Losing the plot

June 10, 2011 in marketing with 9 Comments

 
?????

It seems so obvious from the outside. Winemakers and wineries in a region should cooperate to promote the region and give consumers a clear idea of what that region offers to encourage them to give their wines a try. Yet in practice, when you delve into any region or country, what you see are arguments, divisions and recriminations.

It is something I saw a glimpse of recently during a trip to the beautiful region of the Langhe in Piemonte (thanks to Berry Bros & Rudd), but I stress that this was only the latest example of something I see everywhere.

The conversation started as “How can we (all) make people more aware of the Nebbiolo grape” … but quickly turned into a discussion about who should or should not be included, how “there’s really nothing else in the world like nebbiolo, and everyone should realise this”, and about the classification of vineyards.

Italy is already famous for its complex regional boundaries and multi-layered wine classifications. So how is it that wineries can possibly rationalise “making things easier/clearer for the consumer” by creating further sub-divisions of wine regions and new DOC’s?

I felt the odd one out when I implored the wineries to spend time finding what they have in COMMON that is unique instead of worrying about local matters, but how to explain this view?

Wine and Movies

Winemakers, their wines and their wineries are all great characters. On their own, each one is different, has its own background, personality and role to play in this world. Yet, individually, they are walking biographies, of interest only to the already devoted fans. They lack a context & excitement. They lack a narrative.

To quote an interesting article by Caro Clarke:

“Plot is what happens. Narrative is what the reader sees and hears of what happens – and how he sees and hears it.”

Movies NEED great characters, but they also need a narrative, a story that affects not just what we learn, but HOW we understand what it is all about. There has to be something that brings these characters together, gives them a way to express themselves, makes them interact, highlights their brilliance … and their flaws.

  • Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) needs Los Angeles, computers, satellites, guns and terrorist threats to make sense as a character, otherwise he might just be a moody, aggressive law-enforcement officer with a sadistic streak and a knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time
  • King George VI (Colin Firth) needs the pageantry and social norms of British Royalty and threat of war of 1930′s London to make us care about his fight with a speech impediment, otherwise he’d just be an unfortunate toff who wouldn’t make much money as an after-dinner speaker

Ultimately, there has to be something that engages the viewer and consumer and keeps them in their seats. THIS is what the region should be providing. But just like every movie needs its actors to play the parts, it also needs directors, screen writers and camera operators (and many more skilled folks, including Best Grips, whatever they are). A great movie only emerges when all of these people, and their skills, come together.

The same is true for wines. There are great wine makers, great wineries and amazing wines, but they make a much greater impact when they are put into a context that consumers care about and understand. EVERYONE needs to play their part in promoting the region, and the individuals involved need to learn to think of the overall effort as well as their own objectives.

Consumers are looking for ways to understand wine, so let’s give them the stories they need to convince them to bother paying attention, and then spend their hard-earned money on our wines.

In response to this, Vrazon is planning on running workshops for wineries and regional bodies to help them develop this concept for their own situation. Look out for announcements for dates and locations in 2011 and 2012 but we hope to have one up and running in conjunction with the 2011 European Wine Bloggers’ Conference

Let’s hope that in future we can tell more interesting, unique stories that make sense of the great wine characters that do exist out there.

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About Robert: Robert McIntosh is a wine blogger and online communicator on WineConversation.com, a prolific twitterer (@thirstforwine) and an occasional contributor to wine magazines as well as speaking at wine events. Robert is co-organiser of the annual European Wine Bloggers Conference and Born Digital Wine Awards, promotes international online wine communication, and advises companies about how to engage through social media. Robert also has some trouble communicating in the third person.

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  • Louise Hurren

    “Winemakers and wineries in a region should cooperate to promote
    the region and give consumers a clear idea of what that region offers to
    encourage them to give their wines a try. Yet in practice, when you delve into any region or country, what you see are arguments, divisions and recriminations.” If I’ve understood you right, Robert, what we have going on in the part of France where I live – Languedoc-Roussillon – is the perfect illustration of your opening paragraph.

    On the one hand, you have the regional government promoting an umbrella brand (Sud de France) with a strapline (“from Languedoc-Roussillon: where creativity meets diversity”) devised to encapsulate the plethora of terroirs, climates, soil types and grape varieties found here, and the resulting wide range of wine styles and products made in Languedoc-Roussillon. The Sud de France brand can be used to market all AOP or IGP wines (in other words, to wines that are made from L-R grapes, in L-R) and it was devised as a short form for all that waffle and guff that regional marketing bodies love to come up with (choc-full of terms like “sun-kissed, Mediterranean, healthy, laid-back lifestyle).

    Happily the “where creativity meets diversity” claim can be illustrated – it’s not an empty boast – and I worked with Sud de France to organise press trips that showcased the evidence of the claim, which revealed the narrative, if you will.

    On the other hand, in Languedoc-Roussillon as in other French wine-producing regions, we also have bodies hell-bent on creating yet more complex regional boundaries and
    multi-layered wine classifications (sound familiar?), with Grands Crus and Grands Vins now proposed as the latest definitions designed to “help the consumer”.

    It surprises me that the people who are paid to market the region’s wines to export markets – and who presumably spend a fair amount of their time in those overseas markets – fail to realise that the AOP/IGP/Grands Crus etc spiel is meaningless to many consumers.

    And while the Sud de France initiative has had its critics (“it dumbs down wine”, “there are no real quality controls in place”), I’d defend it for its clarity, and for the potential to tell wine stories and create meaningful narrative around its claim.

    I do hope your plans to run workshops for wineries and – most importantly – regional bodies come to fruition. I look forward to hearing more!

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      exactly that! I’m surprised they even managed to get to a point where they agreed on a strapline like that without the arguments causing a fall-out. However, there is a big challenge is “walking the walk” and producers working together to make it happen. Examples like The Outsiders are few and far between, but great examples to others.

      Consumers do not need more rules to “help” them, they need to understand even the basics, and anything that makes it more complicated, for whatever good reason it was created, just gets in the way of success

  • VinoPigro

    I totally agree with you, Robert, and I thank you for saying it so clearly. It’s true, the lack of “narration”is one of the problems of wine communication in Italy. Everybody believe to be the best, and he/she is surprised when people doesn’t agree. Generally speaking, every winery in Italy think it is the sun, while the terroir  is the earth which revolves around…

    Lizzy

  • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

    Another interesting comment left on Facebook by Donna Childers-Thirkell: 

    “I just don’t see Italy in general ever working together regionally in some sort of organized fashion. Italy exists and survives in spite of itself working so hard to fail. But thats also its charm. If there was a type of Sud de France in piedmont im sure there would be more arguments accusing some wineries getting more perks than others, lots of hand gestures at the meetings and I can only imagine the blog fodder it would produce. I might be wrong, and frequently am but just don’t see it ever happening.”

  • http://www.comeforthewine.com Marcy Gordon

    This is spot on. Narrative is the life blood of effective marketing and engagement through story-telling. I am constanly preaching and teaching the use of narrative elements in everything from tweets to blog posts. Slowly people are getting it. But getting people to agree on the plot-line for an entire region is an enourmous challenge. The workshops you plan to run sound like an excellent idea. 

  • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

    A great comment from Gianpaolo Paglia, another Apple tech user struggling with leaving a comment (we promise we will look into that):

    “I buy into your parallel between film making and wine making up to a certain point. Whilst in a film all characters are already set at the beginning by the film producers, in the wine business everyone wants to be the star. In wine we value the differences rather than the similarities so, the question is, how to reconcile the need of simplifying with the reality of a complex product such as wine. Especially in a country that is genetically incapable of acting as a nation, rather than a group of individuals.
    If you ask me, I have to say that I don’t know. I do not think that there are simple recipes for this, all I know is that we have to start from the basics. 1st, don’t be afraid of your colleagues. Being afraid make it impossible to work together and it’s only the sign of insecurity, being scared of not being good enough, often masked by the aggressive appearance of those who claim to be the best.”

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      I think that Gianpaolo (himself a HIGHLY respected blogger and winemaker at http://www.poggioargentiera.com/) make a very good point. Everyone wants to be the star. Yet in movies, theatre, etc. it is the same. The director defines to some extent who has the starring role, but 1) how often are they upstaged by their co-stars and 2) even the best actors can be booed off stage if everyone around them is terrible. Plenty of very good actors have made terrible films because the other actors were poor, the script was awful or the editing made them look ridiculous. You need to be a star AND a team player to get the best outcomes – there are very few true successful, maverick, independent individuals. 

  • gianpaolo paglia

    I buy into your parallel bteween film making and wine making up to a certain point. Whilst in a film all characters are already set at the beginning by the film producers, in the wine business everyone wants to be the star. In wine we value the differences rather than the similarities so, the question is, how to reconcile the need of simplifying with the reality of a complex product such as wine. Especially in a country that is genetically uncapable of acting as a nation, rather than a group of individuals.
    If you ask me, I have to say that I don’t know. I do not think that there are simple recipes for this, all I know is that we have to start from the basics. 1st, don’t be afraid of your collegues. Being afraid make it impossible to work together and it’s only the sign of insecurity, being scared of not being good enough, often masked by the aggressive appearance of those who claim to be the best.

    • http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

      Thank you Gianpaolo, you make a very good point. Everyone wants to be the star. Yet in movies, theatre, etc. it is the same. The director defines to some extent who has the starring role, but 1) how often are they upstaged by their co-stars and 2) even the best actors can be booed off stage if everyone around them is terrible. Plenty of very good actors have made terrible films because the other actors were poor, the script was awful or the editing made them look ridiculous. You need to be a star AND a team player to get the best outcomes – there are very few true successful, maverick, independent individuals.