Banning Passion

Marketing wine in this day and age takes real imagination, creativity, and ingenuity. The US wine market is saturated with wine brands, numbering in the tens of thousands, filling shelves, wine lists, and cellars. In such a saturated market, creating a distinct, unique brand is a real challenge; after all, everyone is just selling fermented grape juice.

Part of any branding effort is finding a “voice”, a writing style that complements and reinforces the branding. For many, branding just means creating a unique logo - a graphical brandmark, distinctive wordmark, or the combination of the two - and then sticking with a typeface or particular font most of the time. But branding is so much more than that; that is really just the beginning of the branding effort. Creating a distinctive writing style that is consistently used on marketing, sales, and communications efforts can go a long way towards creating a more vibrant and memorable brand.

One would think that, with the internet so much a textual experience despite the boom in online video, writing would be a critical endeavor in marketing. But so much of what is written online for wine really could be written by the same person. Therein lies a point of distinction for those that make an effort (such as the renowned Bonny Doon Vineyard - no one has a more distinctive voice in writing in the wine industry than Randall Grahm), and a very inexpensive way to add a unique attribute to a brand to make it more compelling and interesting.

Hence the title, “Banning Passion.” If there is one single, overused word in marketing, and especially in wine marketing, it is that word, “passion.” Passionate about making wine. Passionate about drinking wine. Passionate about bathing in wine. Ironically, the word comes from the sacrifice and torture that Jesus went through after the Last Supper - not exactly the resounding image one conjures when viewing industrial machinery macerate grapes into pulp, or having snagged the latest Screaming Eagle release to continue a vertical collection destined never to be consumed.

It can’t be stressed enough that to write with correct grammar, and to write creatively will make any marketing more interesting and - at this time at least - a brand more distinctive. That’s something we at T&T are really passionate zealous about / enthusiastic about / have a fervor for!

Web 2.0 Round 3

OpenWine Consortium

At the start of April I became member #711 of the OpenWine Consortium, a Facebook or MySpace for the wine industry. I haven’t joined a social network before, mostly because I couldn’t see how it would be anything but a time sink for already few hours in the day - as well as another thing keeping me chained to the PC. But joining the OpenWine Consortium did make sense for me, and really shows the true evolution of the Web 2.0 revolution. Giant social networks won’t likely go away soon, but I foresee more topic-specific networks being created and populated as the real future trend. The next true step will allow social networks to cross link to each other, e.g., my identity on OWC could populate other specific social networks of my choosing - say one on jazz, for example (another major interest of mine). Rather than me signing up for dozens of “walled gardens”, i.e., exclusive social networks, I sign up once and select those that I want to be a part of. That would really open up new communication and networking, allowing diverse topics (wine and jazz) and industries (wine and music) to cross pollinate and cross market by using those persons specifically interested and knowledgeable about both topics.

If you are in the wine industry, check out the OWC at www.openwineconsortium.org. Looks like the start of a good community.