Jun 14, 2006
The wine PR business has really changed. It is much harder to garner good press for your wine today than it was 15 years ago for one simple reason: There are a whole lot more excellent wines on the market and just as many new, compelling stories that need to be told. A good wine marketer or publicist better know what they are doing. This is the first in a series of looks inside the wine PR business. Or, better…
Jun 14, 2006
A Cautionary Tale What’s the impact of building a winery marketing strategy that relies on receiving only great scores and ratings from the most important wine critics? Consider this cautionary tale. A few years ago a very fine winemaker decides it’s time to make their own wines, rather than make someone else’s wine. So the winery is born. Well, actually they lease space at another winery to make about 400 cases of wine. They get fruit from great vineyards and…
Jun 8, 2006
It goes by various names: "Data Sheet", "Tech Sheet", "Product Page". Whatever it is or should be called it is the single most common piece of marketing material I’ve created in 15 years of wine marketing and public relations. I hesitate to even guess at the number. Yet, each one, while different, is the same. The "Data Sheet" is, simply, a description of a wine used generally to give background on the product to a winery’s distributors, sales people, restaurants,…
Jun 6, 2006
" The Berry Brothers buying team has recently returned from Bordeaux and there is little doubt that 2005 is one of the greatest vintages of all time." ________ "Wine experts are unanimous that 2005 Bordeaux is the greatest vintage in living memory, according to wine importers Wands Limited. _______ "2005 is a knockout. Not only is it exceptional, say those who have tried the wines, it is singular." ________ "What makes it really unique is, across the board, from the…
Jun 5, 2006
My economics professor in college lectured the class that near all pricing could be explained by one simple rule: Supply and demand. On its face this is a pretty simple rule. Count up the supply. Measure the demand and voila. We all knew and so did he that it’s a tad simpler than that. Another thing he taught us was to be careful to accurately identify what the object or item under consideration is. That brings us to this last…