Advice for working with the media

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When you’re a professional communicator or marketer, it is crucial that you ‘wear the moccasins’ of the journalists you are talking to. Today in an unusual twist for SWIG we want to bring you a terrific piece of writing which was also a speech at the recent Wine Bloggers Conference in upstate New York, delivered by award-winning blogger and writer, Meg Houston Maker. Our thanks to Meg for sharing her insights.

AUGUST 17, 2015: The Story Only You Can Tell: Advice to Wine Bloggers

By Meg Houston Maker

You have a wine blog. Congratulations: You are now a nonfiction writer.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell a story. In fact, you must tell a story if you want your work to be read, and if you want your reader to keep reading.

Good wine writing demands more than just a palate and a vocabulary. It demands curiosity, creativity, insight, and diligence—and that’s true whether you approach your work journalistically or view your blog as a strictly artistic endeavor.

Good writing is also about more than grammar and syntax. These reside squarely in the realm of copy editing. This is writing writ small.

I’m speaking here about the realm of storytelling, of story doctoring, the art of stitching your piece together into something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. Something that says something you believe to be true.

If you’re willing to master a few techniques of good writing, you can keep your reader reading. These techniques aren’t hard, but they do require you to bring your writing to a level of consciousness: To inquire, to listen, to reflect, to syncretize—to tell a story.

Keep reading…..

Actionable! You can do this now!

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Want a tip? Something you can do this week publicity-wise that might make a difference?

Here it is: take advantage of the Perseid meteor showers which will dance through the skies this week, starting tonight.

Lots of detail here, here and here.

You might see 100 meteors an hour—how cool is that?

But what’s the action step? Be ready: get the ‘money’ shot.

Image result for perseid meteor shower

If you’re not a skilled photographer, find one. Search out a spot in your vineyard, where you can frame the vines with the images of the meteors racing across the sky. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful image to have and to share? If possible, make sure the setting is identifiably yours—that might not be possible, of course….but maybe the vineyard is known for a huge lone oak tree or a cluster of olive trees. The goal here is to end up with a signature meteors-above-our-vineyard photo which is entirely unique to you and could in no way be thought of as a generic shot.

This isn’t the ordinary annual Perseid meteor shower; the experts predict it to be more exciting than any in recent years. Because the waning crescent moon will be setting early each night this week, the sky will be a fabulous ‘blank slate’ for the meteors.

WHAT TIME?

In the late evening you should be able to see shooting stars in the sky; then, around approximately 11:30 p.m., in the northeastern sky, the constellation will rise. It will move across the sky and set in the southeastern sky.

If midnight isn’t your cup of tea, some of the astronomers say that the meteors may still be visible around 4:30 a.m.

More advice is that it may take twenty minutes or more for your eyes to adjust to the dark.

AND WHAT EXACTLY IS A METEOR?

The Press Democrat explains that “…a meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through an orbiting field of comet debris — in this case, a trail of particles left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which reappears every 130 years. Though the dust particles are tiny, the speed and friction with which they hit the Earth’s atmosphere creates the streaks of light we know as shooting stars. The peak of the shower occurs when the Earth is passing through the densest part of the trail — Aug. 12 and 13 this year, according to NASA. Active from July 17 to August 24, the Perseids are so named because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus.”

“Don’t expect to see the sky ablaze with flashes of light all the time. Each meteor will flash for less than a second as a long streak of light. Many could flash at one time, or none at all might appear for many minutes,” the Chronicle tells us, adding “It’s more important to decide where to watch for the meteors than what to watch for them. The crucial issue is that meteors are faint, so you need a location where the sky is dark, and that means getting away from city and car light as much as possible.”

RELY ON YOUR EYES

In addition, the experts tell us not to use telescopes or binoculars. “Your eyes are the best tool, because the flashes can be anywhere in the sky. Restricting your view to a small part of the sky makes it more likely that you will miss many of the meteor flashes,” the Chronicle’s expert suggests.

Good luck! May the Force be with you!

Oh so trendy

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You’re sitting in your winery’s “how are we doing” marketing/sales/news-dissemination meeting.

You’ve heard about developments in the vineyard.

There’s been a discussion about the pros and cons of cement eggs in the winery.

You’ve heard about whether the tasting room traffic is up or down.

What you have absolutely heard is how everyone seems to be floundering about what way to go. What’s a trend to capitalize on? How can we intrigue visitors, customers, wholesalers, sommeliers? How can we keep employees engaged and enthusiastic?

Image result for riding a forklift

Here’s a sneak peek into trends that corporations are paying attention to, as recently reported by Paul Solman of The PBS News Hour.

Solman interviewed DeeDee Gordon of Sterling Brands; she’s a consultant who advises on brand building and new product development based on cultural trends she spots.

What applies most to the wine business? Here are a few of the many interesting trends:

1) “Conspicuous isolation:….People are feeling very overwhelmed by all of the data out there and so they are trying to find ways of being on the grid while being off the grid…”

2) “Hyper-experiences, people’s need to be more immersed in products and in brands.”

3) “Life framing:….taking pictures of your Sunday meal, for example, to post online…how consumers are using photography to frame up these experiences to be able to elevate their status amongst their group of peers on their network.”

4) “Frugeois: ….our commentary on frugal living. Millennials are extremely conscious of what they’re spending, so they want things that are cheap, but that are designed to function, last and look really good. Fast fashion products…”

Why not challenge a room full of your colleagues to brainstorm new programs or approaches which would embody these ideas?

I can’t resist; here are a few ideas to whet your whistle.

Conspicuous isolation: what a cellphone-free zone in your winery or tasting room? A way to emphasize how enormously absorbing wine tasting is…why dilute it with email from the outside world?!

Hyper-experiences: insurance aside, what about letting people learn to drive a forklift? Ride in an ATV to a view spot in the vineyards? Experience batonnage with their own hands, stirring those lees?

Life framing: how are you handling selfie sticks at your winery? What about making it easier? Setting up vignettes where your customers could jump right in to a nicely arranged ‘set’ to take photos?

Frugeois: maybe offer an outlandishly inexpensive tasting out of the blue one day? Just to BE outlandish? You could come up with a creative hook about why the wine is authentic and the ‘price’ doesn’t matter?!

Happy brainstorming! Remember, a great idea could always go viral.

Let them eat cake?

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Part of being a good marketer, publicist or just plain old communicator (whether in the wine business or any other sector) is keeping your ear to the ground. That would include reading newspapers, as old fashioned as that might sound.

And when you are reading your local newspaper, the op-eds and letters to the editor are important places to look. Those pieces are the voice of John or Jane Q. Public—people who care enough to organize their thoughts and communicate them as broadly as they can.

And in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, may I recommend for your reading pleasure (and marketing savvy skills) an op-ed by a writer from San Francisco, Jeff Miller?

He’s letting off steam about the foodie culture in San Francisco: it’s worth reading:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Food-fan-or-foodie-In-San-Francisco-it-matters-6378016.php#comments (pay wall)

“Food fan or foodie? In San Francisco, it matters,” is the headline. “As a longtime resident of San Francisco, I am tired of feeling guilty for considering food more fuel than art. I enjoy a seared scallop as much as the next person — but I am not obsessed with smoked black cod ponzu or water buffalo meatballs for $32. I think it is high time that like-minded people decry foodie-ism for what it is: pretentious, exclusionary and expensive nonsense.” Wow. Pretty succinctly said, right? Here’s why this is important to read and mull over: how far ‘away’ is today’s wine culture from foodie culture?

Mr. Miller does include a reference to Napa Valley as he talks about restaurant culture: “I have tried to simply ignore the fawning and farcical celebration of this-or-that Michelin-starred, San Francisco celebrity chef and the rapturous drivel about Napa wine lists and poetic cuisine. But over-the-top accolades and starry-eyed “reporting” now have reached such a crescendo that, before another mini-plate of seaweed in Thai basil broth is served, I must speak out for the other San Francisco…”

Where is real food? Real people? Mr. Miller is echoing the sentiments which here in Napa Valley we are seeing play out in the anti-new-winery movement. The step towards ‘real wine’ is quite close.

Miller continues: “We further assert that eating out in San Francisco and its surrounding counties is becoming a class-conscious, expensive sport for the wealthy and their acolytes…” and he recommends “…. We are instead urging them to redirect their enthusiasm to teaching people — and maybe themselves — the virtues of healthy cooking, not extravagant eating….and for returning some balance to the discourse about food.”

After you read this piece, you might take those ‘fresh’ eyes over to your winery’s website and consider what you see….just sayin’…is your winery in the ‘let them eat cake’ mode?

Understanding the Paradigm Shift in Wine Writing

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Paradigm shiftIt seems like the traditional, legacy media is dropping its coverage of wine at a pretty swift pace whether it be a pull back from wine coverage in Chicago, St. Louis or San Francisco. It points to a circumstance that every wine publicist and every wine marketer must accept and embrace: YOU ARE THE DISTRIBUTOR OF WINE JOURNALISM, WHILE THE JOURNALISTS ARE THE CONTENT CREATORS.

This, of course, never used to be the case. All the major media had good wine coverage and good circulation and distribution, assuring that if you or your client were covered, word would be spread by the folks who created the content.

Today, with the legacy media reducing their coverage and its circulation being gobbled up and cut up, there does remain a vibrant independent and largely new wine media that is exploring the subject on blogs, podcasts, online media and elsewhere outside what were the normal information distribution channels. However, few have much reach or circulation.

What this means is that the subject of the coverage (the winery, the importer, the distributor, the retailer, etc) must do the distribution.

That subject as information distributor model has a variety of tools at its disposal:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Google+
Tumblr
Flckr
Vine
Your Email List
Your list of trade/accounts contacts
Your tasting room or Retail Store

If any of the many wine writers and commentators endorse your project, it must be you who gets that word out to those you hope will see it and take it to heart.

This is such a profound and certain and cemented shift in the way companies and concerns use third-party media endorsements that it qualifies as a paradigm shift.

Yes, there remain various media that, when they give you an endorsement, their distribution of that endorsement will get the job done and get their word out. But that list is shrinking on a daily basis. Perhaps this will change. Perhaps media companies with large circulations will return to serious coverage of the most important and refined and culturally significant beverage the world has ever seen. But don’t count on it. For now, you are on your own. Either be the distributor of the content created by the media or don’t count on good coverage having any impact at all on your brand and product.