It was intense. Four full days and nights this June in Sonoma County with a close cadre of 17 wine writers, educators, promoters, and students.
This continues our fascinating conversation with Tim Hanni, MW, a dear friend and collaborator of Capiche. See Part 1 if you missed the first segment.
America’s first Master of Wine and one of fewer than 500 in the world, Tim Hanni has collected epithets ranging from the wine anti-snob (The Wall Street Journal) to the Swami of Umami (memorialized by Pug Ostling, who awarded Tim the official Swami of Umami t-shirt in 1990) to flavor maven (Oregon Wine Press) to the King of Digressions (self-applied 😉) over his five-decade career in the wine industry.
At the end of each year, many publications “celebrate” the worst marketing campaigns of the year. Less than 40 days into the new year, and there is already a regrettable fail from the wine industry.
Anyone who has worked in retail will quickly recognize OND as October/November/December—that three-month period when your sales will either make or break your year’s profits.
In last month’s blog post, Put a Bird on It, I focused on the importance of label design. This month, I share a case study from a southern Oregon winery—DANCIN Vineyards. All it took was a candid observation from a guest in late 2015 to prompt Dan Marca to completely upend the label design he had used since his first vintage in 2010.
When’s the last time you looked at your own wine labels? I mean REALLY looked at them—from the consumer’s point of view? We recently traveled through airports in Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon and—of course—examined the wine choices in each duty-free shop. I was struck by the creativity of some of the packaging, especially in the Champagne category.
Every year, the Wine Business Monthly publishes its annual Tasting Room/DTC Survey results. Did you know that on average 8% of DTC wine sales occur online? What would your business look like if you were able to increase your online DTC sales to more than 8%? How would that impact your bottom line?
Most tasting rooms experience downtime during which there are no guests. That leaves you with three options: let the staff sit and wait, send staff home, or have them perform other strategic tasks. I’ll bet you can imagine what Capiche recommends!
Ready for a happy, profitable new year? Forget reinventing the wheel and take a look at what is trending globally. Incorporate these trends into your local marketing strategies—and take it to the bank.
It was intense. Four full days and nights this June in Sonoma County with a close cadre of 17 wine writers, educators, promoters, and students.
