thecontext of micro-markets or niches.
It’snot that I don’t think wineries don’t need to create a strong brand, because Ido, it’s just that I don’t think most wineries have the financial muscle tocreate strong brands in the way that we throw that term around. The numbers don’t add up, when you considerthat there are 5000 wineries in the U.S. alone and 30 or so wineries/conglomeratescontrol 85% of the market. That’s notan 80/20 rule, that’s a 99/1 rule. And,by consequence, it’s not good enough to say that the rest need to create abrand.
Therest need to participate in a way for a potential customers to find them,deliver a quality product that encourages them to try it again and then letthat lead to developing a brand.
Maybe,what wineries should consider doing is, instead of creating a quote-un-quote“brand” they should micro-slice a target and go after that i.e. trying to targetlegal age female college students in the state of California college system UCDavis, UC Berkely, Cal-Poly, etc.
Onceyou have penetration in that customer base, you target another and then anotherone until they grow on top of each other iteratively.
But,all of this building a brand thing is really a red herring for addressing thelimitations that are in front of you. Nobody achieved anything byacknowledging what they couldn’t do, instead of what they could.
Inthe meantime, this conversation is really snoozers for most people and I haveeight bottles of wine to drink from a little S. African winery that justsecured an importer and is trying to do something unique and different.
Perhaps I should poura glass while I ponder this heady brew of a conversation.
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