Back in May, VinTank, a digital media research agency that focuses specifically on the wine industry, published a white paper on Social Media and the influence of social networks and bloggers on the wine industry. When this white paper was first published I had promised to read through it and think about the effects such a report might have.
Events transpired to delay my objective of learning what these white paper had to offer, but after finally getting around to doing so, I have some comments.
There is no question that every public relations professional should read this paper. Every winery, government sponsored marketing group, and wine producing association should take what is said in this paper and find ways to adapt it to their marketing plans. I am kicking myself for having wasted an entire month without reading it, however I found myself smiling that there were tactics included in this paper that fit within what I considered to be obviously good actions to take.
Money is being freed by government groups and marketing associations to focus specifically on social media and the visible influencers in the online space. The power of advertising has diminished as new avenues to reach directly to enthusiastic wine consumers have opened up. Why would a wine region pay $30,000 to a magazine to run one advertisement when that money can be stretched much farther by doing an online program over several months?
There is no question that "how to use the modern communication tools and the online medium" is now plaguing wineries and their PR/marketing representatives. I think only recently (within the last year) has it really become the focus of the wine industry at large. The wineries and wine regions that had the courage to take the risk of jumping into this forum years ago have (I believe) recovered the most benefit. What I was hoping to find in this White Paper was just how much benefit has already been gained by this new medium. In that, I was disappointed.
After reading the first few pages, I could immediately tell that I would have a hard time with this report. I understand the desire to keep the writing style interesting and engaging, but where I was looking for serious factual information I found more of a friendly slap on the back writing approach. The paper moved away from that style once it moved into more analytical discussion, but it immediately made me distrust the findings in the paper, even if I agreed with them.
Specifically when the writer discusses the pressures of the current regulation system in the U.S., I found the discussion to be partisan without giving me the necessary background information to either agree or disagree with their position on direct shipping models. I do not work for a wine distributor and I actually have very little to do with the actual business of selling wine. While I am not unfamiliar on the whole to the regulations of the three tiered system, I found it hard to simply accept the writer's condemnation of the system without further discussion. I follow Tom Wark's interest in direct shipping for retailers and wineries, and I read his blog thoroughly. However to state such a partisan angle in a paper that had little to do with the shipping of wine caught me as odd.
Other portions of the paper that I found most interesting:
"Wine bloggers with an audience over 20 people has an influence that is relavent." - Such an observation certainly gives my own blog a more interesting perspective, as I can claim many times over that many readers.
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as the three most influential social media networks. Something I totally agree with.
The top 20 bloggers make up an agragated higher reach than Wine Spectator. The only trick is that Wine Spectator is one entity, whereas reaching bloggers is fragmented.
I would suggest you read the paper yourself and form your own opinions. The work that went into this paper is palpable and certainly recommends VinTank as a thorough research source.
Logging you in...
18 hours ago
Paul Mabray · 822 weeks ago
Thank you for reading our paper and for your comments. Our report was meant to be the first signpost on the road of understanding the intersection of wine and social media. Currently we have not seen another report taking another industry and delving so deep into the implications of how social media has an effect on that industry. And with the exception of SVB's report, Nielsen, Wine Opinions, and a few others, there are very few deep reports that the wine industry produces and almost no reports about wine online. We tried to do our best and will continue to do so with future reports. We learned a lot about how to produce content and from much of the great feedback we received from all members of the wine industry (retailers, wineries, wholesalers, consumers, tech companies). We also welcome others (perhaps yourself) to commit time and energy to help create more reports, whitepapers, spreadsheets, books, et al that bring deep information back to the wine industry to help us all. We do know that the information given should give you solid guidance on better PR strategies as it relates to wine social media and a plethora of tools (like Cruvee.com) to help you manage these networks.
I'll try to address the rest of your comments in the order you wrote them:
I am sorry for your disappointment in not seeing more success stories for social media and wine companies. We found the same disappointment and with few exceptions (Twisted Oak, James David, Stormhoek, Pinotblogger, Murphy Goode) not many wine companies are engaged strongly in anything digital. It is our hope that this paper will remedy this.
As to style, we rewrote the paper many, many times looking for the right voice. In the end we wanted a style that reflect our firm, fun and smart. This same style has been incredibly successful for Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Chris Anderson. I am surprised that your trust was less as a result and would ask you back if you trust them less as well. Moreover we supported our case with strong data that reinforced our positions.
In regards to our bias it is well known that we are direct advocates (for wineries and wine retailers). Unfortunately writing a whole dissertation about that could be a book within itself. Tom Warks recent blog post did an excellent summary and as someone who wrote our introduction, you can see he understand the relevance of our report to those targets. Being partisan was a function of the broken system and how these platforms can help a very difficult supply chain gain significant advantages and thus create true value in its publication.
Things that were very relevant that you did not find interesting surprises us such as the platforms we chose to be most relevant (VinFolio, CellarTracker, Adegga).
How antiquated laws create friction for healthy business models.
Our impression chart and the math that created it.
Why Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin are particularly key for wine.
The ethics of wine blogging.
Our investment of time and money to generate the report for free.
Agreed about the Wine Spectator being a single more powerful entity. But with the continued penetration and audiences of wine blogs, it is important to note that they are growing in importance.
In conclusion, we thank you for reading and giving us your opinion. Our next report has already started and we intend it to be better and just as relevant to the wine industry.
RobBralow 61p · 822 weeks ago
WineWonkette · 822 weeks ago
(1) The data didn't match the hypothesis, so it was excluded. This tends to be the worst case scenario, but I've seen plenty of people do it. One of my biggest frustration in business school was the group project where, after research investigation, the original premise was so off base, but the team didn't want to have to go through either admitting it was wrong, or doing more research.
Or (2) the announced deadline for the White Paper had passed by months, and the desire was to get SOMETHING out there, and including all the data would have taken much longer, and would have pushed the paper's release out even farther. So instead of cold hard data, the team puts out a lot of generalities that those of us who are suspect of nearly everything that doesn't give us "all the facts" tend to suspect the veracity.
My guess is that vintank's Social Media "White Paper" suffered much more from (2) than (1). It was such a huge undertaking, that perhaps it was a little too aggressive for an initial effort. That and the availability of data wasn't there because many bloggers were not willing to provide it.
I was most disappointed by these parameters:
"The measurements for all were conducted within 24/48 hours from February 10th for the social networks and February 28th for wine bloggers"
From my experience, that makes some of the data so subjective that it's almost not worth including. It's not a big enough range to capture significant data to form conclusions.
That said, I enjoyed reading the information. It's a great start. I am looking forward to more in-depth reports from a venture that clearly has a huge stable of talent, drive, and determination to assist the wine industry in evolving with the rapidly media model.
Derek Bromley · 822 weeks ago
Paul Mabray · 822 weeks ago
RobBralow 61p · 822 weeks ago
The wine industry is still figuring bloggers out. Citizen journalists are great and all, but do they move cases of wine? When it comes down to it, that is what wineries want to know. And it is definitely a case-by-case basis (pun intended). There are some bloggers out there that blog for the love of wine, some do it because they have an audience they want to express information towards. It is the bloggers that write just to secure free samples that wineries (and PR people) need to identify, although perhaps that subset is also influential. The Wine Whore certainly has an audience and his stated goal is to simply get free samples. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Paul Mabray · 822 weeks ago
WineWonkette · 822 weeks ago
With regard to his point: "You don't see quotes of bloggers on shelf talkers?" Who puts together those shelf talkers? The PR people. They CONTROL what goes on the shelf talkers. You start targeting bloggers and your PR, marketing and ad budget starts shrinking. You hire your own social media person, and you don't need quite so many people at the agency you've been paying. I've seen it. When a corporation hired me as the PR person, the agency rep felt threatened. As well she should have been. Because I had only one "account" I got better results. And the company cut the PR budget with the agency. The agency can get better deals with ad placements, and it's easier to measure results. PR is much more difficult to measure. And when you target bloggers, we're talking about PR.
Of course there's no need to throw the baby out with the bath water, you can't just stop counting on the traditional print media and target only bloggers. But let's be honest here. While it's difficult to target the bloggers who are going to give you the most ROI, it's those who advise the industry on which media to use who are the gatekeepers of success. There is a way to incorporate a variety of media, including bloggers into the mix -- but you must be willing to put your clients interests ahead of your own safe cocoon of "if it isn't broken, why try to fix it?"
RobBralow 61p · 822 weeks ago
If I did not suggest to my client that there is a new hot technology out there and we should check it out, then someone else will. Status quo does me no favors.
Paul Mabray · 822 weeks ago
RobBralow 61p · 822 weeks ago
WineWonkette · 822 weeks ago
Regarding qualifying or quantifying bloggers: Even when they do provide info, don't you have to take somewhat on faith? And HOW do you quantify it? It's much like worth-of-mouth marketing. Its under the radar, but often extremely effective if you can develop a relationship with the blogger, and in-turn his readers/consumers.