How To Respond to Attacks And Criticism in the Wine Industry

responseOver the past 25 years of working in wine PR and media relations it has been extremely rare that I have had to advise a client, “don’t respond” or “craft a careful response” to an attack or criticism leveled at them. The fact is, the vast majority of folks working in and around he wine industry simply don’t come in for the kind of public criticisms or attacks that participants in other industries must suffer. And yet, in those few instances when I have had to advise a client whether (or how) to respond to a public attack on their work or integrity, it has always been a most difficult conversation.

What follows is a way of thinking about a response to criticism or attacks if you or your organization find yourself the object of either.

SUBSTANCE
Public criticism or attacks on a person or organization can be either legitimate or illegitimate. They can be warranted or unwarranted. They can be meant in good faith or bad. The first thing you must do is determine under which of these headings the criticism/attack falls. This is very difficult to do because it requires you step back and evaluate yourself or your work. Oftentimes it’s best to lean on an adviser, consultant or friend to help work though this.

If you can determine that the criticism/attack is legitimate, warranted and offered in good faith, then it is probably a good idea to respond. Whether you respond in a public forum or privately is another question altogether. Additionally, you will want to evaluate the impact your public or private response will have on you and/or your business. Try to remember that legitimate criticisms leveled in good faith can be a gift, no matter how difficult reading  or hearing them may be.

If on the other hand it is clear that the attack is illegitimate and unwarranted, leveled without good faith, mean-spirited, perhaps the result of envy or jealousy, potentially libelous, personal or simply delivered without good faith, then it is almost always a good idea to move on, not respond and try to practice the art of empathy for those who are likely bedeviled by issues profoundly personal.

However, if a personal an illegitimate attack is leveled in a forum that will attract the attention of a large number of peers or a large audience, then you may find yourself in a position where a well-crafted response is a necessity if only because lack of a response might result in the initial insult damaging your reputation or because you want to dissuade other troubled people from embarking on the same kind of libel in the future.

This latter situation will rarely arise.

THE ART OF THE RESPONSE
In the event that you need to publicly respond to a legitimate criticism, how that response is delivered becomes very important primarily because it will set the tone for continued engagement. You almost always want to prevent future public discussion of the issue.

• The “Thank You” Response
Remember a legitimate, warranted criticism of your work or actions is in fact a gift because it gives you a chance to be better at what you do. When you receive a gift, you should say thank you. This amounts to acknowledging the criticism, perhaps explaining how you have already been at work addressing the issue raised, commenting on how the issue became an issue in the first place, and probably noting how you will be responding in the future. And, thanking them for their considered thoughts.

• The “Correction” Response
Oftentimes a legitimate criticism stems from a misunderstanding of the facts. If a critic of your work or actions does not have their facts right, then it is best to simply correct them by pointing to the observable fact they got wrong, thanking them, again, for their thoughtfulness, then briefly responding to anything they got right. This should always been done in a civil tone.

• The “We All Have Our Opinions” Response
Because most well-meaning criticisms derive from one’s opinion, this is the most common response you will be giving. If there is in fact a legitimate difference of opinion on, say, the meaning of your work or actions, the importance of your work or actions or the philosophy that drives your work or actions, then it is important that your response first and foremost note that what separates you from your critic is a difference of opinion and that you beg to differ. At the same time, it’s important for your response to acknowledge the philosophical issue at the heart of your difference; that is, it’s important for your response to note the legitimacy of different opinions on this issue.

• The Response to Unwarranted Attacks
If you find yourself in a situation where, due to the size or importance of the audience reading an illegitimate and unwarranted attack on you or your work, you must respond, there are some important guidelines to keep in mind:

1. Don’t respond in the forum that gave voice to the unfaithful attackers.
You want to move any ensuing conversation to more agreeable and favorable grounds. For example, if your work is attacked or if libelous attacks are made on you personally in a blog or news medium, you will want to respond elsewhere, either on your own ground or on ground that is more favorable to you. There is no sense in giving the original attack reason to be seen by more people or to have your response altered.

2. Muster Your Forces
It’s always a good idea to enlist allies in this sort of response. It’s easy enough to ask friends and allies to respond in your stead in another forum or ask them to weigh in along with your own response. There is always more power in numbers

3. Don’t Wrestle With Bottom Feeders
If the attack on you is nasty, mean, and personal, it is never a good idea to respond in kind. When you wrestle with bottom feeders, their mud will get all over you. More importantly, this kind of attack will almost always be seen for what it is: dirty, stinking, mud. Rather, when you must respond to this type of attack, try to do so simply, quickly, briefly, and with a graceful volley across the net that strikes at the heart of the critic’s lack of integrity, then leave the court. For example “I found your recent personal attack on (me, my work, etc) unsettling for its complete lack of all integrity, its blatant lies and for its purposeful mean-spirited nature. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

It is never fun to have to respond to criticism, whether justified or not. But sometimes you must. Try always to do so with a level head and with purpose. If you approach the task in this manner, it is more than likely that you will be able to move on quickly and profitably.

Lighting the way…or are you visible?

LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!

Sometimes ‘public relations’ or publicity begins with so-called little things.

For example, driving through the Napa Valley at night, I’m always fascinated by how many wineries choose NOT to light their signs or their entrances. Seems so obvious, right? You’ve gone to some trouble to have a great sign or a meticulously designed entrance, framed by flowers or sculpture. But. Not. Why?

The world doesn’t close down at dark. People drive, people go out to eat dinner, people go to events, people look out the window, people chat, people literally grade your image as they speed by. That sign, that entrance—it’s a vignette, a snapshot of what lies across the parking lot.

At night, through the darkness, that winery entrance is a tiny stage set—your graphics gleaming, your name popping out of the blackness to make more of an impression than it may do during the bright sunlight of daytime. Shine a light on it! Make it glow and pop or just warmly and brightly communicate your personality. That means your well lit entrance or sign could be a memorable snapshot, planting a seed for people to plan to come back when you’re open for business.

Your winery might not be a Chateau in the Loire or the Chartres Cathedral staging son et lumiere spectacles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTZSs0qXdD8

but see what you can do….!

 

 

 

A Guide to The Wine Media and the Zombie Apocalypse

zombies and wineAs 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”

Post-quake PR

Toppled barrels at B.R. Cohn Winery.

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.

 

 

What To Do When They Get It Wrong?

THEY GOT IT WRONG!

Recently I have refereed several situations where writers with online outlets made numerous factual mistakes in an article. Gone are the days of fact checking. It’s such a vivid image, though—can’t you picture the grizzled editor with the night shade slipping down his forehead, cigar clenched between his teeth, roaring his disapproval at a misplaced comma….?! No longer.

What to do? The winery/client is upset. Why didn’t the writer get it right? Names of wines are wrong. Names of types of wines are wrong. The wrong job title was used. A name was misspelled. People will be confused. And so it goes.

FIND A FLAK JACKET

This actually introduces us to a bigger area: it’s the publicist-journalist-client interface. I often talk about providing a flak jacket for my clients; it’s something I really should do (an army surplus store? Where do you find flak jackets today?). So here’s the message: Do Not Take It Personally. Repeat as often as necessary. The journalist isn’t out to screw you. They’re scrambling to finish their story and rush off to the next one. There’s no personal animus. There’s no intent to ‘ding’ you. There’s just Real Life. Busy. Distracted. No time to check. On to the next.

So once the winery and publicist have vented to each other and calmed down, there are a few options. As in almost any situation in the practice of PR, do you have a “real” relationship with the writer? Will they be amenable to hearing about a few inaccuracies…which means they might be open to making some corrections?

If you have a green light there, then by all means contact the writer and graciously ask if some correcting or updating might be possible. Be ready that it might NOT be: some online formats are very complicated and the inputting may not be entirely in the purview of the writer.

If the writer is amenable, then don’t prolong the conversation. I suggest that you copy the text into a Word file, make the corrections using editing software and then send it back. This makes it very easy for the writer to 1) see the mistakes (or corrections) and 2) to input the material. Another alternative of course is to delineate the changes referring to specific lines in the article.

JUST THE FACTS

A word of caution: this doesn’t apply to philosophical differences or turns of phrase: this only works when the ‘mistakes’ are fact-based—-a vintage, a name, a spelling, a release date, etc.

If you don’t get that green light, then console everyone with the old PR adage: INK IS INK.