Rethinking Wine Clubs, Loyalty, and Digital Marketing in the Modern Wine Industry

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One of the most important things that wine brands can do right now,

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get your marketers in the room. When you are setting

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goals and KPIs, have your marketers be a part of those

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key growth conversations. Don't just pass them a set of

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KPIs and say, okay, go do this. Sit back

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and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with

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Paul K. Hey, welcome to Wine

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Talks with Paul Kay. And we are at an away game to a certain extent,

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talking to Paulie Hammond out in Barcelona. Introduction in just a moment.

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Yes, I'm the guy that did taste 100,000 wines and sold

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over 17 million bottles all by himself, but not while we're here.

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We're here to talk to the CEO and founder of Five Forest Wine

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Consultancy, Paul Hammond. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Paul, for having

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me. That is a brilliant intro. I feel a little intimidated,

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but everything. You'Ve done, well, you know, it's kind

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of. It's. It's funny you said that because that's a lot of

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wine, right? I mean, I don't know, maybe your opinion is different,

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but I don't think many psalms even get close to that. And even

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MWs, you have to be very fastidiously

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religious about tasting wine to get to that

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number. It's not that I sought for that number, but every Tuesday

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from 9am to 2pm I tasted wine. Unless I was sick, that's the only

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time I missed a Tuesday. And it was just because of a discipline

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to find the best values I could find every month. And so it just added

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up. I love that. Well, I will tell you, when I was prepping for

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this, I had a moment that I turned around to my husband and I said,

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you know, I do enough podcasts. I never really feel uncomfortable. I'm like, but

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this man's liquor store would have sold me wine

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when I was a young person. It's the

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closest to home in my business that I've

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ever been on a podcast because I'm from

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Hermosa Beach. I. You were in Malaga Cove. I know

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exactly where you were, as a matter of fact. And. And so that

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was a weird thing. I was like, damn, there are people who went to high

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school with me who like, listen to Paul's podcast. That's a little

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uncomfortable, actually. I'm super glad to be here. Well,

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thank you. It's. You are right. I forgot about your location where

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you were in Hermosa beach, which I'm going to tonight. And there's some great restaurants

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now, but Malaga Cove, the road A few miles.

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An old center, just for the listeners is an old center. It was sort of

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the entry into palace versus States, which is the peninsula here. And my

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dad, I'll tell you the story quickly. He had a pharmacy right in the middle

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of Malakovi, which is a horseshoe shaped center. And there was a

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pharmacy on the right side. The guy that owned that pharmacy also

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owned the liquor store, which was beer and ice and, you know, booze.

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And the guy wanted to sell the pharmacy. And my dad looked at the numbers

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and the pharmacy didn't make any money, but the liquor store did.

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So he tells the gentleman, I'll buy

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the pharmacy if you sell me the liquor store. And he said, no. And he

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said, fine, we'll just compete with each other. Like three doors down, there's two pharmacies.

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And finally the guy said, okay, okay. So that's how we started. And

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I don't know if, you know, but there were some prominent wine families in

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Palos Verdes at the time, Jim Barrett being one of them. The Wetzels,

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who owned Alexander Valley Vineyards, they're another. And it was, you know,

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the hotbed. It was one of the hotbeds of wine in the early

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seventies in Los Angeles. Yeah, because Malaga Cove,

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the whole thing. For listeners who aren't from the area, if I recall correctly, there

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was like one way in, one way out. It was very exclusive.

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The cops were very visible. You didn't go to

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Malaga Co unless you had a reason to be there.

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So, yeah, I definitely remember that. And we

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went to rival high schools to a certain extent. You went to Redondo Union.

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We played baseball against Redondo Union. And it's still there,

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of course, just up the road from Hermosa Beach. But it's fun to have

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somebody local that understands the lay of the land on the show. I know, and

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it's been one of the real joys for me, actually. So I'm from California,

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right. And getting to go back to California now in the

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capacity for work and actually go to places that I

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remember being a kid, just like, you know, just like the shop. I remember these

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things from my youth and now, so suddenly getting to be there as someone who

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is in any way doing business with them is just glorious.

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So I got to meet. I'll tell a story. For our

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wedding, we served a Paso

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wine that is now owned by the Hope family. That was

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Triana. And I remember being at Provine some years ago

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and them being there and me getting to look at them and say, yes, I

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know we're all doing business here. But oh my God, I served your wine,

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you know, 25 years ago at my wedding. And this is just a real fan

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girl moment. And I, I think that that's the thing. It's like our work

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intersects with so many pieces of our lives and with of course

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our customers lives and everybody has a good wine story.

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It's really fun. It's really fun. Well, you come back, you were going

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to have to. I'll take you one of the newer restaurants there that we've. In

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fact, there's a new chef down there, Chef Slay, he's opened, I don't know,

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probably six restaurants in the area. All of them unique, all of them very good.

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He' on the show soon. Let's talk about that for a second. There's something very

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interesting about what you just said, that that kind of ties into the wine trade

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and that is all of those beach towns have remained,

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their personality has stayed the same all these years. Hermos has always been the wild,

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you know, crazy part of the beach area, man. A little upscale

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Redondo, quieter and older community. And it's fascinating

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to me that that that happens in the wine trade as well when

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these wine regions protect their base, much

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like and I'm jealous of the, who

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protect their butter, protect their cheese and protect their wines

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with their appellation. You know, control and then. But they

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look at a different way. They look at America like this freedom

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to do whatever they want and grow more veg, you know, in the

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Napa Valley, if they want to have you. How do you feel? Because since

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you're working with Ottomany Global, which is a French based group of, of

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think tank for wine, how, how does that play out in. So it's funny because

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of course the executive director of Pauline Vicard is French her

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out of Burgundy and Paulina and I have a lot of discussions and in fact

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she's written quite a lot about this on the notion of topicity. Right.

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And I have coming out of America, I have such a different

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perspective on topicity than she does as a French

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woman. So I understand and can

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really respect those constraints around tipicity and

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around our AOCs, our denominations, docs, whatever we want to call it.

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Something about it has never gelled with me as an American

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though because we don't have the history of that protection

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and we really want to, you know, we were the land of possibility, try

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anything, do anything. And so I always look at topicity

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when I'm working with American and non French

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clients as something that is unfortunately A real

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restriction. Because specifically when I look at

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it from a marketing standpoint, wine is risk averse

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in so many ways that when we compound that

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with these external forces, what we're doing is we're

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making our industry and again, this is just one person's perspective. We're making it

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more fragile. We're losing resilience. And then I ask the

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question, well, how do we remain relevant if this thing that

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we've built a collective identity around isn't.

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Isn't adapting? So, I mean, that's a much bigger conversation. Probably

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kind of a big one to drop in the beginning, but. But. So it's just

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my way of saying that typisty for my American clients concerns me.

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No, I think that's, it's really that that's the crux of the argument. I'm glad

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you brought it up that way because I had this discussion yesterday with a very

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close friend of mine who's president of the local organization that's Armenian

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group. And since Ott, and he is an Armenian grape, I thought that'd be.

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It would segue well, but

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he's president of an organization. They raised money for

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education in Armenia. They just changed the logo. They

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modernized the logo and all hell broke loose with

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the older group. The people that founded the group that are still working with

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the group, they just went nuts. And I started to think, wow, that

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tradition. Is that kind of tradition getting in the

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way of the wine trade or is the wine trade

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steeped in that tradition and that's what keeps it so unique and so

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mysterious? Both. I mean, I,

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I don't think so. Today is. We're recording on July

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15th and this week Harvard Business Review actually had an

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article out about this about how do you onboard new

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generations and new customers without offending the old ones.

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And I think that this is constant tension in wine.

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There is still a contingent who

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has. They themselves believe that wine is and

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should be elite. Certainly I don't feel that way

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and I think a lot of audiences don't. I think that you can look at

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natural wine and we're sort of past the moment when

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natural wine was. Is at all controversial. But if you remember the early days

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of natural wine and there was so much

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circling the wagons within the wine industry because we had

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traditionalists who felt like natural wine was the worst thing that ever came along. And

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then we had, you know, in fact, younger drinkers, we have now Chinese

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drinkers, like we've got whole contingents of wine lovers

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who the thing that they latched onto was natural wine. I think

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so. This is kind of going off on a tangent, but the thing that I

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struggle with the most as a wine marketer is

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over reliance upon macro data. So you

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know, like you think about, you were doing direct mail marketing, right,

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decades ago. You think about how historically good

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marketing is really based upon like hyper targeting and

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segmentation and we know who our audiences are and we're not going

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to send one direct mail or ad or email or whatever.

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We, we, whatever it might be, it really shouldn't be

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blasting in the same way that we as brands should not

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be wholly relying upon macro data to

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understand who our customers are and how we

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grow our businesses. I think that's a really valid point

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and certainly in the direct mail world where we would buy

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lists from people. And you know what's amazing to me, we I had

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send probably a million pieces a year. I did it for years.

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And the difference between then and now and

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when I left the industry was I had a very,

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a reliable expectation of what kind of return I was going to get if

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I did the segmentation of the list properly. And

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I tested new lists. Nothing's different today

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about digital marketing than direct mail was, except that you can be much more

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granular today. But it was the same thing. You would test different lists, you would

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test different ideas and then some would come back failures and some would do better

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than the norm. So then you'd go after that group.

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But I knew I was going to get 3/4 of a percent. Can you imagine?

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You could live on 3/4 of 1%. Yeah, that shock that people

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would buy and the reason it worked then is because they were

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loyal. Those people that signed up, if you made a relationship with them

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through your piece, they, you knew they were going to stick around for 24 months.

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That's what the average was. But today that's not the case.

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I think the Internet and digital marketing has created such a finicky customer

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and such an easy way to find the best deal and to source

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where you're buying from that the loyalty has disappeared.

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God, it's so important, Paul, because I've just recorded this

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week's episode of the Wine Marketers Radar and I've actually

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pulled together three different pieces about loyalty. And one of the

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things, okay, so kind of the snapshot of this

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is building loyalty has really, really changed.

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So back in the day we looked at loyalty as a retention strategy.

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Right. So you'd have, if we're talking about wine, we've got wine clubs and

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we would have a set of perks and those Perks often were quite similar,

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but we had proximity, we had travel, there were these reasons that people came to

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us or found us and so they signed up and they stayed longer and so

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that was a part of retention. But now what you're seeing particularly amongst

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Gen Z is that good loyalty

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strategy, the whole programming of loyalty can

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actually be used for customer acquisition. And

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so you need to like you collectively. We need to start looking at loyalty

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more as how is it a brand builder and how do we use that for

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acquisition? And that just means that we have,

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there's. So every brand will be different but we have more personalization,

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we have a better empathetic understanding of why the customer

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is coming to us. And we're not racing to the bottom by aligning

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loyalty to you know, what is at this point just like

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the bare bones discounting, which is really what you still see an awful

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lot of brands do. But the other thing about wine clubs I think is interesting

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because you had a nationwide wine club

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that wasn't really built upon proximity. Whereas a

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lot of the traditional like winery wine clubs

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were based in a pre Internet era where

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you know, Joe and his wife would travel from Texas

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to Napa twice a year. And they loved the wine and they

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had these really personal experiences there and the only way they could get the

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wine was to sign up for a wine club because there

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wasn't any E commerce and going online. And so I,

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I have my own personal little theory,

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qualitative only that I really do think that E commerce is the

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thing that has effectively killed the

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wine club and is transforming everything about

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loyalty and the perks and the, you know, the, I mean

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it's not just about digital marketing. It's like the real question we

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contend with is why join a club if I could

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go online at any time that I want and buy the wines

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and I've saved my money in the meantime and you don't have my credit card

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and if I don't have room for them, that's okay, I can just get it

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when I need it. There's definitely,

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you're right on track with that. All the years that when

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I did this and the people I saw come and go. So it starts with

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this idea, you're talking about loyalty, every single club. And

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I can say this because my father was first to market and the reason that

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people became nationwide is it all the executives that were in

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palace for these estates moved. They're all El Segundo

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executives in, in defense and aerospace.

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And so it was a natural actual expansion into the country. Because they

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all moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama in different places, and they

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just took my dad's loyalty with them, you know, and they liked the

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brand. My dad did a good job of selecting wines and they just thought, this

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is so easy. So part of the success of the Wine of the month club

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through 2015 was the brand

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loyalty of the quality of the wines. We selected

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a lot. But also trust. I mean, you think about it, your dad

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was the one really leading that, communicating messages,

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selling it. I mean, like that trust factor, especially with something like

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wine where we're going to ship you a 750 and if you've never

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tasted it before, the entire thing is built up upon confidence. So they had that

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faith in your dad. And I think that that's super important to this discussion

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because that's the thing that we need to really focus

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on replicating is if we want to be able to sell wine through E commerce

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to people who've never shopped with us before, how do we actually

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establish that same kind of trust that someone

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had with your dad and then with you? That's an excellent

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question because I think we discussed

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this briefly before and I had this conversation yesterday after.

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Before we were doing direct to mail and building that brand around that. And we

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had the brand built by then so people recognized the name and they sort of

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recognize the idea. We stood at a booth for 12

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hours a day. And my last year in the fair circuits was

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2007. I did 75 shows in 50 weekends,

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52 weekends. So we stood at a booth and we shook hands and

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that loyalty was built. So you talk about the experiential part of

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wine and how people go to Napa and they go to tastings. Every time they

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get that box, they remember that moment and they're taken

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back or they're sitting in front of the Coliseum in Italy and they had that

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glass of trattoria wine. That's

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the memory of wine that comes with no other beverage. So we have that

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asset with us. But the idea that people

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have the memory of my father's

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store was because of the quality. Then what happened was

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all these bulk, you know, these 50 cent a liter wines coming from,

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well, I'm have to say the middle of Spain. It's okay, I

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live here. It happens. We all know. And so there's a bad taste in

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the mouth of, of the consumer when you. I use this

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example regularly. Somebody sent me a bottle of a sample of a

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Beaujolais, which was called Saturday Night Live. You know, and if I was a

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Saturday Night Live a devotee and I bought this wine thinking how fun

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it was unpalatable, you couldn't drink it. And how many times can you

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do that to a consumer before you lose, lose the loyalty? And

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it's not just that when you lose them for your own brand, but how

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many times can you do that before we lose them as a wine

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drinker? And I always say, like when we're talking about. So

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we've done a ton of work, right? On Millennials and Gen Zs. It was millennials

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10 years ago. It's Gen Z now. And the thing that we say to our

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brands is our collective job today

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is not to turn them into a brand specific

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consumer. It's to have them identify as a wine drinker.

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And I remember When I hit 21, we were just having

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this conversation at an event with a whole bunch of wine people. It was that,

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what were the formative bottles in your life? Right. And I

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remember being 21, my girlfriend and I would pretend that

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we were adults and we would go to the cheesecake fact right there.

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And I think it was Manhattan beach, if I were down at the pier. Right?

300
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That's right, yeah. And, and I would order a glass of.

301
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I want to say it was like Chateau St. Michel. It was like some kind

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of Chardonnay. Now if I were to drink it, it doesn't even exist

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anymore. But if, if I were to drink it, I probably wouldn't love it because

304
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I know a lot more about wine than I do then. But the point being

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that it was that moment when my journey to becoming an

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adult meant that I identified as a wine drinker. I didn't go out and

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order beer, I didn't go order cocktails. I went out into the world and I

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ordered wine. And I think that that is really

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where we're falling short right now, is that we're not

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doing the things to try to get younger consumers

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to simply identify as, you know,

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what my thing is going to be. Wine. And

313
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yeah, so, you know, but there's. You mentioned natural wine.

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It kind of hit me when you brought it up. There's always been these entries

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for people like the, the discussion you just brought up, the

316
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example to get into the industry.

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And I hear a lot, we are not we, I guess you're saying,

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is the industry in general. And how do we, you know, corral the whole industry

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into thinking the same way? That's not going to happen. But there's always been

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an entry into the trade. When my dad's time, it was White

321
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Zinfandel 1974, Bob Trincaro, you know, making a mistake

322
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with his, with his what was going to be a Provence dry

323
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ends up being sweet and taking the, you know, the, the world by

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00:20:01,780 --> 00:20:04,420
storm wine coolers.

325
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Now a natural wine, Lambrusco, all these wines

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that were entry level wines to get people to try and understand.

327
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I don't think you can dumb down wine. I mean you can make dumb

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wines, but those don't have any staying power. They have no interest factor. They

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have no complexity. They just are 14 alcohol

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fermented grape juice. So we can call it wine and people enjoy them

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for a little while, but eventually they get, in my opinion, they get

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bored of them, the palate gets bored of it and they move to other

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things. So do you think that generationally there's just different

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curves to get to that point?

335
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:48,160
Oh, that's a really big question.

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So I think that. So, okay, the first thing to

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say, I'm not a huge fan of generational marketing with the exception

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of are they legal drinking age? Because what we're seeing

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is that. Yeah, right, that is generational. What we're

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seeing is that when you rely instead of demographics on psychographics and you

341
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actually look at the cohorts, you're seeing

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alignment across interest levels that really have nothing to do

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with generation. But if we're simply talking about new customer

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acquisition. Right. Regardless of what the age is,

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I can tell you the things that I hear and that we

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see from our own data, which is there are,

347
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and this is nothing new. You know, there are a lot of young people who

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feel like that they've been told that

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the only way that you can really enjoy wine is if you understand it.

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And so when you say, you know, is there can't be a dumb

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00:21:46,010 --> 00:21:49,850
wine, I mean, they're certainly not complex wines, you know, and there are

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wines that we evolve into.

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But I don't have to understand

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all the reasons that a wine is elegant

355
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or well made or quality to know

356
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I love the way this tasted. In fact, I'm going to tell a story. We

357
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had a client some years ago who we were

358
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working on a go to market plan for the US and we were

359
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searching for user generated content, so not like

360
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pro reviews and found a quote on Vivino where

361
00:22:22,910 --> 00:22:26,670
all it said was, this is the wine that made me fall in love with

362
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wine. And I was like, you know what? That's one of the

363
00:22:30,510 --> 00:22:34,110
best pieces of marketing, you know, collateral

364
00:22:34,110 --> 00:22:37,910
I've ever been given. Because we could, we could all have

365
00:22:37,910 --> 00:22:41,510
that, that, you know, I can't tell you what it tastes like, but I

366
00:22:41,510 --> 00:22:45,030
don't know who I was with. I just remember that I had this wine and

367
00:22:45,030 --> 00:22:48,070
this was the thing for me that made me completely fall in love with wine.

368
00:22:48,070 --> 00:22:51,500
How important is that? What does that. I mean certainly 19

369
00:22:51,500 --> 00:22:54,860
crimes isn't going to do that. I mean what

370
00:22:55,820 --> 00:22:58,700
my romantic view of it, it's that complex,

371
00:22:59,740 --> 00:23:03,460
thought provoking wine which comes from the

372
00:23:03,460 --> 00:23:07,140
mysterious part of terroir. But if I'm 21, I

373
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mean, I'll tell you an interesting story about 19 crimes. One of the largest

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00:23:11,980 --> 00:23:15,700
cohorts purchasing that wine were middle aged moms buying it for their

375
00:23:15,700 --> 00:23:19,270
sons. So if I am, I know,

376
00:23:19,910 --> 00:23:23,470
right? The things that surprise us. So if

377
00:23:23,470 --> 00:23:27,150
I am 18 because I'm in Europe, I realize that

378
00:23:27,150 --> 00:23:30,830
doesn't count for the US if I'm 22 and I

379
00:23:30,830 --> 00:23:34,310
don't have a lot of money and I'm learning to explore wine

380
00:23:34,550 --> 00:23:38,230
and 19 crimes with the snoop and the

381
00:23:38,230 --> 00:23:41,750
gimmick and the whole thing is what gets me to buy that bottle of wine.

382
00:23:42,810 --> 00:23:46,650
Awesome. Like it doesn't need that. That moment doesn't need to be

383
00:23:46,730 --> 00:23:50,410
a Grand Cru wine. It just needs to be the

384
00:23:50,410 --> 00:23:54,170
thing that gets me saying, ooh, wine, it's now

385
00:23:54,170 --> 00:23:57,650
on my radar and I'm now going to grow from it. I agree with that

386
00:23:57,650 --> 00:24:01,410
completely. That's what goes back to in the

387
00:24:01,410 --> 00:24:04,650
example you gave earlier, which is natural wine.

388
00:24:04,970 --> 00:24:08,730
Wine was, by the way, wine was always natural. I know, I know. So

389
00:24:08,730 --> 00:24:12,490
much arguing about this. Right, right. But the point being that's, that

390
00:24:12,490 --> 00:24:15,330
is the entry level for a lot of people now instead of it being 19

391
00:24:15,330 --> 00:24:19,170
crimes or Bartles and James, it's, it's natural wine and

392
00:24:19,170 --> 00:24:21,810
there'll be something else in the future to do that. But I'm talking about some

393
00:24:21,810 --> 00:24:25,450
of them. Never move on from natural wine. I think that that's a really interesting

394
00:24:25,450 --> 00:24:29,050
thing. Like I think when we talk about things like 19 crimes or what I

395
00:24:29,050 --> 00:24:32,290
would just describe as for better or worse sort of entry level grocery store wines,

396
00:24:33,250 --> 00:24:36,850
you know, chicken wine. Such a great example. I think we all as young people

397
00:24:36,850 --> 00:24:39,990
drank chicken wine for years that we, we.

398
00:24:42,550 --> 00:24:46,310
Chicken wine is la vieille fer. It's the, you know, it's

399
00:24:46,310 --> 00:24:49,510
gone wild. But even before it was tick tock famous. Right. It was one of

400
00:24:49,510 --> 00:24:52,990
those wines that we all knew because it had such tremendous distribution

401
00:24:52,990 --> 00:24:56,790
worldwide. Right. So just. But, but the interesting thing about

402
00:24:56,870 --> 00:25:00,510
natural wine is of course it is a space where some

403
00:25:00,510 --> 00:25:03,870
people get there and they stay there and they don't choose to Move out of

404
00:25:03,870 --> 00:25:07,600
that category. I was at the market the other day. Well,

405
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:09,920
the other day, and it's probably been like three years.

406
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:15,000
That's a little timing problem there with my social networker at one

407
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:18,840
of the month club, and we were doing some content creation and a woman

408
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:22,440
came down to the shop and we recognized each other. I think I'd

409
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:26,280
coached her daughter in little league or something. And I said, what are you looking

410
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:30,000
for? She says, something different today. I go, what do you usually drink? She said,

411
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:33,720
rodney Strong. And I said, okay, let's take a look. And she

412
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:37,240
didn't. And she knew I was in the wine trade. I think she remembered that

413
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:41,200
she did not grab any of the bottles I suggested. She

414
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,640
clearly was looking for something other than. Which I thought was very

415
00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:47,960
encouraging. And I told my social networker, I said, look, this is a very important

416
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,400
conversation here because she's the woman we need

417
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:55,760
looking for something else than her regular consumption. And

418
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:59,560
that's because she wants to move on. And she then it

419
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:02,800
also. I told her, I said, look how emotional this decision is. She knows I'm

420
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:06,640
in the wine trade. I recommended things that were different than Rodney

421
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,240
Strong, but down sort of the same tone, and she didn't accept

422
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,480
them. She wanted to make that decision on her own. Do you remember what she

423
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:17,120
got? She never grabbed a bottle. And

424
00:26:17,120 --> 00:26:20,000
then I saw her go by the aisle a couple times to see if I

425
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:23,040
was still standing there because she didn't want to pull something off that I didn't

426
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,760
recommend. I guess I'm not sure exactly why, but it shows you

427
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:30,130
how emotional this decision is for the consumer.

428
00:26:30,530 --> 00:26:33,370
And how do you corral that? I don't know if there's any formula for that,

429
00:26:33,370 --> 00:26:37,170
but I think wine, unlike any other beverage in the

430
00:26:37,170 --> 00:26:40,810
world, is such an emotional. I want to be in control of the

431
00:26:40,810 --> 00:26:43,730
decision. Like, you must go to dinner with people that aren't

432
00:26:44,050 --> 00:26:47,650
regularly wine drinkers or novices. And,

433
00:26:48,130 --> 00:26:51,890
you know, whoever gets the list, you know, there's. There's a

434
00:26:51,890 --> 00:26:55,570
lot of angst. I'm under a lot of pressure. When I get the list,

435
00:26:56,330 --> 00:26:58,890
how am I going to please everybody at the table? We had an anniversary party

436
00:26:58,890 --> 00:27:02,610
the other night down here in Newport beach, and I get the

437
00:27:02,610 --> 00:27:06,370
list. I'm like, there's a whole different crowd here. Somebody's not

438
00:27:06,370 --> 00:27:10,130
going to like this. I have two answers to that. So

439
00:27:10,130 --> 00:27:13,930
the first one is, I'm old enough and I've purchased enough wine

440
00:27:13,930 --> 00:27:17,610
for tables that I know. Just buy multiple bottles. Like, the first

441
00:27:17,610 --> 00:27:21,250
thing is, don't try to buy One bottle to please everyone. And that's great for

442
00:27:21,250 --> 00:27:23,610
the restaurant, it's great for the seller. We all love that.

443
00:27:25,450 --> 00:27:29,150
The thing, though, that most curious that

444
00:27:29,150 --> 00:27:32,790
relates to your story and those moments of going out to dinner, is it

445
00:27:33,190 --> 00:27:36,870
when people find out that you work in wine, the immediate response

446
00:27:36,870 --> 00:27:40,670
is, if they don't know wine, they're like, oh, wine,

447
00:27:40,670 --> 00:27:43,150
I don't know a lot about it. You probably know a lot more about it.

448
00:27:43,150 --> 00:27:46,550
Or they're. They're talking about a bottle and they're like, oh, you probably drink much

449
00:27:46,550 --> 00:27:50,230
better wine than I drink. Like, there's this whole sense that people who work in

450
00:27:50,230 --> 00:27:54,030
wine are drinking, you know, bottles that are

451
00:27:54,030 --> 00:27:57,710
worth hundreds of dollars every night. And. And I try to get them to

452
00:27:57,710 --> 00:28:01,330
understand that. I'm like, you work in wine are probably

453
00:28:01,410 --> 00:28:04,930
the most accepting and the most forgiving and the most

454
00:28:04,930 --> 00:28:08,690
willing to try weird wines. And when you find something

455
00:28:08,770 --> 00:28:12,370
that is, like, an excellent value that completely, you know,

456
00:28:12,690 --> 00:28:16,410
like, goes beyond what that that bottle cost is, you're

457
00:28:16,410 --> 00:28:20,250
pretty stoked about it. So. So yeah, I. I think that the.

458
00:28:20,250 --> 00:28:23,570
The buying of the wine thing, though, how do you. How do you

459
00:28:23,730 --> 00:28:27,450
combat that? So I'll tell a story. We've only ever managed to

460
00:28:27,450 --> 00:28:30,680
get. I know one off the top of my head. There might be another one,

461
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:35,120
clients to do this. So we had this experience of going into

462
00:28:35,120 --> 00:28:38,760
the bottle shop, and the people who work in that wine store,

463
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:42,520
liquor store, whatever it is, we develop relationships with them. We know which one

464
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,640
knows our palate or when they make a recommendation. That recommendation

465
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:50,440
is spot on to what we like. You can actually mimic this

466
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:53,600
in a digital space so that what we've tried to get clients to do in

467
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:57,400
the past and only one or two have done it, is have the

468
00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:01,140
tasting panel so their ident identified members of

469
00:29:01,140 --> 00:29:04,540
your staff or your winemaking or whatever it might be. But there are

470
00:29:04,540 --> 00:29:08,260
multiples of them, and each of them give their honest

471
00:29:08,260 --> 00:29:12,060
opinion about every one of the wines. And so what you can do

472
00:29:12,060 --> 00:29:15,220
with that is that then as an online

473
00:29:15,220 --> 00:29:18,940
buyer, I can understand, okay, the chef and I,

474
00:29:18,940 --> 00:29:22,420
whoever, you know, Chef Joe drinks exactly the same way I do.

475
00:29:22,580 --> 00:29:26,180
If the chef likes the wine, I'm probably going to like it. So I

476
00:29:26,180 --> 00:29:29,780
read what his reviews are, but then you can actually use that for

477
00:29:29,860 --> 00:29:33,520
targeting and segmentation. So if I, you know, if they know

478
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,720
that I'm buying the wines, which absolutely can happen, that chef

479
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:40,640
likes, then I can receive emails that

480
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:44,200
are specific to what chef is recommending

481
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,600
this month and how he or she is talking about the wine. So

482
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:51,320
it's actually really easy to do at scale and

483
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:55,080
online. I just find that most wine brands, when they look at the, you know,

484
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:58,560
when they look at it as an option, it just falls away, sadly. Well, it

485
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,320
sounds like, well, we know this for a fact and I think we

486
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:06,000
discussed this briefly before that, you know, winemakers and

487
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,680
winery owners are farmers, that most of them get into it because they

488
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:13,480
want that ethereal experience. Many get into it because they just want

489
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,680
to have their own brand and be a big shop. But for the most part,

490
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,560
wineries are farmers. I was just thinking when you said that that restaurateurs

491
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,330
are not a whole lot different. You know, they,

492
00:30:24,330 --> 00:30:27,730
they're complaining now. The on premise sales are down. I went to a restaurant the

493
00:30:27,730 --> 00:30:30,610
other night and the guy says the mice bottle sales are off 40%.

494
00:30:31,570 --> 00:30:35,250
And I thought. But restaurateurs are probably reluctant

495
00:30:35,650 --> 00:30:38,530
to test, probably reluctant to understand

496
00:30:39,249 --> 00:30:42,610
the nuances, the metrics, the consumerism of wine

497
00:30:42,850 --> 00:30:46,570
and just want to make good food and, and, and have a good

498
00:30:46,570 --> 00:30:50,340
wine list. So here's this idea I had because

499
00:30:50,340 --> 00:30:54,140
we used to test everything when I mailed, when I, you know, what is Google

500
00:30:54,140 --> 00:30:57,900
advertising and what is Facebook and Instagram advertising? It's strictly testing.

501
00:30:57,900 --> 00:31:01,620
You're just constantly testing content. What if you took

502
00:31:01,620 --> 00:31:05,380
a wine list and this is, goes back to this, I

503
00:31:05,380 --> 00:31:09,020
think, inane conversation about changing the language of wine. I don't,

504
00:31:09,900 --> 00:31:13,220
and we'll talk about that in a second after I give you this example. But

505
00:31:13,220 --> 00:31:16,980
what if you took, you had two wine lists, same wines. This

506
00:31:16,980 --> 00:31:20,540
particular restaurant is changing his whole list to Mediterranean style wines.

507
00:31:20,540 --> 00:31:24,340
He's, he's dropping the basics. He's dropping, you know, a Mutankade

508
00:31:24,340 --> 00:31:28,100
and he's dropping Caymas, he's dropping Silver Oak and he's dropping Austin Hope.

509
00:31:28,100 --> 00:31:31,780
He's just going to do Mediterranean style wines. But what if you made

510
00:31:31,780 --> 00:31:35,500
two lists? What if you took the same exact wines and you changed the language

511
00:31:35,740 --> 00:31:39,540
as they talk about. And so you did it, you know, bold and aggressive,

512
00:31:39,540 --> 00:31:43,380
light and fruity, dry and whatever, you know, whatever, whatever. However, how you

513
00:31:43,380 --> 00:31:46,950
want to segment it. And then you drop the wines into that, that profile

514
00:31:47,190 --> 00:31:51,030
and you do the other list, you know, by region or over your traditional

515
00:31:51,030 --> 00:31:54,710
list. And you give half of the waiters one list,

516
00:31:55,270 --> 00:31:58,950
another half, another list. And you run that for a couple of months

517
00:32:00,150 --> 00:32:03,990
and you see if the actual wine list, the format, I

518
00:32:03,990 --> 00:32:07,790
don't think it'll change anything. But everybody's talking about changing the language. So

519
00:32:07,790 --> 00:32:11,150
let's change the language and see if it works. I don't think it'll change anything,

520
00:32:11,150 --> 00:32:14,840
but at least you've, you'll know the consumer, you know, the

521
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,880
restaurateur is not going to know the difference. I mean, the restaurant client's not going

522
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:21,720
to know the difference. So then I asked the, I asked the

523
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:25,960
restaurateur, I said, and what do you do to educate your

524
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:28,920
waiters on what they're serving? He goes, they don't know shit.

525
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:33,320
I'm like, well, there's, that might be one of your problems, right?

526
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,440
I'm like, so whose problems have solved? I'll tell you. That brings up something though,

527
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,440
that is a really interesting occurrence with the

528
00:32:41,090 --> 00:32:44,810
rise of digital marketing in wine. So we deal with this

529
00:32:44,810 --> 00:32:48,450
all the time, which is, whose responsibility is it to

530
00:32:48,530 --> 00:32:52,370
actually train all of those people at the front line?

531
00:32:52,610 --> 00:32:56,210
And how as a brand can you make those people

532
00:32:56,290 --> 00:32:59,690
who are on the front lines, how can you control your

533
00:32:59,690 --> 00:33:03,450
message? Right? Because that's the thing. As it passes through all of these manifold

534
00:33:03,450 --> 00:33:06,390
channels, it can dilute and go off in any direction that you want.

535
00:33:07,340 --> 00:33:11,060
And just about that specifically, one of the things that

536
00:33:11,060 --> 00:33:14,780
we've seen has worked really, really well are internal

537
00:33:14,780 --> 00:33:18,500
podcast. So they're podcasts, they're not meant to

538
00:33:18,500 --> 00:33:22,180
go out on Spotify for every consumer to

539
00:33:22,180 --> 00:33:25,500
listen to it. But it's more about training your team.

540
00:33:25,740 --> 00:33:29,580
So new releases, offers in the tasting room changes, you're making

541
00:33:29,660 --> 00:33:33,510
food and wine pairings, content, anything that are the talking points.

542
00:33:34,300 --> 00:33:38,140
And if you, if you think about just basic. So we deal

543
00:33:38,140 --> 00:33:41,820
a lot with the psychology of how we buy and how we act.

544
00:33:41,820 --> 00:33:45,220
That's sort of the foundation of our work at Five Forest. And if you think

545
00:33:45,220 --> 00:33:48,620
about the psychology of how we recommend things, right,

546
00:33:49,020 --> 00:33:52,740
we don't ever want to look stupid. That's the number one thing. And we

547
00:33:52,740 --> 00:33:56,580
need to have confidence that when we make that recommendation that what they walk away

548
00:33:56,580 --> 00:33:59,660
with is going to be the same experience as when I had it.

549
00:34:00,370 --> 00:34:03,970
So that means that the more that we can train, whether it's the waiters,

550
00:34:03,970 --> 00:34:07,730
whether it's the 24 year old selling in the bottle shop,

551
00:34:07,810 --> 00:34:11,570
whatever, the more that we can help

552
00:34:11,650 --> 00:34:15,250
them feel confident to speak about our product,

553
00:34:15,570 --> 00:34:19,250
the more likely our product will be the one that is recommended.

554
00:34:20,050 --> 00:34:23,890
And so this all goes back to. But there are farmers and we didn't

555
00:34:23,890 --> 00:34:27,450
have the margins built in for all of this. There's a lot of layers to

556
00:34:27,450 --> 00:34:30,210
complexity to solving those problems.

557
00:34:31,420 --> 00:34:34,860
The one that I think is really interesting, that comes up all the time

558
00:34:35,020 --> 00:34:38,620
when you talk about the, the people in restaurants Is, of course,

559
00:34:38,780 --> 00:34:41,900
the Coravin is magical. Like,

560
00:34:42,380 --> 00:34:46,140
I. I look at it and I'm like, well, why? If we're

561
00:34:46,140 --> 00:34:49,500
trying to figure out a wine program, quite honestly,

562
00:34:49,900 --> 00:34:53,300
why are we not leaning in? Why are more

563
00:34:53,300 --> 00:34:56,820
restaurants not leaning into Corvin?

564
00:34:57,450 --> 00:35:00,850
Because that is a great way to be able to meet a

565
00:35:00,850 --> 00:35:04,450
customer where they are, Let them try, let them

566
00:35:04,450 --> 00:35:07,290
sample, and really just

567
00:35:08,170 --> 00:35:11,850
make it easier for someone who at that moment

568
00:35:11,850 --> 00:35:15,570
is saying, I would like to impress the girl or boy that I'm out on

569
00:35:15,570 --> 00:35:18,410
a date with. I don't want to get it wrong. I have no idea what

570
00:35:18,410 --> 00:35:22,130
bottle to choose, but if I could pay for a short

571
00:35:22,130 --> 00:35:25,130
pour of it out of a Coravin, I'd be willing to do that before I

572
00:35:25,130 --> 00:35:28,850
bought a whole bottle. You know, it's very funny.

573
00:35:29,970 --> 00:35:33,650
Remind me of a podcast I did with the gentleman who's the

574
00:35:33,650 --> 00:35:37,490
preeminent authority of wine served at the White House. Oh.

575
00:35:37,650 --> 00:35:40,810
And he tells the story by going to the Brown Derby here in Southern California,

576
00:35:40,810 --> 00:35:44,450
the famed restaurant where Groucho used to eat. Groucho Marx. And

577
00:35:44,450 --> 00:35:48,210
taking a date from sc, a sorority

578
00:35:48,210 --> 00:35:51,530
girl. He was a fraternity guy, and he thought he was going to impress the

579
00:35:51,530 --> 00:35:55,370
date. And he told the waiter he wanted this bottle of wine, and

580
00:35:55,370 --> 00:35:58,410
it was a bar sack. And he. Because he could pronounce it, it was the

581
00:35:58,410 --> 00:36:02,090
shortest name on the list. It might even been Chateau Coutet or something.

582
00:36:02,250 --> 00:36:04,490
And he goes, that's what I want. And the guy goes, sir, you really don't

583
00:36:04,490 --> 00:36:08,210
want that? He goes, no, I really want that. And so the guy brings

584
00:36:08,210 --> 00:36:11,850
this half bottle of this dessert wine with the prime rib,

585
00:36:12,250 --> 00:36:15,450
and it's a funny story. And I thought, wow, you know, that's.

586
00:36:15,930 --> 00:36:19,250
That's. That's where Coravan would have been a great thing. You want to taste it,

587
00:36:19,250 --> 00:36:23,050
sir? First? Because Check that. Check that decision. How'd it go? Did the

588
00:36:23,050 --> 00:36:26,220
girl like it? He never dated her again. He never dated her again.

589
00:36:26,700 --> 00:36:30,100
Yeah. We didn't mention in the intro that one reason you and I are sitting

590
00:36:30,100 --> 00:36:33,900
here is because we're both SC grads. So that was

591
00:36:33,900 --> 00:36:37,500
really how you and I connected. And it's funny because, of course,

592
00:36:37,820 --> 00:36:41,180
most great universities have got wine programs.

593
00:36:41,420 --> 00:36:44,460
That's right. And like, that is something that I think

594
00:36:45,100 --> 00:36:48,700
collectively, maybe we don't tap into as much as we should

595
00:36:48,700 --> 00:36:52,340
when we're talking about how do we get young people into wine? Well,

596
00:36:52,820 --> 00:36:56,140
how do we make it easier for them to discover great wines? There was an

597
00:36:56,140 --> 00:36:59,660
article some years ago. I can't remember who wrote

598
00:36:59,660 --> 00:37:03,380
it. Your listeners will Know, I'm certain that was someone

599
00:37:03,380 --> 00:37:06,420
in trade. I think it was a psalm saying how it was such a problem

600
00:37:06,420 --> 00:37:09,380
that they can't even afford the wines that they are meant

601
00:37:09,940 --> 00:37:13,700
to be serving. And I do think that there are some real issues

602
00:37:14,500 --> 00:37:18,340
around access that run all that run straight through trade

603
00:37:18,580 --> 00:37:22,170
as well as our consumer bases. And those are gonna be very different,

604
00:37:22,240 --> 00:37:23,920
difficult to solve. Well, certainly

605
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:29,440
because of the three tier system in America which for the listeners is

606
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:32,920
supplier to distributor to retailer to consumer as

607
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:36,680
required path has a huge effect on

608
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:40,480
that. On that. Because even in Southern California now we have a huge consolidation

609
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:41,520
of distributors.

610
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,200
I'll put it in industry ease.

611
00:37:48,490 --> 00:37:52,290
Even myself at the time when I was doing somewhere around a half a million

612
00:37:52,290 --> 00:37:56,050
dollars a year with a distributor on a regular basis for year

613
00:37:56,050 --> 00:37:59,770
after year after year. And as soon as something changed inside their company,

614
00:38:00,010 --> 00:38:03,730
I was put on cod. And so I couldn't even

615
00:38:03,730 --> 00:38:07,130
get stuff that I wanted. And I was buying thousands of cases a month.

616
00:38:08,090 --> 00:38:11,890
And so the consumer gets affected by that eventually because it ends up

617
00:38:11,890 --> 00:38:14,370
on the shelf or doesn't end up on the shelf or the price goes up

618
00:38:14,370 --> 00:38:18,050
because of the tiers of marketing it takes to get there. So

619
00:38:18,050 --> 00:38:21,630
certainly that's. Or you have allocation requirements. You're not going to get this

620
00:38:21,630 --> 00:38:25,430
bottle unless you buy this bottle. I mean like that's certainly a huge

621
00:38:25,430 --> 00:38:28,950
issue that, that we see more and more brands dealing with. It's

622
00:38:28,950 --> 00:38:32,470
huge. So when you're dealing with. Since you're a consultant on yourself And I had,

623
00:38:32,470 --> 00:38:35,910
I posted this yesterday on LinkedIn a little bit because I was talking to a

624
00:38:35,910 --> 00:38:39,550
woman named Courtney o' Brien who was with Coca Cola then she was with Gallo.

625
00:38:39,550 --> 00:38:43,270
And so she's a guerrilla marketer type. And one of my

626
00:38:43,270 --> 00:38:46,820
pet peeves when I started this digital marketing,

627
00:38:46,820 --> 00:38:50,020
1997 when we had. We were the first wine club with a website

628
00:38:50,740 --> 00:38:52,740
and a subscription, you know, Bucket

629
00:38:54,340 --> 00:38:58,020
was. I was tired eventually

630
00:38:58,020 --> 00:39:01,380
of paying consultants to teach them my industry. We have such a

631
00:39:01,380 --> 00:39:05,100
finite group of people to attract and it's hard to

632
00:39:05,100 --> 00:39:08,940
find them. And most digital marketing consultants are such

633
00:39:08,940 --> 00:39:12,580
a shotgun approach to everything because they think one, one size fits all.

634
00:39:12,980 --> 00:39:16,180
And I'm talking about Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, Google Ads,

635
00:39:16,580 --> 00:39:20,160
all of those things. Not the, the latest for me was a YouTube

636
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,200
group because I wanted to move my YouTube channel.

637
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,960
How do you. Without any global. How do you consult wineries

638
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,680
to vet out the consultant and make sure that they're getting

639
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:35,200
the right. So it's funny, it's more work that we do through five forest

640
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:39,120
than Irani so Irani very much is about research.

641
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:43,040
Amazing. For anybody who wants any information, I actually recently

642
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:46,880
came on board overseeing their membership because I've been with them for so long

643
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:50,450
as a sponsor supporter. So about Irene, you can absolutely reach out to me

644
00:39:50,450 --> 00:39:53,490
about five Forest and the digital marketing side of things.

645
00:39:54,050 --> 00:39:57,730
So when I, when I set up five forest, which was

646
00:39:57,970 --> 00:40:01,730
10 years ago, at this point we just had our 10 year anniversary.

647
00:40:02,370 --> 00:40:06,130
I think there was only one other like digital marketing company

648
00:40:06,210 --> 00:40:10,050
for wine in the English speaking world. And it had happened

649
00:40:10,450 --> 00:40:14,090
because for various historical personal reasons we

650
00:40:14,090 --> 00:40:17,770
had all of these friends who were winemakers and they would. I was doing the

651
00:40:17,770 --> 00:40:21,070
same job but in a different industry. So I know exactly what you're talking about

652
00:40:21,070 --> 00:40:24,750
about not knowing alcohol. And so

653
00:40:25,230 --> 00:40:28,870
it was really important to me from the very beginning that I

654
00:40:28,870 --> 00:40:32,310
understand the peculiarities of

655
00:40:32,310 --> 00:40:35,910
wine. So I took courses to do that. I actually did a fabulous

656
00:40:35,910 --> 00:40:39,590
course with Tim Hani who is an MW that used to be

657
00:40:39,590 --> 00:40:43,430
through like Napa Valley Wine Academy. Crazy. Yeah, Tim's

658
00:40:43,430 --> 00:40:47,190
awesome again. And Tim's on TikTok. Everybody should go follow him. He's

659
00:40:47,190 --> 00:40:50,910
hysterical. Anyway, I, I did that course because I needed to

660
00:40:50,910 --> 00:40:54,350
understand the economics that were specific to alcohol.

661
00:40:54,910 --> 00:40:58,350
Then we invested a lot of time

662
00:40:58,430 --> 00:41:01,550
into understanding the legalities around

663
00:41:01,790 --> 00:41:05,510
alcohol messaging because remember, we're global. So I

664
00:41:05,510 --> 00:41:09,070
don't just have to know what I'm allowed to say in California,

665
00:41:09,230 --> 00:41:12,890
I have to know what I'm allowed to say in Australia and New Zealand and

666
00:41:12,890 --> 00:41:16,410
Chile and all of Europe and the uk. So like actually

667
00:41:16,970 --> 00:41:20,090
really developing that knowledge around,

668
00:41:21,210 --> 00:41:24,810
around the legalities. And even more so, it's not just

669
00:41:24,810 --> 00:41:28,130
the legalities for alcohol, you know,

670
00:41:28,130 --> 00:41:31,810
advertising messaging, but it has to do with things

671
00:41:31,810 --> 00:41:35,530
like we were the first agency talking about GDPR to anyone in wine.

672
00:41:35,530 --> 00:41:39,130
I mean, this was years before GDP came out. My business partner Mike

673
00:41:39,130 --> 00:41:42,930
Bourne has become pretty much the US expert on Ada

674
00:41:42,930 --> 00:41:46,430
Complian and Winery website. So

675
00:41:47,150 --> 00:41:50,510
we put a lot of time into things that nobody ever

676
00:41:50,510 --> 00:41:54,350
sees. And there can be moments when I sit at my desk and I'm like,

677
00:41:54,510 --> 00:41:57,470
I wish that everybody could understand the difference between

678
00:41:58,110 --> 00:42:01,950
someone who actually knows the alcohol industry. I mean, the other thing

679
00:42:01,950 --> 00:42:05,710
is we have, I call it institutional knowledge because I don't

680
00:42:05,710 --> 00:42:09,470
ever disclose it, but we have data from hundreds of wine brands

681
00:42:09,470 --> 00:42:13,150
whose accounts we run. So like we have really, really

682
00:42:13,150 --> 00:42:16,930
deep industry knowledge. And you said

683
00:42:17,090 --> 00:42:20,850
you hated having to teach people your industry. And I think that that's

684
00:42:20,850 --> 00:42:24,610
the crux of it is that you have to, when you hire

685
00:42:24,610 --> 00:42:28,330
someone who is a Generalist, they're going to come

686
00:42:28,330 --> 00:42:32,130
in and they're going to say things like, we're very passionate about wine and we

687
00:42:32,130 --> 00:42:35,610
make exceptional wines. And, you know, they just, like, they have no idea who the

688
00:42:35,610 --> 00:42:39,370
consumers are. They don't know anything about the legislation. Like, and you

689
00:42:39,370 --> 00:42:42,890
have to spend all of this time getting them up to speed. And that

690
00:42:42,890 --> 00:42:46,720
incurs a cost of money and time. Whereas when you

691
00:42:46,720 --> 00:42:50,280
work with an agency that like, only works in alcohol.

692
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,200
So, yes, our little, our little bubble of people we can work with is

693
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:57,960
smaller, but we can get to work

694
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:01,040
from day one. Like, we can actually just come in and do the work from

695
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:04,880
day one. So, you know, certainly on other podcasts, people have heard

696
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,480
me say that I can get really, I can get really frustrated behind the

697
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:12,260
scenes. Digital marketing was

698
00:43:12,260 --> 00:43:16,100
this thing where, you know, from about 2000 on, you could

699
00:43:16,100 --> 00:43:19,420
hang a shingle and say that you were a digital marketer and

700
00:43:20,300 --> 00:43:24,060
sell your wares. And one of the worst things I think that happened

701
00:43:24,060 --> 00:43:27,100
to wine, this is the most negative I'm going to be about this is

702
00:43:27,900 --> 00:43:31,420
a lot of wineries signed up for that

703
00:43:31,420 --> 00:43:34,820
early on. They signed up for someone who hung that shingle for digital

704
00:43:34,820 --> 00:43:38,360
marketing and they didn't see returns or they

705
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:42,000
weren't given realistic expectations. I think that that's a really big issue.

706
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:46,000
And so they say, oh, well, I tried, it didn't work.

707
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,600
I'm done. Like, that was one of our biggest challenges 10 years ago when we

708
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:53,399
were getting started, is people being like, yeah, I ran some ads, they didn't

709
00:43:53,399 --> 00:43:57,240
work. I'm not going to do that anymore. And I'm like, despair. That's a

710
00:43:57,240 --> 00:44:00,920
really interesting point. Yeah. And the other part of it though, because I

711
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,440
am like the biggest advocate for in house marketers in

712
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:07,720
wine brands, is that the world that a lot of in house

713
00:44:07,720 --> 00:44:11,180
marketers came up through when they were learning their craft

714
00:44:11,420 --> 00:44:15,140
is not how we're marketing now. And if they don't

715
00:44:15,140 --> 00:44:18,460
have leadership that is helping them actually

716
00:44:19,500 --> 00:44:23,260
upskill, you know, side skill, whatever it might be to

717
00:44:23,260 --> 00:44:26,940
train in current marketing practices.

718
00:44:27,420 --> 00:44:31,220
But then, you know, dictating

719
00:44:31,220 --> 00:44:34,900
KPIs or having expectations that don't have any kind of

720
00:44:34,900 --> 00:44:38,620
stakeholder or leadership support, that's a real injustice to your

721
00:44:38,620 --> 00:44:42,240
marketers. So, I mean, I've talked about this on podcasts, written about this at

722
00:44:42,240 --> 00:44:46,000
length. One of the most important things that wine brands can do

723
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:49,840
right now, get your marketers in the room when you are

724
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:53,320
setting goals and KPIs. I know of one very major

725
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:57,160
brand where historically their marketers were Helping them dictate what was getting

726
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,800
planted. Right. Have your marketers be a part of those key

727
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:04,080
growth conversations. Don't just pass them a set of

728
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:07,920
KPIs and say, okay, go do this. And when they come to you and

729
00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:11,520
they say they need support, if that's resources in the form of

730
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:15,220
say, visual assets or creators or, or

731
00:45:15,220 --> 00:45:18,340
if it's training as the

732
00:45:19,380 --> 00:45:23,140
person controlling the purse strings of that brand, you have to support

733
00:45:23,140 --> 00:45:26,940
your marketers because there is, your marketers are

734
00:45:26,940 --> 00:45:30,540
setting your long term strategy, your salespeople are out there hawking the

735
00:45:30,540 --> 00:45:34,220
wares right now. And I know that that immediate cash flow is super, super

736
00:45:34,220 --> 00:45:37,620
important, but you can't, you can't risk

737
00:45:37,860 --> 00:45:40,790
your long term brand building

738
00:45:41,430 --> 00:45:45,190
simply for short term cash flow. So I

739
00:45:45,190 --> 00:45:48,230
want to say three things and we're almost at, we're actually out of time.

740
00:45:48,710 --> 00:45:52,310
But this took a little while to learn. But I did come from corporate

741
00:45:52,310 --> 00:45:56,070
America. I came from probably the largest sales organization of the 80s at Xerox

742
00:45:56,070 --> 00:45:59,830
Corp. And that's a different story. And then I went to the smallest thing in

743
00:45:59,830 --> 00:46:03,350
the world. I had five partners. We had a fishbowl foot, business cards and no

744
00:46:03,350 --> 00:46:07,130
office and a Commodore 64 computer. So we,

745
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:11,000
we've had to go make payroll a couple of times in our career on a

746
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,800
Friday afternoon just to make payroll, go sell something. But what

747
00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:18,080
I found through and what I started to use at the end of my career

748
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:21,720
as a digital marketer, a daily digital marketer, were a couple things. One

749
00:46:21,720 --> 00:46:25,560
is most consultants would look at, they would

750
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:29,280
do something, something would change, they would improve it. And my first

751
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:33,080
consultant was Chris Brogan, a famed social

752
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,870
networker of the day. Back the Gary Vaynerchuk beginnings. They

753
00:46:36,870 --> 00:46:40,630
were friends and they, you know, competitors, so to speak. And I hired

754
00:46:40,630 --> 00:46:44,470
them and they did change this Facebook revenue

755
00:46:44,470 --> 00:46:47,470
stream from the ninth source to the seventh,

756
00:46:48,110 --> 00:46:51,790
which was as far as they're concerned, a consultant like that is they were

757
00:46:51,790 --> 00:46:55,310
successful. Look what we did. But I got an extra, you know, 200

758
00:46:55,310 --> 00:46:58,670
bucks, but it cost me 2,500, so that's not

759
00:46:58,670 --> 00:47:02,110
successful. And the other thing that happens that I learned to

760
00:47:02,350 --> 00:47:06,000
combat was the marketing agencies that become,

761
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:09,920
they put you into the funnel, their funnel, and all

762
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:13,040
of a sudden you're just, you're, you're talking to this, this

763
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:17,400
entry level person who's. Not sure exactly what to do. Yeah, yeah,

764
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:21,200
your account manager. And you just get funneled through and they cross all their T's

765
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,640
and dot all their I's and then they go, look, you know, we're Doing the

766
00:47:23,640 --> 00:47:27,320
work. We ran the ads and they didn't work. And so I've learned how to,

767
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:31,080
how to negotiate up front on that. And the comment I made earlier, which

768
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:34,760
was, I don't mind if this digital marketer

769
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:38,440
was aggressive enough to go out and learn the industry, to go scrub thing,

770
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:42,240
read some articles, go scrub some information and come to me and

771
00:47:42,240 --> 00:47:44,880
say, look, this is what we've understood so far. How does it work with your

772
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:48,600
business? I would have been very happy, but they didn't do that. They

773
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:52,320
just wanted to put you into the funnel. And so what I ended up

774
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:56,040
doing is exactly what you said. Every Wednesday morning

775
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:58,790
for three hours. I had my, my,

776
00:47:59,750 --> 00:48:03,430
my Google Ads person on a zoom call.

777
00:48:03,670 --> 00:48:07,150
I had my social in house networker in the room, I had my

778
00:48:07,150 --> 00:48:10,950
inventory buyer in the room, I had my digital

779
00:48:11,030 --> 00:48:14,390
designer in the room, and I had my video and audio engineer in the room.

780
00:48:15,110 --> 00:48:18,630
And so we sat down and we planned the week's promotions.

781
00:48:19,430 --> 00:48:22,750
Which means you've got to come up with the content for that promotion. You got

782
00:48:22,750 --> 00:48:24,630
to come with the promo code for that commotion. You got to come up with

783
00:48:24,630 --> 00:48:27,990
what the promotion is. You can do a Bordeaux sale or Napa sale or some

784
00:48:27,990 --> 00:48:31,330
kind of red wine sale or something. And all those pieces

785
00:48:32,050 --> 00:48:35,570
had to work together to understand the process. And then you

786
00:48:35,650 --> 00:48:39,370
come back the next week and say, how did it go? You know, that's the

787
00:48:39,370 --> 00:48:43,050
thing like with Fiforest, that was one of the problems from the very

788
00:48:43,050 --> 00:48:46,329
beginning that we wanted to solve. So I mean, there's the joke, right? I know

789
00:48:46,329 --> 00:48:49,730
I'm wasting half my marketing dollars. I just don't know which half kind of thing.

790
00:48:50,050 --> 00:48:53,730
And then also we were seeing that by having all of these

791
00:48:53,730 --> 00:48:57,570
elements siloed. So you'd have someone who was creating strategy and they were like in

792
00:48:57,570 --> 00:48:59,820
an office in New York. And then you'd have somebody else who, who was, you

793
00:48:59,820 --> 00:49:03,300
know, doing 12 other things and then email set somewhere else. And so what we

794
00:49:03,300 --> 00:49:06,300
did is our goal from day one was to bring all of that together. And

795
00:49:06,300 --> 00:49:10,020
the way that we work with our ongoing clients is that we literally work

796
00:49:10,020 --> 00:49:13,540
like an extension of their teams. I have clients who I am in there

797
00:49:13,620 --> 00:49:16,980
every single solitary week in meetings.

798
00:49:17,220 --> 00:49:20,860
I think that one of the things that we, it was really important to

799
00:49:20,860 --> 00:49:24,580
us from the very beginning was full transparency. So this is just for

800
00:49:24,580 --> 00:49:28,060
anyone listening in any industry. As a matter of fact, don't let an agency run

801
00:49:28,060 --> 00:49:31,890
ads under your agency account. Account. Make certain that you as the brand have full

802
00:49:31,890 --> 00:49:35,690
ownership of everything that relates to your data. I can't tell

803
00:49:35,690 --> 00:49:39,490
you how many times we have had to come in and clean up instances where

804
00:49:39,490 --> 00:49:43,290
vendor lock in meant that our clients didn't even

805
00:49:43,290 --> 00:49:46,730
have historic data. So that. The other thing is

806
00:49:46,810 --> 00:49:50,330
you always start with saying, this is what we understand

807
00:49:50,410 --> 00:49:54,130
your goals to be. I would be a negligent marketer if I did

808
00:49:54,130 --> 00:49:57,900
not reset expectations where those goals were inaccurate.

809
00:49:57,900 --> 00:50:01,740
Like, I cannot say, yes, that's yes, I agree to everything.

810
00:50:01,740 --> 00:50:04,740
I will do all of it. So you have to make certain that you have

811
00:50:04,740 --> 00:50:08,420
that level of trust. And the other thing, and this is really hard, and I

812
00:50:08,420 --> 00:50:12,180
think that this is where sort of this, the, the agency model of yes men

813
00:50:12,180 --> 00:50:15,980
is such a problem, is that there are absolutely times, fairly

814
00:50:15,980 --> 00:50:19,340
frequently that I have to push back against a

815
00:50:19,340 --> 00:50:23,190
suggestion, a request, somebody's heard about something, someone's

816
00:50:23,190 --> 00:50:26,830
nephew told them to do things. And I have to say to them, this is

817
00:50:26,830 --> 00:50:29,470
not, you know, I do not feel comfortable with this work. And I'll give you

818
00:50:29,470 --> 00:50:32,990
a really good example. Five Forest, with one

819
00:50:32,990 --> 00:50:36,510
exception, and they've been with me forever. Five Forest does not run

820
00:50:36,510 --> 00:50:40,230
organic social media for brands. And the reason for that is I

821
00:50:40,230 --> 00:50:44,030
personally, I can't report on it. And I don't believe that organic social media

822
00:50:44,350 --> 00:50:47,830
drives revenue. Your brand awareness is fine, but not doing that

823
00:50:47,830 --> 00:50:51,390
contemporaneously, you know, not having someone on site, all these reasons.

824
00:50:51,860 --> 00:50:54,540
So I'm not going to do a job that I can't sit down with my

825
00:50:54,540 --> 00:50:58,140
client at any moment and say, here's what you've spent,

826
00:50:58,140 --> 00:51:01,460
here's what the results were, here was the rationale behind it, and here's what we're

827
00:51:01,460 --> 00:51:05,260
doing next. And so, yeah, I think that what you say is spot on. They

828
00:51:05,260 --> 00:51:09,060
need to be treated as part of your team. And part of your team means

829
00:51:09,140 --> 00:51:12,700
that you are having regular transparent lines of

830
00:51:12,700 --> 00:51:16,500
communication about what you're doing, what's moving the needle, something

831
00:51:16,500 --> 00:51:19,200
like the returns that you're talking about. You know, when we sit down with clients,

832
00:51:20,230 --> 00:51:23,710
the returns that they get need to also pay my

833
00:51:23,710 --> 00:51:27,550
fees. Like, that's something that I know that's really important. So

834
00:51:27,550 --> 00:51:31,310
if the returns that I'm getting on that marketing aren't paying

835
00:51:31,310 --> 00:51:35,149
my fees, well, that's a big discussion.

836
00:51:35,149 --> 00:51:38,190
The brand should be discussing that with me. And if I'm saying that a set

837
00:51:38,190 --> 00:51:41,990
of returns that aren't paying my fees are good returns, I am

838
00:51:41,990 --> 00:51:45,820
also not really a credible marketer. But, but I also have

839
00:51:45,820 --> 00:51:49,100
clients who've been with me, you know, for like 10 years. So

840
00:51:49,580 --> 00:51:52,860
I'd like to think that maybe. But that's an important thing and

841
00:51:53,020 --> 00:51:56,780
certainly any business owner would look at that like, well, Jim, not covering the expense

842
00:51:56,780 --> 00:52:00,460
of my consultants. So why am I bothering? You know, just anecdotally

843
00:52:01,180 --> 00:52:04,540
you're talking about organic marketing and I agree with that completely.

844
00:52:05,020 --> 00:52:08,380
People don't understand that you're basically

845
00:52:08,460 --> 00:52:11,820
organic. Social networking is damned if you, damned if you don't. Because if you don't

846
00:52:11,820 --> 00:52:14,130
do it, you don't look like you have any intelligence or you're part of the.

847
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:18,040
The bit part of the program. But if you do do it, you're. You're basically

848
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:21,960
the time you spend on it is virtually worthless when it comes to revenue.

849
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:26,000
And, and the highlight that. And what I love too is

850
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,800
like the trending. Whatever's trending music that's trending

851
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:33,440
styles that are whatever doesn't matter. My most viral

852
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:36,840
video I have on my TikTok and my Instagram

853
00:52:37,720 --> 00:52:40,520
is one camera angle, no

854
00:52:41,110 --> 00:52:44,870
edits, natural organic sound from the background

855
00:52:44,870 --> 00:52:48,590
of a restaurant. And it's an old friend of mine, guy named

856
00:52:48,590 --> 00:52:52,350
Don Schliff, used to run wine warehouse here in Southern California, opening a

857
00:52:52,350 --> 00:52:56,070
bottle of port with red hot tongs. And I have

858
00:52:56,070 --> 00:52:59,270
4 million TikTok views on that and a few hundred thousand

859
00:52:59,510 --> 00:53:02,870
Instagram views. It did $0.

860
00:53:03,910 --> 00:53:07,470
There's not one. I can't attribute one sale to this 4

861
00:53:07,470 --> 00:53:11,030
million views on TikTok and hundreds of thousands on Instagram.

862
00:53:12,010 --> 00:53:15,210
It has none of the benchmarks or earmarks of

863
00:53:15,530 --> 00:53:18,970
something contemporary based on today's organic

864
00:53:18,970 --> 00:53:22,410
marketing. But it was viral.

865
00:53:23,050 --> 00:53:26,890
I know it went viral. Virality

866
00:53:26,890 --> 00:53:30,690
has zero revenue to usually to associate with

867
00:53:30,690 --> 00:53:33,650
it. But we're out of time and this is incredible because we could probably talk

868
00:53:33,650 --> 00:53:37,410
for another couple hours. We'll do an episode two sometime. I suppose we're going to

869
00:53:37,410 --> 00:53:40,330
have to do that. Such an honor and pleasure to have you on the show

870
00:53:40,330 --> 00:53:43,910
and talk again and sort of peel some of this stuff back. There are no

871
00:53:44,390 --> 00:53:48,070
concrete answers to all of it, but there's certainly some intellectual

872
00:53:48,390 --> 00:53:51,830
and academic exercises to do to make it

873
00:53:52,710 --> 00:53:56,510
more understandable. I love it. I've loved being here. Thank you for having

874
00:53:56,510 --> 00:54:00,230
me. I can't wait to be in Hermosa beach and have a

875
00:54:00,230 --> 00:54:04,030
glass of wine with you. We'll find something better than that old wine that I

876
00:54:04,030 --> 00:54:06,870
was drinking in Cheesecake Factory 25 years. Yes,

877
00:54:07,830 --> 00:54:11,030
I know. Thanks for being on the show. Cheers. Cheers.