The Spirit World

By the time the last person had managed to squeeze into Gallery 11/12 at ExCel, London, last Wednesday, it was standing room only. The trade’s response to the ‘Wine and the Web: the Business of Getting Social’ LIWF briefing presented by Catavino Marketing, The Wine Conversation and Bibendum Wine Ltd was fantastic, proving what a hot topic this is at the moment.

One look at the RSVP and attendance lists shows how widely it appealed with wineries, importers, wine shops, journalists, restaurants and PR executives filling the 175 seats. Ryan Opaz of Catavino Marketing opened the proceedings by talking about the history of social media, the birth of blogging and the launch of social networks.

“If you are involved in the wine business in anyway, you know it’s complicated to get your wine brand out to the consumer. Social media has opened up the opportunities for the conversation to happen. A powerful way to reach consumers, influencers etc. We’re not saying that social media is replacing what’s happening now. We’re talking about something that adds to it.” Ryan Opaz

Then Rob McIntosh of The Wine Conversation talked about the future of the social wine brand and specifically the idea that brand managers have less control over their brand in the marketplace than ever before. If it’s out there then people will be talking about it. Companies need to be part of that conversation in order to influence it. Social wine note sites like Adegga and Snooth mean that people can very easily share information about a wine, leading to new ways for users to influence others’ purchasing behaviour.

“Normal people chatting about your wine can influence all of their friends, community, and communities around the world. Your brand is being influenced. In the social wine channels online you no longer have the same power you had in traditional marketing channels. Join the conversation online. Interact, communicate, be with them, and let your online fans build a relationship with you.” Rob McIntosh

Ryan then went through the free tools and communities that are out there to use including Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter Taste Live, Twitter Fall, Adegga, Snooth, Open Wine Consortium, the European Wine Bloggers Conference and Wine Blogger amongst others.

Finally Dan Coward of Bibendum got up to add a practical appendix to the discussion by explaining why Bibendum had moved into social media and what the activities and outcomes had been. After initially experimenting by holding a Twitter Taste Live event at their Annual Tasting in January, Bibendum have now expanded their social media strategy to improve their blog, communicate with new influencers via Twitter and host other online wine events. The results have seen a 97% increase in traffic to the blog and 30% increase in overall web visitors as well as building really strong relationships with journalists, bloggers and potential customers. Having said all that Dan admitted that “It feels like we have only just scratched the surface of what is possible.”

Crowd Reaction
There were plenty of questions from the floor about whether social media has had any effect on sales, whether people should run professional and personal twitter accounts, and what to do when people talk negatively about your product online. Here are the thoughts of some of the attendees:

“I very much enjoyed the briefing and came away re-invigorated and tremendously positive about the opportunities the web and social media have to offer the wine business. I am in no doubt that this will become a major part of future business plans for all companies and I would urge all to embrace the new technology.” Justin Liddle, Stokes Fine Wines

“At the 2009 LIWF, the UK wine trade realised at last that ’social networking’ might be a new route to consumers. There was a packed room at the seminar on Wednesday. People were fascinated by the webcam at the ViniPortugal stand. Everywhere you turned, there were wine bloggers and tweeters, dazzling wine-folk with their electronic wizardry. Bloggers and tweeters attained a new status at ExCel last week. Congratulations to Bibendum, ViniPortugal/Catavino and The Wine Conversation for catching the mood of the moment.” Charles Metcalfe, journalist

“We’ve been using social media to interact with our customers from day 1 (back in December) and our website is very heavily focused on customer interaction. The talk highlighted the great importance of social media in our industry today and contained some handy tips on some of the best tools to use.” Greg Banbury, Naked Wines

The next steps?
There is clearly a lot more that people would like to find out about this new business area. Gabriella Opaz live-blogged the presentation. Alternatively a Word account of what she broadcast is also available

The session was filmed and this video will be available in the next 2 weeks. Check out the Catavino, Bibendum or Wine Conversation websites for the link when it’s ready.

Bibendum is going to host another social media session later in the Summer (in the UK) with a special focus on wine retailers and how they can build better customer relationships and ultimately sell more wine through developing social networks. If you are a retailer (traditional or online) or a journalist interested in coming to this please email dcoward@bibendum-wine.co.uk to register your interest.