Good Grape Wine Company

April 20 2006

Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the

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 4^thestate

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 4^thestate

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 4^thestate

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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