{"id":247,"date":"2011-04-14T13:51:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T17:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batchat.net\/?p=247"},"modified":"2011-04-14T13:51:24","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T17:51:24","slug":"us-drinks-conference-debut-partnership-with-wswa-wows-sro-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/14\/us-drinks-conference-debut-partnership-with-wswa-wows-sro-crowd\/","title":{"rendered":"US Drinks Conference Debut Partnership with WSWA Wows SRO Crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re just back from a whirlwind few days at the WSWA<\/a> in Orlando where we inaugurated the link up of USDC<\/a> with WSWA. \u00a0For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America is the big daddy of wine and spirit trade conventions in the U.S.<\/p>\n

After four years of flying solo with the U.S. Drinks Conference, we were thrilled to be asked to provide the educational sessions for this year\u2019s WSWA, with plans to co-locate the two conferences in full next year in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

We weren\u2019t sure what to expect in terms of attendance and were kind of worried since we didn\u2019t have that much advance time to promote it.\u00a0 But we were blown away by the response.\u00a0 The crowd started pouring in for the first session on Social Media, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly we were a bit conservative\u2026.Cindy Nachman-Senders and the folks from WSWA did some fancy footwork and found a fast extra 50 seats. We ended up with a standing room only crowd and had to turn people away at the door.\u00a0 The next three sessions were also packed filling up the extra seats.<\/p>\n

We led off with a focus on Social Media Marketing with me as moderator and a panel of Alyssa Rapp of Bottlenotes<\/a>, Kit Codik of Liquor.com<\/a>, Vincenza Kelly from the Italian Trade Commission<\/a> and Camper English of Alcademics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

(l to r) Kid Codik of Liquor.com, Vincenz Kelly of ITC, Alyssa Rapp of Bottlenotes, Steve Raye of Brand Action Team and Camper English of Alcademics<\/p><\/div>\n

They did a great job of putting into context what this whole SMM beast is all about.<\/p>\n

The key takeaway was the importance of engagement, transparency, authenticity and commitment\u2026not just talking the talk, but walking the walk.<\/p>\n

Jeff Grindrod moderated the Brand Builders session with Chris Catterton of Bogle Vineyards<\/a>, Norm Bonchick of Van Gogh Vodka<\/a> and Dave Stringfellow of Beacon Beverage Imports.\u00a0 The big advice there was for small brands\u2026start small, stay focused and don\u2019t expand too quickly.\u00a0 Distributors have their eyes on what\u2019s going on and they\u2019ll recognize a successful brand. It\u2019ll be much easier to expand when you\u2019ve proved the concept, and then can leverage the middle tier for growth. For larger companies there’s no silver bullet.\u00a0 Just as each brand has a unique USP, each has to determine the right strategy whether it be flavor extensions galore, or sticking to a core set of skus.<\/p>\n

MHW Ltd. prexy John Beaudette piloted the \u201cNavigating Brand Entry:\u00a0 Understanding the Three-Tier System\u201d session with panelists Bill Earle of NABI<\/a>, Charlie Merinoff of Charmer Sunbelt,<\/a> Vince O\u2019Brien of Nixon Peabody<\/a> and Jim Squeo of NABCA<\/a>.\u00a0 They pointed out the critical need for offshore suppliers to have an experienced pilot to guide \u00a0them through the apparently Byzantine rules and regulations that comprise the American drinks market.<\/p>\n

Mike Ginley of Next Level Marketing<\/a> played solo cleanup with a deep dive on maximizing the value of a Brand Ambassador team.\u00a0 Brand Ambassadors (aka Market Managers) are a critical component to a new brand launch.\u00a0 They can help prime the pump and supply the account-level time and attention that can results in real brand traction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Drinks Conference produces educational sessions for WSWA in Orlando…first year partnership between the two organizations delivers valuable info and networking for wine and spirit industry attendees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,17,21,23,43,71,90,165,167,168,182,204],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alcademics","tag-beacon-beverage-imports","tag-bogle","tag-bottlenotes","tag-dave-stringellow","tag-italian-trade-commission","tag-liquor-com","tag-us-drinks-conference","tag-usdc","tag-van-gogh-vodka","tag-wine-and-spirits-wholesalers-of-america","tag-wswa","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7k1BV-3Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bevologyinc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}