Whither the Future of Journalism
One of the subjects that comes up frequently in discussions about today’s blogs is, “Are bloggers journalists?” Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody,” explains it through some insightful observations which I’m paraphrasing here (really, you gotta read this book!)
A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that requires some sort of specialization. Professions exist because there is a scarce resource that requires ongoing management. The scarcity of the resource itself creates the need for a professional class. “The old dictum that freedom of the press exists only for those who own a press points to the significance of the change. To speak online is to publish, and to publish online is to connect with others. With the arrival of globally accessible publishing, freedom of speech is now freedom of the press, and freedom of the press is freedom of assembly.” And that explains why the Chinese government is so paranoid about Google.
For journalists, the resource (access to the means of distributing information, news, opinion) is no longer scarce, so we’re seeing the “mass amateurization” of the profession and a shift in the timing of when content gets edited. To make matters worse, when the resource was limited, an editor’s content editing role was necessary to determine “Why publish this?” Now, the question isn’t why, it has become “Why not?” So where scarcity of the means of distribution previously meant journalism’s function was to filter information before publication, it now means content editing and filtering comes after publication (think Search, Google Alerts, RSS feeds).
Another way Professor Shirky phrases it is, “If everyone can do something, it is no longer rare enough to pay for, even if it is vital.” And that’s the conundrum faced by journalism…and many other professions that were created from the pre-internet world.
Reposted from http://mengonline.com/blog/2016/02/10/todays-journalism-content-editing-shifts-to-after-publication/
Wine Price Structure Model for the U.S. Market
Here’s a link to a pdf explaining a price structure model for the U.S. market from Ex-Cellar to retail shelf price.
“Terroir” Being Redefined by Social Media: from “where produced” to “where consumed.”
Terroir is traditionally defined as “the sum of every environmental force affecting a given vineyard site” (Karen MacNeil, Wine Bible 2nd Edition). To many in the industry it’s considered a French fantasy; for others it is gospel. And just recently the word seems to have jumped the fence (or maybe the shark) into the spirit industry.
Etymology aside, why should we care about the credibility, definition or the myth/reality about the term? The answer lies in the revolution in wine and spirit conversation that is social media.
Terroir’s traditional definition speaks to the uniqueness of where a wine is produced and the collective impact of the soil, slope, exposure, microbes in the soil, microclimate et al.
We’re seeing a paradigm shift now however, with the word is taking root among Millennials in a new definition for wine: where it is consumed, and with whom.
And let’s be clear, I’m not advocating this use, just reporting on it.
What Foreign Wineries Want to Know About the U.S. Market
Here are the results of some research we conducted among export wineries regarding what type of information they most wanted to know about the U.S. market.
MARKET STRUCTURE AND REGULATIONS
• Finding an importer: How do you get one?
• Open vs. control states: strategies you should employ
• Selling to accounts with locations in multiple states: is it the right strategy for you and your brand(s) off-premise, on-premise?
• Independent stores vs. supermarkets: understanding which states allow wine to be sold in supermarkets, drug stores, mass merchants and which states don’t. What this means for you in terms of marketing, pricing and distribution.
• Distributors: understanding what they really do, what you can expect from them, what they will expect from you.
MARKETING
The answers here were interesting. What they need to know and think they want to know are two different things. E commerce is a very compelling strategy for smaller, esoteric brands…they only need to be in distribution in one store and can sell in multiple states. Interesting that social media is only 4th.
• Scores: how to get your wines scored, how to effectively use them in the U.S., and what your options are if your brand is not currently imported. (Larger concept: role/value of scores relative millennials in a social media driven world)
• Public Relations: how consumers get information about wines, what publications and websites they read and how to capitalize on a growing digital industry. Understanding the impact and importance of “traditional” print wine publications such as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Advocate
• Other ways to compete: non-traditional marketing, distribution and sales strategies
• Social Media: an overview of its impact in the American wine market and what tools are most useful for your brands.
• E-commerce: Why it’s important, how you can participate in it and how it differs from traditional retail (pros/cons).
OPERATIONS
• Contracts and agreements: why you need to get it in writing and what should be included.
• Timelines: how long it will take to find an importer, distributor, and to actually get your product on the shelf
• Market trips: how often someone from your winery should visit the U.S. and what should their priorities be when traveling there (meeting with importer/distributor, management for business reviews, wine dinners/lectures, working with sales reps in market).
• Trade events: an overview of the main trade shows and events in the U.S.
• Brand ambassador: job description and why you might need one.
Exhibitor Registrations for USA Trade Tasting 2016 Officially Sold Out
New York, NY. January 10, 2016 – USA Trade Tasting announced that exhibitor registrations for the Grand Tasting are officially sold out. Occupying both floors of the celebrated Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City on March 21-23, the event will host 160 exhibitors who will showcase wine, beer and spirits brands from more than 20 countries including the USA.
American importers and distributors looking to source new international brands for their portfolio will find this event of particular interest. With masterclasses on a wide variety of categories and regions, in addition to the traditional trade tasting hall, the grand tasting is set to give US buyers access to one of the largest forums for international beverage representatives.
Major international organizations will be in attendance, including Wines of South Africa, Wines of Australia, Wines of Chile, Wines of Portugal, New York Wines as well as hundreds of private groups and independent beer brands and craft spirit brands.
“We are extremely pleased by the overwhelming response we’ve received for USATT” said Sid Patel, CEO of USA Trade Tasting and Beverage Trade Network. “With the last few exhibitor registrations coming in at the end in December, we’ve officially sold out. We couldn’t have asked for a better caliber of suppliers for this year’s event. More importantly suppliers exhibiting understand the dynamics of USA market and are ready to support their new distributor and importer partners”
The grand tasting will also include the event’s Brand Pitch Sessions, a unique match-making service being offered at USA Trade Tasting. The initiative will partner importers and distributors with suppliers who closely match their buying requirements.
USA Trade Tasting will conclude with the Business Conference on March 23, 2016. The conference will consist of TED-Style talks with industry leaders speaking on best practices being used in the import and distribution industry.
Passes for USA Trade Tasting (trade only) can now be reserved online at http://bit.ly/1TEmhOa.
Marketing Manifesto for Wine and Spirits
Here’s a distilled version of things I’ve learned to be true in marketing wines and spirits in the U.S.
1. Distribution: It’s not about placements it’s about RE-placements
- Distribution on-and off-premise is a good absolute number, but the ratio of total distribution to number of accounts that have reordered gives more insight into how the brand is really doing.
- Reorder rates: This is the key metric which tells you whether the product is moving at the point of consumer purchase. Tip: if you run a distribution-build program with anything less than 3 bottles per placement minimum, you might be doing yourself more harm than good…generating distribution that won’t move.
2. Don’t market to empty shelves
Before you start consumer promotions, make sure you’ve developed sufficient distribution such that consumers can actually buy what you are promoting.
Tips: 1)You must have a where-to-buy function on your Facebook page and website. That does double duty…it not only allows your consumers to actually buy the product you’re promoting, but it also is a powerful sales tool to let retailers know you’re helping to drive traffic to their store/bar/restaurant. 2) Always target and work with at least one aggressive e-commerce retailer in every market… It will allow you to sell your products to consumers in states where you don’t have a distributor on board.
3. Get it in, and then Get it OUT
Building distribution is one thing, but it has little value if you haven’t coupled that with consumer marketing and promotion to move the product through and generate reorders at retail. Tip: in today’s hyper-competitive environment you need to prove your case commercially by yourself before you can convince others that it will sell through for them.
4. Help the importer and distributor do their jobs:
- Tell the trade what you’re going to be doing via trade advertising, PR and newsletters
- Drive consumer demand via advertising, promotion, social media et al.
Tip: Add a trade component to all consumer promotions so that the on and off premise accounts you have distribution in recognize you’re the one sending them customers and helping grow their revenue and margins.
5. Target Audience:
You can’t be all things to all people. Determine your target audience and focus on it precisely, comprehensively, consistently and relentlessly. Rinse and repeat.
Tip: it’s just as important to determine who’s NOT your audience as well as who is.
6. Triage by “Must,” “Should,” and “Could.”
It’s easy to be seduced by great ideas, but it’s your job to recognize that great ideas are only great if they are on-strategy. We like to break things into three categories to really simplify decision-making:
- What Must we do?: Things that absolutely, positively have to be done; without them nothing else will work
- What Should we do?: Things that are on-strategy and will help the brand, but only to be funded after insuring that all the “Musts” are funded and fielded effectively.
- What Could we do? Usually these fall into the category of unsolicited offers for sponsorships, events etc. We recommend you consider these only after all the Musts and the most cost-effective “Shoulds” are taken care of.
Tip: Make sure your strategies mesh with target audience behavior. You must use different tools to reach Millennials vs. Boomers.
7. Have a POINT of Difference that MAKES a Difference
This is the simplest, but perhaps also the most difficult thing you have to do. Pare down your brand positioning to its absolute essence to determine not just what differentiates you from competitors, but how to express that difference in ways that are meaningful and motivational.
We often ask prospective clients to define their POD that MAD and commonly get the same answer: “We make really great (your category here).” In today’s world, making great wine, spirits or beer is necessary, but not sufficient. What is it that makes your brand a unique solution to a consumer and trade buyer’s problem? Think emotional benefits rather than trade benefits.
Tip: “Pairing” no longer is limited to food and wine/cocktails. The new paradigm is not about what it pairs with, it’s where, when and with whom you are pairing . What is the environment, virtual or real, and who is participating. With apps like VinePair, ViVino, Wine4.me, consumers are sharing their experience in real time. That goes beyond the food…way beyond.
8. This is a Marathon, not a 100-meter dash.
The U.S. may be the most important wine/beer/spirit market in the world, but it’s also the most difficult, competitive and complicated. Tip: Recognize and plan for it…and most importantly hire a guide you can trust.
9. Don’t pay for people to come to you, bring your wines to where they’re already gathered.
- The real world: bars/restaurants/retail stores/events and,
- The virtual world: wine destination websites (not yours), online events,online communities.
Tip: Think of “gathering” in terms of synchronicity. These days, not everybody has to be in the same place at the same time to share the same experience.
10. Push vs. Pull
Building both into your marketing plan is mandatory. Push has no value without consumer purchase, pull has no value without distribution.
Tip: Allocate resources to activate consumers to order/call for your brand in a way that involves the retailer so they recognize what you’re doing for their specific account.
11. Ready, Fire, Aim
It’s rare to get everything right the first time. So set specific, quantified objectives (the ready part); fire when ready, then refine aim based on performance against those measurable objectives.
Tip: An objective without a measurement is just a goal.
12. Curb your enthusiasm and really focus
This is really hard to do, but absolutely critical. Recognize it’s rare to get things right the first time…you can be ready and still be wrong. (Ciroc was originally positioned as “snap-frost vodka before P Diddy got involved.) So invest the time and resources on a limited geography to soft launch in a small number of markets (no more than 3). The U.S. is more balkanized than the Balkans…52 different markets.
Tip: Prove your concept commercially and scalably and only then look to expand.
Steve’s Writing a Book
It’s been suggested, recommended, advocated, promoted, repeated and most of all…inevitable…so I’m taking the plunge and am writing a book.
Thanks to four people in particular for the motivation: Deborah Gray, “How to Import Wine: an Insider’s Guide” and her new book “Exporters Guide to the U.S. Market“; Cathy Hughye “Hungry for Wine“; and Alder Yarrow “The Essence of Wine: Celebrating the Delights of the Palate,” and Sid Patel of Beverage Trade Network and the USA Trade Tasting who hasn’t written a book yet, but pushed me over the edge of commitment to write mine.
More to come as it takes shape, but by publicly stating it I am now not just involved, but committed. The difference being captured in a joke I like to tell about the comparability of those words to a breakfast of bacon and eggs: The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.
Stay tuned.
Karen MacNeil’s Wine Bible, 2nd Edition
It’s a rather bold book title but the content delivers on the promise. Again. And while the publisher’s name is Workman, this is much, much more than a workman-like opus.
Karen MacNeil participated at the Wine Blogger’s Conference in the Finger Lakes this year and shared her insights, personal story, and passion. Soon after, the second edition was released and I got an early copy for review.
Wow!
Comprehensive, thorough, up-to-date and packed full of practical and useful content, it’s a delight to read. Unlike other major wine reference tomes, this is decidedly not an encyclopedia. It reads more like a travelogue-cum-textbook with some deliciously expressive prose.
Here’s what she has to say about Feiler-Artinger’s Ruster Ausbruch, one of my favorite stickys from Austria, and a winery and winemaker I had the privilege of dining with one winter’s evening in Rust. “Feiler-Artinger’s Ruster Ausbruch Essenz is a liquid caress, enveloping you and folding you into it. The wine quite simply has awesome beauty…Dried fruits, nuts, and dried citrus peel explode on the palate, and refinement and exquisiteness (at just 6.5 percent alcohol) is crazy good.” I love it…crazy good.
And this from the chapter on Ribera del Duero: “Old vines, gnarled as if in agony, protrude from the rough ground. If the ground holds vines in place everywhere else in the world, in Ribera del Duero, the opposite seems true. Earth herself clings to the muscular vines.” Brilliant and so very, very accurate.
Her overview of Greece includes an homage to the foods of that country, without which the wines it produces can’t be truly appreciated. Similarly for the color commentary of Campania she retells the competing stories of Lacryma Christi (trust me…if the stories don’t make you cry, the wines will. Thank you Filipo di Belardino and Piero Mastroberardino.)
While it’s too big to consume in one sitting, I’ve been enjoying, or better said, savoring each chapter and learning a lot along the way. Karen’s notes on petrol and its presence in aged Rieslings helped me understand the flaw/characteristic argument.
Bottom line, everyone should have a copy of The Wine Bible in their library, or better yet, keep it in the kitchen. It’s just the ticket to get a conversation started. You can order your copy from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Wine-Bible-Karen-MacNeil/dp/0761180834/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450222535&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wine+bible
Wine2Wine, Verona Italy Dec. 2015
I’ve just returned from Verona, Italy where I participated in the Wine2Wine Wine Business Forum organized by Vinitaly’s Stevie Kim and team.
The key problem Vinitaly has, and in fact shares with many trade shows, is that while they have a great schedule of seminars, conferences and workshops at the annual event, attendees and exhibitors just don’t want to leave the show floor.
Stevie’s answer was to create an entirely new event, dedicated to the sharing of knowledge and ideas and bringing together some of the top thinkers in the industry.
In addition to the Italians, there were some great speakers from U.S. including Danny Brager from Nielsen, Jancis Robinson of the Financial Times, Robert Joseph and Felicity Carter of Meininger’s, Levi Dalton of the I’ll Drink to That Podcast and Adam Teeter of VinePair.
I had a SRO crowd at a seminar with two parts which we knew from past experience are the two subjects that are of most interest to offshore producers. One was on helping attendees to understand the culture of the U.S. and how that impacts the wine business. And the second was a workshop on U.S. price structures answering the question the wineries commonly ask… “How come everyone is making more money on my wine than I am?” When I put a slide with the formulas on the screen it looked like a rock concert…everybody pulled the cell phone out to take a picture of excel spreadsheet.
I also participated on a panel discussion on the changing media landscape and role of paid, earned, shared and owned media. Adam Teeter of VinePair gave a really articulate explanation of how millennials are no longer seeking out or responding to concept of authoritative wine publications and critics. Instead, they’re looking to their peer group for information and validation. Pierrick Bouquet talked about the La Nuit en Rosé event and gave some practical examples of how he’s using social media tools like Instagram and Facebook to turn an experimental idea into a social trend turbochrging the explosion of interest in rosé wine. Gino Colangelo added his thoughts on how “traditional” PR is adapting to a changing marketplace. And I got to tackle the issue of the role of paid advertising in reaching today’s wine consumers.
They also had a a speed dating session of wineries pitching to prospective importers. And that just reinforced to me how important it is to educate these wineries on what it’s really going to take to break into the U.S. market.
And that’s one of the reasons I’m involved in the USA Trade Tasting event scheduled for next Mar. 21-23, 2016 in NYC. Like the folks at Vinitaly, our goal is to rock the industry and reinvent the way wine and spirit trade shows are conducted in the U.S.
Spec Creative: Not a Good Strategy
When a brand runs an agency review, they’re generally looking to answer the question: “Are these the kind of people I want to work with.” That means focusing on how they work, and how they work with you. Not whether they guessed right while being kept at arm’s length and working for free.
I believe it is neither in the client’s nor the agencies’ best interest to make spec creative part of the review. Spec creative generates only a superficial snapshot at best and one often judged on poorly defined or sometimes even irrelevant criteria.
All the agencies on your finalist list should be able to do the job creatively given the right input and guidance—they wouldn’t have made it that far if they hadn’t already demonstrated that. But actually experiencing the process offers much more insight than the spec creative results can.
So let me throw out a radical idea, instead of asking agencies to work for free…pay them. The best way to figure out what it’s like to work with them, is, well, to actually work with them The reason is really simple and compelling, the dynamic of the relationship changes when you are paying someone to do work for you. From the pitch pose of arms crossed, sitting back in their chair with a stone expression on their face, a paid project will have the marketer leaning forward and engaging with the agency in a collaborative mindset.
We’ve been successful in getting clients to agree to what we call a “Roll Up Your Sleeves” meeting. It’s a two day deep dive collaborative workshop with the goal of defining a strategy, timetable, budget and revenue forecast. Client gets tremendous value. It saves them tens of thousands of dollars and some six months of “normal” strategic planning work.
Beyond the practical, the real benefit for everyone is both sides have made a mutual commitment, and will give some penetrating insight into how the agency thinks and works, and most importantly give you a sense of what it would be like to work with them. Both sides will have only made a commitment for a limited of time and since it’s a project, it comes with an automatic “out” clause.
Most importantly, asking for spec is just plain wrong. This video puts the process into perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=essNmNOrQto
