As one goes about attempting to gain recognition for their wine products or services via the media, it is pretty crucial to understand how different types of media are likely to cover the subject of wine. And there is a very big difference.

If, for example, you hope to draw attention to your wine based on coverage from the Dallas Morning News or Time Magazine, you might want to consider using your wine to create Molotov Cocktails in order to combat undead attackers during the Zombie Apocalypse. That’s the kind of story wide circulation, general news and entertainment media like to publish about wine…sensational stories.

On the other hand, if you think a feature in Wine & Spirits Magazine might help your brand, you might be better off pitching a story about how you’ve made a wine that appeals to the army of zombies coming our way since the “enthusiast” Wine Media is generally looking for stories that highlight unique producers.

What follows is a breakdown of how different elements of the media cover wine and can serve as a guide to which type of media outlet you approach in pitching the story of your wine product or service:

THE TRADE MEDIA
Whether from a business, viticultural, financial, winemaking or marketing angle, this is where you find the most geeky, detailed, jargon filled and least generally interesting coverage of wine. However, the wine business could not function well without this kind of coverage. It is through this type of media that the newest ideas are first reported upon, achievements of individual industry professionals are announced and the state of the industry is most closely dissected.

Example of Trade Media: Wine Business Monthly, Vineyard and Winery Management, Wines & Vines
Typical Stories: “Large California Harvests Create Capacity Crush”, “Wineries May Lose Dispute Over Internet Domaine Names”
Likely Zombie-Related Story:”Zombies Wine Drinker Demographics”

THE ENTHUSIAST WINE MEDIA
Where the enthusiast wine drinkers go to read and learn. It’s in this category of wine media where reviews are published, profiles of wineries and wine people are printed, the wines of regions are profiled, wine travel options are considered and wine-centric restaurants are highlighted. This is the media for core wine buyers.

Examples of Enthusiast Wine Media: The Wine Spectator, Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine, World of Fine Wine, Wine & Spirits Magazine, The Wine Enthusiast and most wine blogs
Typical Stories: “The Magical Perfume of Jerez”, “The Heights of Ribera del Duero”, “A Tale of Two Outstanding Viogniers”
Likely Zombie-Related Story: “Zombie Vintners in Alaska Experiment with Biodynamics”

WIDE AUDIENCE ENTHUSIAST WINE MEDIA
In this category of wine media you find wine writing that reaches beyond the enthusiasts to a much larger and broader audience than the Enthusiast Wine Media. These are the wine articles that show up in daily newspapers and in food and lifestyle magazines and blogs. The content is often similar in nature to that of the Enthusiast Wine Media, but also often in a shorter format or more general in scope. It is through this category of media that the vast majority of people come in contact and consumes wine information.

Examples of Wide Audience Wine Media: Wine columns in Daily Newspapers, Food & Wine Magazine, Travel+Leisure Magazine, American Way Magazine
Typical Stories: “Wine of the Week: A Rich Vibrant White You Can Enjoy with Steak”, “Provence: Its Transportive Rose Wine”, “Decanting French Wine”
Likely Zombie-Related Story: “How to articulate your love of wine through grunts”

GENERAL NEWS & ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA
When coverage of wine turns up in the General News and Entertainment Media, you can almost guarantee that it is salacious wine news, wine news connected to politics or in some way belittles wine enthusiasts. In other words, it’s not usually about wine. This is the case because in this category of media there exists little or no interest in wine among readers so when wine is covered at all it must appeal to other interests of the readership.

Examples of General News & Entertainment Media: Network News, Daily Newspaper New Sections, Time Magazine
Typical Stories: “Counterfeit Fine Wine Dealer Sentenced to 10 years”, “Why Boomers Should Drink Like Millennials”, “A Hint of BS: Can it be that Wine Snobs are Worse than Art Snobs? Yes it Can.”
Likely Zombie-Related Story: “Zombie Health Benefits From Two Glasses of Wine Daily-Study Shows”

B.R. Cohn Winery / Personal Photo

The term ‘crisis pr’ is today’s term, no question. You’ve seen the news of Sunday’s early morning earthquake. We send our wishes of support to everyone coping with the aftermath.

Here is a checklist and overview of what a winery should be considering in this situation.

One thing which is clear from the early coverage of the Napa earthquake is that the outside world might not realize that many wineries don’t have power or electricity or Internet access. Keep that in mind as you reach out to communicate.

There are several communications to send out. Keep in mind that anything you send out “internally” may make its way to the media, so don’t disclose anything too proprietary or personal.

All of these pieces are equally important:

1)      Be in touch with your employees. Update them with how the situation has impacted the business, whether you will be open, how to reach each other if phone lines or computers or power are down.

2)      Be in touch with your partners: that would mean non-full-time employees, people who work intimately with you such as your computer website maintenance team or sales fulfillment company.

3)      Communicate with your distributors: let them know if the situation is impacting shipping or availability of wines (if you know this yet) and most importantly, give them contact information if they have an urgent question.

4)      Consider reaching out to your mailing list customers: if they’re fans of your winery, you can bet they’re eager to hear and may be monitoring your Facebook or website home page for news; hearing directly from you would be very meaningful to them.

5)      Have a statement ready for the media. This can be very brief, even one or two sentences. It should be sent to any employee who might answer a phone and be asked to comment. You could literally put a copy by every phone in the winery. It should go on to your Facebook and website home page and other social media channels if possible. In intense professional and personal times of hardship, it is VERY important to have a position and ‘stick to it,’ so that the winery’s image is consistent. This sounds callous, perhaps, but the craft of image-making is very, very delicate, composed of so many strands of detail and personality—an off-hand comment to a journalist can easily undermine all of your marketing efforts over a long period of time.

The use of photos: Crisis situations aren’t different from normal life in that the power of a great photo can easily trump lots of words. Just remember—before sharing and posting photos of damage—that there is the communication of news and then there’s the long-term presence of those images.

We send everyone who was impacted by the earthquake our warmest wishes, and hope these ideas might be helpful.

It’s not the easiest thing, nor the least expensive thing, to have our wine reviewed positively by an authoritative wine critic or wine-related publication. So when it happens, it’s important for the producer and vendors of the wine to take full advantage of occasion; to extend the life and utility of the positive review.

But first, ignore anyone who tells you that the reviews published by wine critics are a useless, waning in marketing value, ignored by any particular generation of wine drinkers or meaningless. The difference between the impact of a rating and review of a wine by someone touting it on Twitter and a critic touting it in, say, Wine & Spirits Magazine is exponential: one is exposing your wine to probably 1000 people at most, some of whom may like wine and some of whom may have no interest in the tweeter’s opinion, while the other is exposing your wine to a highly engaged audience of tens of thousands of wine lovers who have already indicated they trust the opinion of the magazine by actually paying money to read it. Continue Reading →

CLICK BAIT

There’s ‘click bait’ and then there’s serious journalism. There’s been a fair amount of wine country water cooler discussion of an article on The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch which appeared August 3, titled 10 Things Winemakers Won’t Tell You. Take a read: it’s instructive and may even get your heart racing: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-winemakers-wont-tell-you-2014-07-31

As of August 12, it’s attracted 110 comments online. Let’s deconstruct it wearing publicist goggles:

1)      The writer has selected controversial aspects and elements

2)      The writer has enriched each of the 10 “Things” with supporting statistics and quotes

3)      It’s easy to be negative and stay negative—that’s always more interesting than ‘platitudes’ about how wine might enhance meals or moments with family and friends.

Good news isn’t news—that might be another way to digest this article. You’re being taken advantage of! It isn’t what it seems. You’re paying too much. Wine is bad for you. Wine has terrible and unhealthy components….right?

In reality, although this seems to be an article about wine, it may really be a discussion about  marketing, with its numerous implications of how the public is easily fooled about wine. Wouldn’t we all love to sit down with this writer and taste the wines we’ve made and tell her their stories—notwithstanding the isinglass or Mega Purple….?!