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Stormhoek

Social Media Is About Conversation

by Tim Elliott on May 1, 2009

There is a good post on Mashable today about social media that struck a cord with me. All too often when “social media” is mentioned in the wine industry, most think all they have to do is start a blog, claim their Twitter account and setup a Facebook page. While all of these things are part of a social media plan, they are just tactics to produce one thing: conversation.

Back 5 years ago, Stormhoek leveraged the conversation they nurtured in the tech blogosphere to change how people chose wine to take home for dinner. This led to increased sales and solidified the brand to withstand a near-death experience a couple years back. Although I don’t have any updated numbers, I think they still sell a fair amount of wine in the UK.

Blogging didn’t sell Stormhoek wine; the conversation started on their blog and other places spread awareness, their sampling programs got wine into people’s mouths and the rest took care of itself. They never really blogged about the wine but about getting like-minded people together to share some time accompanied by Stormhoek wine.

To those who think the Stormhoek story is old, dated and can’t be replicated today, just look at Le Beast. Same playbook, just updated. I think we’ll see that this approach still works if the social marketing is executed creatively.

Watch this space as I will be blogging about another case study I’m working on right now.

Going Where No Wine Brand Has Gone Before

by Tim Elliott on January 8, 2009

I think this year will be the tipping point where wineries will begin to get the power of social media to drive their brand. But some are still hung up the the ROI of social marketing which will delay their campaigns. This creates opportunities for those who understand how to plan and execute successful social media programs that engage customers.

Take Le Beast, for example. This French wine brand started their marketing late last year with a series of viral videos posted to a couple video sharing sites. Check out the first one here:

Huh? What about the wine, you might be thinking. Well watch the rest of the series to find out (you’ll need to scroll to the bottom and click to show all since they have posted 32 videos to date).

I think this is a great example of social media marketing in action. There is not a lot of production value here. Just some creative use of iMovie and a Flip video camera. The “secret sauce” is partnering with well known video blogger Loren Feldman (he’s the guy behind the puppet). But anyone could have done this since Stormhoek pioneered this approach partnering with Hugh Macleod some 4 years ago.

Loren has an audience already and this audience will follow his Le Beast antics. Word will spread, wine will be sold and by this time next year we’ll be talking about how brilliant and innovative this campaign was. But all the ingredients were already in the public domain. All you have to do is find a new twist and do something no wine brand has done before.

Viral campaigns don’t just happen; they are planned, executed and take time to develop. And remember that ROI also means Return on Ignoring.

To be continued…

Going Beyond Terroir

by Tim Elliott on November 12, 2008

Every winery has a story to tell and does this through various channels: advertising, PR outreach, their tasting room experience, on the web and now in social media. Most times this story is related to the vineyard and it’s unique climatic conditions, the so-called “terroir” story.

The only problem with this is that every winery tells the same terroir story and few actually have the unique conditions in their vineyard site to actually have much impact on their wine. It’s just more marketing blather that many customers are starting to tune out.

Photo by EverJean via Flickr

So that makes what Stormhoek is doing so interesting. Yesterday Jason Korman posted on their blog a story not about terroir but about what the brand stands for:

Love
Being Passionate
Dreaming Big
Being Spontaneous
Celebrating
Changing The World

It’s not just all about these things, of course, the wine still has to be good but that is much easier to ensure these days even for those like Stormhoek making wine at industrial scale.

But this type of aspirational positioning for a wine brand is precisely what I think connects with the average web-savvy wine consumer today, and a large part of the “luck” Stormhoek has had in the market these past few years (they’ve also had some bad luck, but that’s the subject of another post). So I would challenge all winery leaders to think hard about what their brand really stands for. Is it the place, viticulture or winemaking practices or something else entirely? I think those who think differently will be the ones building stronger brands and customer loyalty.

Change the world or go home. Indeed.

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