Welcome, Hit the Bottle listeners, I’m your host, Michael Wangbickler. When you have an opportunity to spend an hour with one of your respected peers, it’s a refreshing experience. It makes you remember why you do what you do, and that there are others out there that have similar experiences and thoughts, especially one of your favorite topics, blogging and digital communication.
That was the case when Tom Wark, founder of Wark Communications, joined me on the podcast late last year. It is one of our longer interviews, but there were so many valuable insights that we felt guilty about cutting it down, so we didn’t.
The conversation took us in many different directions, but some of the key points discussed were the evolution of blogging; the importance of third party endorsement; how you gauge whether an independent blogger is worth your time; why all beverage producers should be publishing their own content on a frequent basis; how the wine industry needs a better communication strategy when communicating digitally; and how wineries should take their experiences on the road.
You may need to listen to this one more than once, honestly, but I guarantee you will learn something new. So, let’s get on with it.
Transcript on Blogging and Digital Communications
Michael Wangbickler:
My next guest started a little blog 15 years ago that he named Fermentation, and he’s been going ever since.
He is the owner and chief bottle washer for Wark Communications, and he has been involved in direct consumer shipping on all levels for a number of years. So, it’s my pleasure to welcome Tom Wark to the show.
Tom Wark:
Michael, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Michael Wangbickler:
Absolutely. It’s great to have you. So today…
Tom Wark:
I want…
Michael Wangbickler:
yeah, go ahead.
Tom Wark:
I was going to say I’ve been waiting for a podcast like this. You know, I’ve seen all these podcasts emerge that talk about wine facing the consumer. But I was wondering when that was going to be a podcast that spoke to us, the professionals who work in communications and DTC in the industry. And you went did it.
Michael Wangbickler:
Thanks. I basically created the podcast I wanted to listen to because I was in the same boat. I’m like, well, if nobody else is going to do it, I’ll do it. So, thanks so much for saying that. I really appreciate it.
So today we’re going to we’re going to talk a little bit about wine media and blogging and a little bit about social and how all this sort of influencer marketing kind of falls into what we’re doing in the beverage business. So, you’ve been doing this for a long time, so, what to you is important for us to consider when we’re talking about blogging in general?
Tom Wark:
Well, it certainly depends on why you’re blogging and who you want to communicate to. So, bloggers, at least in the wine business, have predominantly been those folks who want to reach a consumer audience. And in my view, the emergence of the wine blog – or let me step back – the emergence of the technical platforms that allowed anybody to reach the same audience as The New York Times and Time Magazine and The Wine Spectator in an affordable way, almost for free, was a revolution in in wine communications, as it was in every other industry.
Some of us have been in the business long enough to know that there was a time when the only the people who controlled what people read about wine, it came down to about maybe 10 or 12 different magazines, most of which were hardly read, and then maybe 10 or 12 different folks at a daily newspaper and a few magazine writers. That was it. They were the voices and the editors of those places; they were the ones who determined what would be discussed in terms of wine in front of consumers.
Once the blogging software arrived that allowed anybody to write, and allowed anybody to access that audience, everything changed. Primarily because all these voices that had essentially been penned up or been spouting on bulletin boards or been sitting around at a bar talking to each other about terroir, all of a sudden, all these voices could communicate with a vastly larger audience. And all of a sudden, the gates, the keepers had tried to keep up but came down, and it was a true revolution, and that was exciting to me.
I started blogging in 2004, and at the time there were two other people: Louis Dressner and Alder Yarrow, who are blogging about wine. And it was exciting to know that, I mean, for literally an investment of ten dollars, all of a sudden I had the potential to reach the same audience and people responded at the time, it was very novel and whatnot. That was 15 years ago.
And so, you know, things have changed considerably today there’s a lot less excitement around wine blogging, there’s a lot less excitement around there being new voices along the way.
I think wine blogging in some circles got a bad name. But I still think that the traditional wine blog, when operated by somebody with integrity and somebody with a real excitement around wine, they can find an audience and they can potentially find a big audience and potentially make a difference.
So, I’m still very excited about wine blogs. But to use them today, I think one has to be fairly strategic.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the challenges I’m often asked by clients about what they… Who they should consider to be the most influential wine bloggers out there, because frankly, you know, as you say with the software now, anybody can be a blogger. And so, the question is, are they important enough to pay attention to?
And I think that’s one of the challenges that a lot of beverage producers have. There’s a lot of suspicion, I think also in that realm of because there are a few people, a few bad apples who have spoiled the bunch in some cases of just asking for free stuff.
Tom Wark:
Yeah, those people are usually easy enough to find, but it takes a little bit of research, right? I mean, you get a call from somebody, they say that they want to do samples and to review so and so’s wine, “oh, and I’ve got this great audience, I’ve got 2000 people on my Twitter feed and another 2000 on Facebook, but I’m very prominent in my hometown”. Well, and you go back, and you start to do the research and it’s clear that this person has gotten samples from other people in the past and has written their two-sentence review.
And even that has grammatical mistakes in it. But you have to do the work right, to figure out who these people are. And it’s just a – it’s an ongoing process. But there was a little bit of that, I think, that spoiled the wine blogging pool to a degree. And then there were a lot of wine bloggers, myself included, who in the early days were more than happy to sort of take on the establishment views and, you know, to put out click bait headlines and whatnot.
And the traditional wine media looked at that group of people and just thought they were, you know, flights of fancy, that they were just trying to get attention. To some degree we were, but to some degree we also did. And some of us did a pretty good job and went on to do some pretty great things beyond blogging, too.
So, you know, in terms of determining who’s going to be the right person to put your client in front of, you know, and how much influence this blogger has over that blogger, it comes down a little bit to, you know, asking yourself, is it pornography or is it not? You know, you can tell it when you see it.
Michael Wangbickler:
Well, I do have a few criteria as to what I consider to be a blogs worthy of… Independent blogs worthy of consideration.
Michael Wangbickler:
And a lot of that you’ve already played. One of those is that is the quality of the writing. Right. You know, if it’s full of typos and jargon that nobody’s going to understand, then it’s really not going to give you the best quality right up that you’re going to want.
So, the quality of the writing has everything to do with it, the voice, you know, the personality behind it, and to a certain extent, the readership as well.
Tom Wark:
That’s right. Yeah. I’m always looking for that wine blogger who’s really stepping up and who’s doing a lot better than everybody else. And they come at… They’re few and far between. But I’m always looking for one. And the one that I came across most recently that I really wanted to write about was Amber at SpitBucket. She’s a great blogger, she’s a really good thinker. Her writing is pretty darn good, too. And she writes about consequential, consequential issues, too.
I’m finding fewer and fewer new bloggers now who meet the criteria that you’re talking about, who are good writers and who take the subject seriously and who I want my clients to be to be written about from. But one of the things I also look at to gauge the seriousness or the influence of a blogger is how often they actually post.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. Frequency, for sure.
Tom Wark:
I don’t believe somebody who posts who wants to I don’t believe somebody who posts no more than once a week is serious. I really don’t. It’s so easy to post once a week that it doesn’t take any effort whatsoever.
And particularly if somebody is only posting, you know, a wine review once a week and they give us two or three paragraphs and a photo of the wine, they’re just not trying. And I like to try to reward and work with those people who are trying.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. You know, and to a certain extent, I mean, you can you get wine reviews from any of the big publications. Right. And frankly, they’re going to be, probably more influential than your average blog.
Michael Wangbickler:
So really what I would look for from an independent blogger is a story, you know, what kind of story can you build around the wines or collection of wines that you’re talking about?
Tom Wark:
That’s right. That’s right. And even if it’s a review and or a story, and even if the blogger isn’t that influential, if you’re going to work with bloggers, all of a sudden you’re going to find that your client has four or five, six, ten different reviews or stories by these relatively non influential bloggers.
But when you package them together and then all of a sudden you redeliver them on social media or you’re redeliver them to your wine club or to your mailing list, they really work in that way.
I mean, they’re not going to move the dial in terms of, you know, moving tens or hundreds of cases of wine, just not going to happen. But what I like to do is I like to try to package them together for our clients and then send them out to the rest of the audience who probably didn’t see them to begin with.
That’s always the value of having a third-party endorsement.
Michael Wangbickler:
Right. Well, you don’t need that many. I mean, you don’t need to have hundreds and hundreds of bloggers that you’re sending samples to you need like 10 or 20. You know, that are good. And, you know, if you can collect together 10 or 20 of them, then, you know, that shows some real movement there.
Tom Wark:
You know, it’s harder than it used to be back in the day. I mean, if you would ask me, how do you gauge influence, you know, say free blog? It was very, very easy. You looked at the sales kit, you saw with the circulation, with the audited circulation was of the magazine or you saw with the circulation was of the newspaper and that was it. That was easy. I mean, if The New York Times had a circulation of one point nine million, OK, that’s easy.
That’s influential just because of all the eyeballs, the wine spectator may have only had two hundred and fifty or what was maybe 500,000 back in the day. But you knew the readership was ideal. It’s a different kind of readership. It was very it was much easier to gauge influence back in the day than it is now. Now you have to take into account not just circulation or readership or click through, but you’re looking at page views and you’re looking at, you know, social media follows and likes and then you have to look and see how they’re using their social media feed with regard to their other content.
And it’s become a much more complex thing. It’s interesting, but I’m wondering… and maybe you know this, because there used to be a few things like this, but is there anything right now that does a really good job of measuring influence by taking into account your Facebook followers, your Instagram followers, your Twitter followers, et cetera, et cetera? Is there anything that’s doing a good job?
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, yeah. Trendcoat kind of does that. Yeah, there’s a few others out there, but they’re expensive.
Tom Wark:
Right. That’s right. I remember there was that one that was free. That was it called it began with a K… Klout. Remember Klout?
Michael Wangbickler:
Right. Yeah, yeah yeah.
Tom Wark:
That was funny. Back in the day I had clients who said, oh, we want to we want to move up on Klout.
Michael Wangbickler:
Well, you know, I mean, it was it was it was an admirable goal to try and quantify, you know, what people were doing in a way. So, but really, what it comes down to is engagement numbers and how engaged people are, how many people are liking what you’re doing and, you know, engaging conversations with you.
You know, that’s frankly I mean, I think that’s what you have developed over time as well as folks like Alder. I mean, I’m curious to see how that’s evolved over time for you, like, I’m sure that, you know, what I’ve seen is basically one time, like comments on blogs were plentiful and now they’re almost non-existent.
Is that still the case with your blog and have had exposure elsewhere?
Tom Wark:
If everything’s moved into social media, the conversation has moved to Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. I mean, it used to be back in the day where I keep saying back in the day, I don’t like that term now that I hear it.
It used to be before social media, BSM, that the conversation on blogs would be robust, and they still can be, and they occasionally still are depending on the topic. But generally, after we write a blog post, of course, we’re always promoting it on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and whatnot.
And that’s where the conversations happen. And it’s just a function of the way people have changed communicating. So that’s where all the that’s where all the comments have gone. I mean, I can I can post a link to a new post, say, on Facebook, and I’ll get 30, 40 comments, there, used to be that I would get 30 or 40 comments or even more directly on the blog. I’m always satisfied when are more satisfied when people actually come to the blog to comment.
That’s where people, I think, feel a little bit freer to really get into the argument and into the discussion. So, I still like it when that happens. But it doesn’t happen nearly as much. It’s all it’s all gone to social media. So, we’re all paying attention to a few different things.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. And it goes back to what you were saying about how to measure somebody’s influence. And let’s, you know, let’s talk a little bit about that. Is that like how do you how do we measure influence that somebody has? We can’t base it solely on a blog post or how many readers they have on the blog because social media that extends further out.
Tom Wark:
Well, certainly we’re going to go look and investigate their social media feeds, aren’t we? I mean, we’re going to look and see if they’re using social media regularly and responsibly and if they’re getting if they’re getting interaction with their audience. And that’s easy enough to determine generally.
So that’s… you go there, and you’ll look at that and also, you’ll see what the quality of the interaction to that’s real important to me. To what kind of people are they attracting?
And the other thing I’ll do, too, is, I mean, if somebody says, I don’t know on I don’t know, say Twitter, right? And they’ve got, say, 10000 followers, I want to know who those 10000 followers are. I want to know who the who the first 100 followers were. And I’ll look and see what kind of you know who those people are.
And I’ll look to see if there are influential people who are serious people who are following them too and who are commenting. From doing that sort of thing, if you don’t happen to know the person already, you can get a sense of the degree to which they’re going to do things responsibly and seriously.
And you’re going to find out the degree to which you can promote them once you get a review from them or an article from them or whatever. So that’s the first thing that I’m going to do. Since everything has moved to social media, I’m going to investigate their social media, their social media play and see where it takes me. Yes, it’s time consuming, though, man, I mean, it really is.
Michael Wangbickler:
But I mean, that’s why people should hire agencies, because that’s what that’s what we do. We and often enough times, we’ve already done that for another client. So
Tom Wark:
that’s exactly right, when they have questions about, you know, X blogger, they don’t know because they haven’t had any good reason to investigate or the in-house PR person they have is, you know, too busy putting the wine in boxes for the next wine club send, because they were dragooned into doing that. But theoretically, we’ve been doing that the whole time. And theoretically, if a client asks us about a blogger who we’ve absolutely never heard of, chances are they’re not blogging about wine on a regular basis.
Chances are they’re an influencer who wants to blog about wine or wants to post about wine or whatnot. So that is the value. That’s always been the value of hiring an agency or a consultant to do that work for you, particularly where media relations is concerned. I think that’s where our value is really is really heightened.
Michael Wangbickler:
I can’t agree more. And we do consider, you know, when we talk about blogs this whole time and that’s where these kind of started, but, you know, the idea of blogging and for that matter, for the traditional media, they’ve all kind of evolved.
And almost the lines are blurred. Right. Because, you know, traditional publications are actually publishing as much online or more online nowadays than they are even in print. And, you know, and the bloggers, you know, they’re extending well beyond well beyond their blog also.
So, the key is to, again, like know who you’re talking to and what kind of quality they are.
Tom Wark:
Is there any wine media group out there that is not publishing online? I’m not aware of one at this point, I mean, there used to be that there were such things, but I don’t I don’t know of one now and I would be suspicious, to be honest with you, of any publishing group that tried to exist in print only. I wouldn’t understand that particular strategy.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, you’re there’s no wine publications. There are some other publications that are mostly print. But, you know, they tend to be very specialized and kind of like niche.
Tom Wark:
I can imagine something like the art of eating, you know, staying in print, right? Something along those lines of I don’t know if it is [crosstalk]. Exactly. That’s exactly right. But you’re right, I mean, the lines have been blurred. I mean, blogging is a really weird word to use, now.
It worked back and back then when the platform was new. But in the end, it’s just a… it’s just a press, isn’t it? And it’s just it’s just a way of publishing things. That’s all it is. But we think about the blogger is that person who would post things in sequential order and who would have a little a little sidebar of other bloggers who they liked, right? And certainly, they were an independent voice.
Tom Wark:
I think now what people think of bloggers, what they think of is an independent voice unconnected to a major media group or even a minor media group, for that matter. That still seems to be this, what people talk about when they talk about bloggers, although I sometimes see lists here and there on the Internet that, say, the top bloggers and you see Wine Spectator right there. Robinson is.
Yeah, I always think that’s not fair. I don’t want to be compared to those guys, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to go into business against Marvin Shanken and I don’t think I am in business with Marvin Shanken so…
Michael Wangbickler:
But to that point, though, I mean, that’s essentially what they are still doing. I mean, they’re publishing a blog post every day.
Tom Wark:
I think… Yeah. you know, you’re right, essentially, that is what they’re doing with a with a print publication on the side.
Michael Wangbickler:
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Tom Wark:
You’re absolutely right. So, in that sense, you know, everything has changed. But, you know, it’s interesting too, thinking about wine media, it’s really an interesting state of flux right now. I just read today that SevenFifty Daily and Beverage Media combined, and it started me thinking I think we might be in store for some consolidation in the wine media industry. There are a few properties out there that I can see being gobbled up or looking attractive to other folks. And I’m not going to be surprised at all if we see that happen in 2020.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, I agree. You know, we saw a little bit of that with Dennis kind of picking up a few things. Yeah but yeah, I think, I think you’re right, you know.
But the other thing is, is that you and I were talking before the show about how there’s this kind of odd sense right now for people like us who’ve been doing communications in the wine business for a long time, how there seems to be this feeling that earned media and when we talk earned media blogging and, you know, getting your articles into publications, newspapers and magazines.
But that’s all earned media, how that doesn’t seem to have the same kind of value now that it once had.
Michael Wangbickler:
And it’s an odd phenomenon. And I’m wondering, what that means for the future.
Tom Wark:
Well, I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think part of it has to do with I think there’s a growing distrust of professional media in general, I think that owes to a number of different conditions that underlie our culture right now. I think that’s part of it, because I agree with you that I think there is a diminished appreciation for earned media and, you know, giving your getting your name in the paper, if you will.
And so, I think that’s part of it. I think also a lot of people have become absolutely captured by instant feedback. And the only place you can really get instant feedback today is social media and everyone’s on social media. And that’s that is an information platform for a lot of people, including a lot of important professional people.
This is where they look to see themselves mentioned. And I think that has something to do with it, too. Some people are going to value a Twitter mention more than they’re going to value a short profile in a regional paper that will also be printed online about their company or about their efforts or about their new whatever.
I think that’s part of it, too. So I whenever I get a new client and whenever that client is all about media relations and trying to gin up more earned media, I always have to let them know that just like it’s always been, it’s a process. And if you’re hiring me for three months to try to gin up some more media for you, I mean, I’ll take your money, but I won’t get you anything. It’s a process.
Michael Wangbickler:
Exactly. Exactly. It takes…
Tom Wark:
And you’re going to have to hire me for a year because I know I’m going to pitch stories to some pretty prominent members of the media and some pretty prominent publications. I’m going to pitch it today and it’s going to come through four or five, six months from now after they have their editorial meeting, after they decide what they’re going to write for their August issue after… I mean, and I think there’s a lack of patience, at least less patience today than there was.
And that’s our challenge as consultants and that’s our challenge as professionals to educate our clients that the value of an article in whatever it is, you know, Forbes or Time or The New York Times or I was going to name some other newspapers, but I think some of the ones I was going to name, they’re already dead. There’s value in that. There’s real value in that.
And you can extend the value via social media and via your newsletters and even, you know, in your in the boxes that you send out with your with your wine clubs, a number of different ways that that sort of thing makes a real impact.
That person has to be patient. It’ll come if you make the right pitch, and if you if you sell convincingly and if you have a good story, you know, it’ll come. But it’s not going to come in three months. It’s not going to come in one month. And so, but I always thought that was the value of bloggers, though, right? Because I did pitch stories for fermentation that I’ve actually been able to turn around that day and write about and people are absolutely shocked when it happens.
And they should be because it hardly ever happens.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s…
Tom Wark:
That’s OK. Now, I think it was funny, it’s a lack of attention. I think it’s the attention span that is in part harming the value of earned media because it’s not as instantaneous as social media. And that’s I was going to say that’s a problem in our culture, but it is what’s happening. It is what is what is. And that’s what we have to deal with as professional communicators.
That’s how people are operating today, so we have to adjust our outreach to the media to accommodate for that. There’s just no other way around it.
Michael Wangbickler:
So, OK, there’s there is never a time when a third-party endorsement isn’t valuable.
Tom Wark:
That’s right.
Michael Wangbickler:
But I think we’ve covered that well. So, let’s talk about owned media – so that’s stuff that’s generated by a producer or their agents. So, should a should a producer, a beverage producer, blog themselves?
Tom Wark:
So, let’s keep it in wine then. If the producer is at their peak production and if they’re selling out that production completely at the price, they want to sell it at, then no, there’s no reason for them to do it.
Michael Wangbickler:
You probably can count those wineries on one hand.
Tom Wark:
That’s right. Well, you got there before I did so. And in fact, those wineries might want to raise their prices, so you might want to support that somehow. So, the better way to ask the question is why wouldn’t a winery or a beverage company want to create their own controlled content that helps them, helps them communicate their values and their mission to their customers? Why wouldn’t you do that?
Clearly, you’d want to do it well, but I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t. And even if it’s a small audience, we have a client now that is literally targeting a total of maybe 400 companies that it wants to do business with. And so, what we’ve done is we’ve created a blog and we’ve created a newsletter that gets sent out on a regular basis to those 400 companies, to 400 people. That’s it.
And it’s of great value because we’re able to, on a regular basis, brand ourselves exactly where we want to brand ourselves, deliver our mission statement. We’re able to deliver our values without an intermediary.
And the other… Michael, the other value of a…you’re like this, too, you’ll go “yeah, that’s right” is when we first started doing media relations for this company too, the first reporter who we worked with, got it wrong. Despite listening to us and interviewing us, they just got it wrong. And I had to explain to my client, you know, that’s par for the course.
I promise you that the reporters you talk to in the future are going to get it wrong. Which is, again, another reason why if you can control the message to your customers, I can’t think of a good reason why you wouldn’t want to do that.
Michael Wangbickler:
So many times.
Tom Wark:
Oh, I know,
Michael Wangbickler:
I always tell my clients that basically it’s like they’re going to have at least one thing wrong in every article written about you.
Tom Wark:
And I just get up and do the happy dance if it’s one thing.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Tom Wark:
Just one thing. So yes. And the other thing is, I don’t think it costs that much to develop good, well considered content that works for your audience. I think, which makes the ROI somewhat high for that kind of a play. So even if it’s just a blog that you’re publishing on your website that you’re alerting your customers or your mailing list to, it’s a relatively inexpensive way to brand yourself.
And so that’s again why it’s also valuable. It gives the small guy a way to raise their profile and do sort of the same thing that the bigger guys are doing. So, I’m all in favor of blogging, at the very least for most companies that I’m working with. Sometimes you get to let them do their own writing. You know, sometimes it’s rare. But if they don’t do it, if they’re going to hire us, we can certainly do it for them.
We can do it faster and on a more regular basis, hopefully in their own voice. So, I can’t figure out those moments when it’s not a value.
Michael Wangbickler:
I agree. You know, content creation is a major function for agencies like ours.
So, it does actually require a certain amount of talent.
Tom Wark:
Agreed. 100%.
Michael Wangbickler:
A basic talent, but it does require that somebody is a good storyteller and you don’t even have to call it a blog, you know, it can be weekly updates or, you know, notes from the seller, or whatever you want to call it. You don’t even have to call it a blog.
Tom Wark:
You don’t have to call it – and I don’t think most people would actually, now. That would be sort of sort of archaic, I think, to call it that. Call it whatever you want, but as long as you’re pushing out, you know, well-developed information.
Again, you’re right – has a good story that communicates the values and communicates the mission. I think it’s always going to be of value. And again, even if you’re hiring a consultant or a firm to do it for you, I think the return on that investment is significant enough to do it.
The only question, the only pushback I usually get or sometimes get when I make this recommendation is aren’t people getting inundated already with information? And I don’t think that’s I don’t think that’s the right way to respond. I mean, I think there is a tidal wave of information that comes at us, but I think people have done a pretty good job of siloing themselves and taking in the information that they want to take in.
So, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a bigger problem as some people think it is.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, the thing is, is that, you know, again, the way that the weather that consumer behavior is working these days is that most buyers are engaging with brands that they have an affinity for, right?
That they like their values, they like their vision, their products, what have you. So, if they’re already engaged in that way, they’re going to read your blog. Any of the content that you create, they’re going to be interested in that. Those are those are your superfans, right?
Tom Wark:
That’s right.
Michael Wangbickler:
The rest of the people out there that aren’t, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter if they read it, because they’re not going to take any action on it anyway. So…
Tom Wark:
That… which takes me back to my client, who literally has four targets… Four hundred targets. That’s it. I could care. We don’t care if we don’t necessarily want anybody else to read what they’re doing. Just these 400 people. Eventually will get them, all, right?
But that’s all we care about. It doesn’t matter. So as long as you can identify those folks who are likely to be sympathetic to your message or want to hear what you have to say or appreciate what you’re doing, those are the ones you’re going to be trying to influence through your work.
So, you’re right, it doesn’t matter if they don’t if they don’t listen to you. Although it’s true, and I hear it more and more, that the wine industry really needs to change the way it communicates. I don’t know where I come down on this yet, but there seems to be this feeling that as things start to change in the industry, as Amazon, for example, might start to get in the business of selling and shipping wine down the road, it’s going to put wineries at risk and they’re going to have to up their game.
They’re going to have to up their game through digital communications, and they’re going to have to start being the Warby Parker’s of the world, right? And they’re going to have to… And I don’t know if…
I don’t know how much the wine industry can necessarily do different in the way that it communicates to its customers, particularly the wine industry that we’re talking about, in that we tend to work with those folks who are making ultra-premium or highly expensive wines.
But that seems to be the discussion that people are starting to have right now is how can the wine industry talk differently once the big boys start to get the wine game and when big boys are talking about Amazon? I mean, it’s an interesting conversation to have. I’m not sure that that the wine industry is equipped to become the Warby Parker’s of the world.
Michael Wangbickler:
No, but…
Tom Wark:
There are a few out there that might be able to do it, but if you’re selling 5,000 cases a year or 10,000 cases a year, even 15,000 cases a year, I don’t know.
The one thing that I want to have if I’m selling 15,000 cases a year or 10 or five, the one thing I want to have is I want to have a tasting room. I want to have a tasting room on Highway 12, and I want to have a tasting room on Highway 21. That’s what I want.
But I think I might be coming them coming the minority on that opinion.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. You know I, I’m of several minds on this topic. One is, is that I do believe that the wine business has to change the way that it conducts itself online, that it can actually do much better digitally than it does.
Do I think that the, you know, those higher end wines from Napa, Sonoma, wherever that are, you know, fifty dollars plus? I don’t think they’re going to necessarily be competing with Amazon. I think that, again, it comes down to finding your super fans. Finding the people who are really into your brand, you know, whether those are wine club members or what have you, and be able to grow that base, that’s going to as a ultra-premium producer, I believe that’s where your success is going to be.
I don’t necessarily think it’s going to be in in competing against Amazon on price or any other any other way. That said that kind of middle tier between 20 and 50 dollars. I mean, they could be in trouble when it comes to competing against the folks like it.
Tom Wark:
And both if they’re working inside the three-tier system.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yes.
Tom Wark:
Yeah, I agree.
Michael Wangbickler:
And they’re going to give up more and more margin and it’s going to get tighter and tighter.
Tom Wark:
The thing is, though, nobody’s going to want to give up more and more margin. The first thing they’re going to ask themselves is how can I retain my margin as Amazon and maybe retailers and more people get into the business. If I retain my margin and stay or stay where I am with regard to DTC or increase it and get my wins out of that three-tier system.
And one of the things that I don’t think enough people do, and they’re going to start thinking about doing it, particularly when you’re selling wines in the 60, 70, 80 dollar bottle range, is I don’t think we take the tasting room on the road with us enough. I don’t think we go into markets and find your champion in in Charleston and have a dinner in their house where they invite 20, 25 people. And you go there, and you literally get drunk with those folks and all of a sudden, they’re your friends.
And all of a sudden, the friends that they invited to this party are buying the wine, too, because they know the winemaker, he was there. I don’t think it’s that kind of move is exploitative enough in our business. There are people who complain that the wine industry waits for people to come to their tasting room. And they do, we do wait for people to come to our tasting room. I think maybe the next move we’ll see a lot of wineries start to do it just to get out in the market and bring their tasting room on the road into people’s homes.
Tom Wark:
That’s one of the things I might concentrate on.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I you know, that’s something that we’re already working on with some of our clients. And you start and there are some there are some wineries out there that are doing this really well.
Tom Wark:
Yeah.
Michael Wangbickler:
It looks like Kessler, you know, and, you know, there that’s exactly what they do. They’re you know, they’re on the road and they’re talking to people in their market because they can’t rely on them coming to California, Oregon, or Washington.
Tom Wark:
That’s right. The other guy who does it really well is John Caldwell here in Napa. I don’t know if you know John Caldwell, but if anyone listening knows John Caldwell, I want you to try to imagine to have him in your in your house with 20 of your best friends, I can guarantee you you’re going to have one of the best times of your life and it just works. And they increase their customer base, they increase their wine club, and if you’re selling a hundred percent direct, you’ve got the margin in there to be able to get on the road and pay for the plane tickets and the and the hotels to increase your customer base.
But I wanted to go back, because you said something that I keep hearing other people say, and they say it, but I don’t know exactly what they mean. I think different people mean different things. So, you said that what the wine industry needs to do is they need to do better digitally.
I don’t know exactly what that means – I don’t know if that means they need to have a better social media outreach program, I don’t know if that means that they need to have better website, I don’t know if that means they need to have, you know, go with the geo fencing strategy, and see who’s in town. I’m not exactly sure what it means when somebody like you, or my friend Paul Mayberry or other people say we need to do better digitally.
I have a sense of what they’re saying, but I’m not entirely sure what they mean.
Michael Wangbickler:
Well, that’s an excellent point. And the answer is all of the above. But more than that, it is it is it is a realization that you have a very powerful set of tools to market to, and sell to, your potential customers. And frankly, it’s the expertise, the knowledge and or the work just isn’t there for most wineries, as you say, most wineries are, you know, if they’re selling direct, they’re making they’re not on people coming to them, signing up for the wine club and then them going somewhere else.
Whereas, you know, if you’re able to engage using any of these digital tools… And it comes down to it’s not the tools, it’s how you’re using them. So, the art of marketing that we practice is all about relationships, right, whether that is through PR, whether that’s through advertising with the social media, whatever, the whole idea is that you want to make a connection with somebody. And the fact is, is that the wine business is terrible at doing that online.
And there are many different tricks and tools that they can use, whether it’s through personalization, more personalization of communications with the people who, you know online or whether that has to do with automating certain functions that will help move people down that sales funnel to purchase. So, there’s any number of things that can be done, but a lot of wineries, except for the big boys, aren’t really doing it.
Tom Wark:
Well, that’s right. And that’s why not talk about him behind his back and I’m sure he’ll call me when I do talk behind his back. But that’s why Paul Mayberry’s company, most of his clients, I think, could be qualified as the big boys, at least in our neck of the woods.
But the one thing also that Paul would tell everybody who listens is that if we are going to do better digitally, then you need to think about having that VP of digital on your staff and finding the person with the talent and the know-how and the knowledge and bring them on and dedicate them to your digital to your digital profile and your digital activity.
That makes sense to me. I’ve never hired a VP of Digital. I don’t know what it costs. My guess is it’s going to be somewhere in the neighborhood, depending on where you are of one hundred to one hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year plus benefits. And the question I have is, to what degree do you make that back, and more obviously as a result of their talent?
I haven’t seen too many good case studies in the wine industry of what happens when somebody brings on a person who’s dedicated – not to building the wine club and using digital technology to do it, not to manage the tasting room, and then also being in charge of social media.
Bring somebody on who’s absolutely dedicated to working through the digital channels, be it social media, branding online, making sure the color scheme from the website to the photos on Instagram are correctly aligned and correctly communicating your branding.
I haven’t seen that case study and it’s something that I desperately want to see because I have a feeling that there’s that if we had a good case study and if we saw somebody who did it successfully, that it might open a lot of people’s eyes in terms of bringing somebody online to communicate only in the digital sphere.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah. So, I’m going to I’m going to push back on you a little bit on that. And that is that I look at this in terms of just being another piece of the marketing mix.
So, if you’re a VP of marketing, you should have a clear understanding of how digital tools work and how you can market digitally. I don’t think you necessarily have to have somebody who’s dedicated to that.
I think you have to have somebody who has a vision and is willing to make the investments in that. And you can bring in outside talent to do that, you can hire consultants to do that, or you can do it internally. But I don’t necessarily think that you have to have a dedicated person.
Just think that you need to shift the culture.
Tom Wark:
It’s a good point. But I would ask you the same thing I would ask once you hire the consultants who you’re confident in, and once you pay them the money, I want to see the return on that investment.
I’m not saying that… I want to see the study that shows me the return on that investment. That’s what I want to see. What were the costs of the investment and how much did that directly increase my sales, my wine club, you know, my lifetime value of the client, whatever it is, that’s what I want to see.
And I haven’t seen that yet. And I don’t know why I haven’t seen it. Maybe somebody is keeping secrets from us.
Michael Wangbickler:
Well, I think I mean, it could be that part of it is that, you know, people don’t want to share their numbers. I mean, you know, OK, so the wine business, as you and I know, is quite insular.
And I mean, one of the one of the one of the challenges with bringing in that digital talent is the fact that, you know, we have this tendency to want to keep to ourselves and not bring in people in from other industries who may have the talent that we need or the expertise that we need because we feel like they don’t know the wine business, and so they can’t actually do the do the job.
I don’t know where that comes from. I think it’s just a lot of inertia in in the business because of industry initial roots and what have you.
But the fact is, is that, again, I think it just comes down to a cultural shift within these companies. We need to start thinking about all of these things. And frankly, we need to start thinking about marketing in general more.
You know, it’s not just digital marketing. It’s just marketing in general, because, you know, that like when a company has a down quarter or what have you, the first thing that that goes is marketing, which is always counterintuitive to me, because that’s the one thing that’s going to keep you afloat, right?
To your point about ROI, you know, I think it probably has to do with, again, kind of lack of resources to be able to calculate that. Because of so many different silos within a lot of these organizations where, you know, the sales doesn’t talk to marketing, and marketing doesn’t to talk to finance, and finance doesn’t talk to production. So, it’s just it’s again, I think it really comes down to culture.
Tom Wark:
Other production-based industries have figured out how to do it, though.
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the wine business has to do that, and I think part of it, part of the key here is going to probably be bringing in more talent from outside of the business. I mean, good talent, you know, not just the people who work in that business, but people who actually know what they’re doing to really help in that regard.
Tom Wark:
You know what’s interesting, Michael, is I’ve been I’ve been in the business just long enough now to know that my own business as a public relations consultant, always does better in a recession.
It’s really interesting because maybe it’s just my prices, you know, I think I’m priced fairly, but there are a lot of companies, you know, once the sales start to dip for whatever reason, I start to get more and more calls in the recession.
And I think it’s they’re looking for something that’s going to save them. And then I have to tell them, well, it’s going to be a few months before you get the results back. But that’s what I’ve always found as opposed when times when times are good, who needs the PR guy? You know, things are good, you know.
So, I’m not saying I’m looking forward to a recession, despite the fact that I think there’s one coming. But, you know, so that I get maybe I need to pay better attention, but and your point is well taken that it’s not necessarily somebody who needs to be brought on as the VP of digital, but there’s any number of different combinations of consultants who can bring that talent to you.
And the talent is out there in the way of various consultancies. You’re right. But I think we’re going to have to get that case study from a winery that probably is making to cases a year. I think we’re going to find very few wineries that are making, you know, to cases a year who are going to be able to justify the expense of hiring one or two different consultancies to put together the program and carry out the program for us.
They’ve already got the person in the tasting room who’s doing the wine club and who’s running the tasting room and who’s putting wine in boxes, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe we have to look for a generous, larger winery who’s going to do the case study for us and have it published?
Michael Wangbickler:
Yeah, perhaps. But, you know, there’s also the idea of hiring consultants to train your staff and to you know, there’s other ways of bringing in the expertise and the talent, doesn’t necessarily have to be hiring high dollar consultants to do stuff.
Tom Wark:
Michael, let me ask you a question, because I was having this conversation is sort of dovetails into what we were talking about, and it’s sort of a personal – I don’t know if it’s personal question or not. But tell me the truth. Do you like social media?
Michael Wangbickler:
Honestly, not in its current iteration.
Tom Wark:
I’m sort of with you, I was talking to a guy who whose business it is, is to go in and run the social media platforms primarily for wineries, but other regional businesses and whatnot. We were having a talk – and we weren’t even drinking – and he says to me, I hate social media with a hot burning passion. He hates it. And for some of the same reasons that you just mentioned in terms of…
Tom Wark:
But the point that he was making is I spent so much time looking at Twitter feeds and trying not to look at certain Twitter feeds and reading the most inane shit that you could possibly type out on a computer ending up on Facebook or Instagram. And he’s actually losing his faith in humanity as a result. And yet he’s making a very good living, you know, trying to do it right for different companies and trying to increase their profile with the right people.
Tom Wark:
But he hates with a hot burning passion what he sees on social media. And it’s something that’s out there. I think, you know, in the I don’t know what you want to call it in the in the ether. I think there are a lot of people like this guy who absolutely hate social media. And I wonder to what extent that that impacts that impacts the willingness of some in our industry to want to engage in the digital sphere.
Michael Wangbickler:
Oh, absolutely. You know, I completely understand. I honestly personally, I don’t… I’m not as active on Twitter as I once was. You know that I was fairly active in Twitter early on. But it’s not something that I, I do often anymore. I spend most of my time on Instagram and I kind of have a love hate relationship with Facebook. But you have to do Facebook because it’s the biggest you know, it’s the biggest player on the block.
Michael Wangbickler:
But, you know, there’s other there’s you know, the thing is, is that for those that have maybe have, you know, Facebook fatigue or, you know, just social fatigue in general, there are other things coming down the pipe. And they are targeted at a younger audience. And frankly, they’re in in some ways they’re just more fun. I don’t know how brands are going to be able to utilize them currently. But I think that, you know, there are plenty of tools.
Michael Wangbickler:
And I look at I look at social media as a tool. It’s just another tool for communications. And you just have to do it right. But as a consumer of social media, yeah, there are challenges there. But as a person who is a marketer who has to use social media as a as a tool, there’s you know, there’s still a lot of power in that.
Tom Wark:
Well, it seems to me that that filters have to come into play here a lot, particularly in any sort of a platform that might be coming down the road, because it seems like inevitably any sort of a social platform devolves into a hashtag I saw the other day that was actually starting to trend, which was #fuandyourdog. And I saw it trending and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, you know, and I think they were talking about pudding, you know, or Jell-O or something like that.
Tom Wark:
And I had to avert my eyes. It seems like wherever you avert your eyes now, in some areas of social media, you have to try to avert your eyes again. So, I’m constantly on social media, I’m constantly on Twitter, I’ve done my best to sort of set up as many possible filters as I can.
Where Twitter’s concerned, obviously, it’s just about creating different groups, so you only see those people that you want to see. But every now and then, you know, a #fuandyourdog will creep into your world. And there’s something about it that you have to you have to ask yourself, who the heck is #fuandyourdog? And you start to read it and then there’s a rabbit hole involved, it’s not. It’s not good at all.
Michael Wangbickler:
Well, that just means you have to have discipline. I mean, you know, it’s one of the things that is challenging with social media is that, you know, you could easily spend your entire day just consuming social media, and so you have to be pretty disciplined about what it is you’re doing and how you’re doing it.
Tom Wark:
Can I have a little social media? And I want to ask you a question, because, again, we sort of touched on this earlier, but I was thinking about it a little while ago. Do you think that there is room for a serious, substantial, well-read new wine publication centered on an American audience? We haven’t really seen one emerge in quite some time, have we? We’ve seen them die, but we haven’t seen one emerge.
And I think it might be because there seems to be a lot of noise from the relatively large number of smaller-ish niche wine publications that may have convinced other people that this is a this is a niche saturated. But I’m not sure it is, particularly from a consumer facing perspective.
And I’m wondering if you think that there’s room for that and if you think that anyone with means might want to take it on.
Michael Wangbickler:
Honestly, I don’t know.
Tom Wark:
I don’t either…
Michael Wangbickler:
I would like to think so. I do think in terms of where journalism is going in general, I do feel like magazines in general are moving more niche and they’re moving more towards more thoughtful, more thoughtfully written pieces.
Tom Wark:
I agree.
Michael Wangbickler:
And so I would like to think that there is potential out there for a publication that really looks at the world of wine in a different angle, and really kind of dives deep into certain subjects where the other the other publications, which are great, you know, they might not necessarily have the luxury of going very deep into a particular topic.
Tom Wark:
If you were going to create a publication that went deep on to different subjects, you’d have to be content with having a much, much smaller audience who subscribe to your publication [crosstalk].
Michael Wangbickler:
And, you know, and frankly, it’s probably having to be like an all subscription model, you know, because advertising, the advertising model is just this feeling in print publications.
Michael Wangbickler:
So, uh, but, you know, I mean, there are there are publications out there, there are lifestyle publications out there that fit this bill, and so I don’t think that they’re that that things are moving more of that direction.
Tom Wark:
Every now and then online, you’ll see a nice deep dive by a member of the media into a subject that is not been covered, or that hasn’t been often covered, that whether I disagree with it or not, I think it’s fantastic that somebody assigned to a story and somebody was willing to let somebody explore the subject. So, for example, we’re seeing a lot more being written these days about social justice in the wine industry. And I have various issues with the whole social justice movement, I think it’s I think it can be done better. But nonetheless, it’s being done.
Tom Wark:
And there’s there have been a variety of really interesting deep dives on that on that subject that don’t resolve the issue at all, in large part because it’s unresolvable to some degree. But you would have never seen anything like that being written, you know, 10 or 15 years ago. And it’s always interesting for me to see how culture creeps into this sort of insular industry that we’re in.
Tom Wark:
And it does, it ultimately does creep into our industry, and it’s just fascinating how it does. And I think social media or rather social justice is going to be a topic of conversation in the wine industry going forward that not just the media, but I think also the producers and the retailers and the wholesalers are going to have to reckon with.
Michael Wangbickler:
All I can say, Tom, is watch this space.
Tom Wark:
Watch the space. OK, fair enough. Fair enough. You know who you have to have on, you have to have Victoria James come on from New York. I criticized her in the past, but I haven’t seen anybody out there who’s putting more of her money, where her mouth is. Sometimes I think her mouth strays, but nonetheless, she’s one of those people who is willing to stand up and do things about what she thinks, and that’s slightly rare in this industry, too.
So, I mean, I’m looking forward to seeing more of that going forward this year. And watching how the wine media sort of absorbs all these cultural issues and spits them back out. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in 2020 on those issues.
Michael Wangbickler:
I can’t agree more. And that is a wonderful way to wrap up this. So thanks a ton for being on the show today. It’s been a great conversation, one of my favorites actually. So thanks a ton.
Tom Wark:
Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
