5 Marketing Lessons from Wine Country

Disclaimer:  Don't worry ... I have no intention of fashioning myself as the next Gary the "social media sommelier" Vaynerchuk [for those of you who are not familiar with Gary, check out http://tv.winelibrary.com/ for a truly unique experience].

I recently returned from my first-ever trip to California wine country [specifically Sonoma].  In addition to pristine weather, post-card vistas, incredible wine and some of the best food I've ever had, I also picked up a few lessons that might be useful for any marketer.

Lesson 1 - In sea of uneducated consumers, free is a good starting point:  If you're like me you haven't the faintest idea why one winery is better than the next.  The ones we ended up visiting our first day were largely based on free tasting passes [a $10-$20 value] passed on by our concierge.  Not the most sophisticated method of choosing, but a starting point.  I'm not advising marketers give away their product [who do you think I am, Chris Anderson?] but I do think trial is crucial, and free is as powerful driver of that behavior. 

Lesson 2 - Get your story straight, then tell it with passion: My wife and I were fortunate enough to visit with a guy called Stewart Dorman who runs a winery called Adrian Fog.  Stewart has a great story [former wine writer ... left to pursue his passion ... spends his days toiling in the vineyards or perfecting his blends ... only makes 1,000 cases barrels a year ... etc.].  It's not so much Stewart's story [which is awesome] but the passion with which he tells it.  We walked away from our conversation with two bottles of relatively expensive wine - I wanted to take part of Stewart's story home with us.

Lesson 3 - Create a captivating and differentiating experience: Of all the places we visited, we only joined one wine club - and it wasn't necessarily the best wine we had [but it was damn good].  Rather, it was the winery that did an elegant snack pairing with their tasting flight, spent an hour talking us through the flight, answered our questions, told us their history ... they were the anti-wine snobs.  And it made their tasting room different than the others, and a really fun experience.  The winery is Williamson Wines.

Lesson 4 - "Limited edition" can be a powerful sales tool: I quickly realized that most wine for sale was not available for distribution [meaning only sold direct or via a wine club]. So the pitch is: You can't get this anywhere else other than buying it right now.  Wouldn't it be a shame to get home and think to yourself, 'too bad I didn't get that wine when I had the chance'?

Lesson 5 - Search is king:  Found on every street corner in the town of Healdsburg.  Charming, no?

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5 Rules For How To Behave In Social Media

I've been on a jag lately about the phenomenon of the "vocal few" in social media.  I wrote about a troubling shift in the brand-consumer power dynamic; and the vilification of "old" media during the breaking Michael Jackson news. 

Hopefully this is my last post on the topic ... for the time being.

PersonalFoul The latest broo-ha-ha has to do with ESPN.  Yesterday afternoon it was rumored - based on a misguided Tweet from an ESPN reporter - that ESPN had enacted draconian social media policies on their employees.  Very influential bloggers, including Chris Brogan and Mashable rushed to wag their finger at the network.  Tsk Tsk.  Problem though - neither Brogan, nor Mashable, nor anyone else had actually seen the policy at the time they were passing judgment. So they were basing their "reporting" on ... [crickets].

[Update: In the spirit of this post ... neither Chris nor Mashable indicated having seen the policy when they first blogged about it. Both referenced an NPR post as their source; that NPR post was based on a single Tweet from an ESPN reporter. Since then, everyone has updated their posts to link to the actual policy in question.  But the entire point of this post is about what happened before anyone had actual facts on which to base an evaluation.]

By the time ESPN released the policy, countless people had blindly re-tweeted and propagated the negative POV, based solely on the uninformed opinions of others.

Funny thing happened on the way to the forum ... turns out the policy was, for the most part, reasonable.  You can see the bullet points here.

Yet another tempest in the teapot.  The vocal minority strikes again.

Can't we all just get along?  I have five proposed rules for how we should all behave moving forward [wishful thinking, I know]:

  1. Get your facts straight before the bashing begins.  Or at least get a fact [any fact] on which you base your opinion.
  2. Put yourself in the brand's shoes.  Have you worked at a brand in the era of social media?  If not, take your fingers off the keyboard for a minute and just try to think what it's like to be a brand trying to navigate the new world of social media.
  3. Don't blindly pass along the uninformed opinions of others.  Do your own thinking.  If you agree, go for it.  But at least put some effort behind it.
  4. Consider the impact your words can have on an individual or organization.  I'm not saying "if you don't have anything nice to say ..." but do try and put a human face on the target of your criticism.
  5. Get over yourself.  We all make mistakes.

So - can you live by these rules?  I, for one, will make a conscious effort to do so.

Hotel Partnerships

[I wrote this for the Ogilvy PR travel and tourism blog, and thought it had some relevance here]

I recently read on Springwise about a nice promotion from Omni Hotels called Omni Flips for Summer.   From Springwise …

… families staying at any of the chain’s hotels and resorts in North America can borrow a pocket-sized video camcorder for free and use it to record their most memorable moments. The camcorder provided is the new Flip Ultra video camcorder, launched this spring by Pure Digital, and it’s available to guests who purchase any “Omni Flips for Summer” weekend package … When their weekend filming is complete, guests can upload their video memories to their own laptop or use the Omni Hotels Business Center at no charge to transfer the footage to a thumb drive to take home. Guests are also encouraged to upload a three-minute video to Omni’s Local Scoop social networking website as part of the Omni Flips for Summer Video Contest, the winner of which—announced in September—will get a free trip for four to the Omni Bedford Springs Resort in Pennsylvania.

In the last few years hotels have become a very attractive environment for brands to reach their targets.  In my experience, here are a few things brands should keep in mind when partnering with hotels:

  1. Simplicity. Hotel brands are usually governed by a centralized brand team, but operations are very much determined property-by-property.   And these days, operations teams are stretched thin.  The more you - the brand - can do to create a truly turnkey promotion, the better your chances for success.
  2. Beta. Rolling a promotion out to an entire chain of hotels is risky, expensive, and will require logistics coordination you never imagined.  Instead, pilot the promotion in one or two markets - validate guests interest and take the opportunity to tweak the operational aspects to make it easier on a grander scale.
  3. Localize. If possible, try to localize the promotion to make it more interesting to the guests in a particular market.
  4. Delight. Travel - particularly business travel - can be grueling.  When possible, delight guests with something unexpected and fun.  At the very least, don’t make them jump through hoops.
  5. Talkability. Don’t think me too.  Think me first.  The latter will generate much more word-of-mouth.

So what else should go on this list?

What's With The Media Bashing?

To those using Michael Jackson's death as a reason to bash "Old" Media:

You rightly criticized the mainstream media for calling the 2000 election prematurely.  That was an unmitigated disaster.

Now you're wrongly criticizing them for their initial reporting (or lack thereof) out of Iran; and their hesitation to confirm Michael Jackson's death.

You can't have it both ways. 

At at the end of the day, I'll take solid reporting over knowing something 20 minutes earlier. 

Because unless we're talking a terrorist attack or natural disaster, those extra 20 minutes it took to get the story right won't matter in the long run.

And besides, what value comes of bashing "old" media?  Perhaps I'm biased since my wife spent many years as a national TV news producer, but what seems lost on the Twitterati is that behind the mastheads and animated logos sit a smart, dedicated, thoughtful group of producers, editors and reporters who want - more than anything - to get the story right.

Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Conference

Had the pleasure of attending the Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference [WOMMA-U] this past week in Miami.

The prevalent themes were very clear:

  • "Campaign" is a four-letter-word.  It's all about conversation.
  • Brands cannot succeed in social media or WOMM without committing to listening.
  • WOMM measurement is still a work-in-progress, but strides are being made.

If you're interested in reading my posts from the conference, check them out on the Ogilvy PR Digital Influence blog.  More recapping than analysis, but perhaps a nugget or two you might find interesting.

Also, here's a link to my #WOMMA related Tweets.  I tried my best - with a few exceptions - to make them more than mindless noise.

Would love your feedback on any of the blog posts, or your perspective if you also attended WOMMA-U.