February 20 2007
Maybe it’s a slow news day, or maybe it’s because a guy, bloodied and beaten, lunged below the belt, a last ditch effort of the street fighter courting defeat, but unwilling to go down without a parting shot.
Wine X magazine announced they were closing down—announced on Decanter.com no less, a U.K. double gun middle finger salute aimed at the U.S. wine industry that allegedly didn’t do enough to support the young target market that Mr. Darryl Roberts cultivated for the last 8-10 years at Wine X magazine. Assuredly, Dale Carnegie would not approve.
And, some folks linked to below are weighing in:
In my pop culture view, there is a 15 year gap in between perception and reality. By that I mean that sometimes fifty year olds think they can identify with 35 years and 35 year olds think they can identify with 20 years olds. There’s a part of us that thinks we can skip down half a generation and still be current.
Rarely does speaking in the same voice occur naturally in between two generations if leadership and mutual respect isn’t also a part of the equation. Ultimately, Roberts was trying to step down a generation without providing leadership to the industry or speaking in the same voice. His scarlet letter is a crash and burn marked with an X.
As a sometime subscriber, albeit frustrated, I wrote a lengthy post on their miscues in June of ’06. Read the full post. In that post I was incredulous at the re-hash they put out as a new magazine amongst numerous other grossly negligent mistakes they were making in trying to appeal to an audience that I occupy. Ultimately the issue that prompted my ire was the last issue published.
I’m not surprised they’re folding up their tent. Very rarely have I seen somebody so completely disconnected and out of touch from their intended audience. And, let’s get one thing straight—they didn’t target millenials. They targeted Generation X and they targeted a hipster Gen X that had long ago ceded the bar scene to more mature lifestyle choices. But, the content and style of the magazine never kept up with Generation X, nor came even close to Generation Y.
I’m not about to dance on anybody’s grave, but I will say that Wine X magazine is and was a good idea that suffered from terrible planning and terrible execution. I have frequently ranted about a lack of a magazine for my generation, not too mention folks 10 years my junior. That opportunity still exists for somebody that wants to approach it intelligently. If you don’t believe me, check out a bookstore—any Border’s or Barnes & Noble will do and look at the music magazine section. In this day and age of plummeting cd sales, Web 2.0, ipods, and digital downloads, etc music information publishing is increasing. Yes, increasing. There are scores of music magazines that did not exist a couple of years ago. Rolling Stone has a lot of company. Oddly enough these music magazines target the same supposed audience that Wine X did, and younger consumers. If you want to check out a magazine that addresses a youthful culturally literate and wine consuming audience check out this link for Imbibe magazine. If you want to check out a music magazine that addresses an adult alternative-style music fan check out Paste Magazine. Whoever wants to create a wine magazine to address Generation X and Y would do well to start with these two examples.
Mr. Roberts rails against the wine industry and their lack of support. Ultimately, this is the defense mechanism of a man who has lost his magazine, his baby. I feel bad for him because an idea without execution isn’t much to hang your hat on. And, unfortunately, Mr. Roberts is still looking for a place to hang his hat. Instead of raising the hackles of others for his poor form, I think he deserves our sympathy in failure.
Posted in, Wine: A Business Doing Pleasure. Permalink | Comments (3) |
Ruarri,
Excellent comment and observations. Thanks for taking the time!
While on the whole I agree with your take, I still think we’re a long ways off from being a paperless society. I’m 34 years old and I read 30 + magazines a month in paper form as a hyper-consumer of information. It won’t be Gen. X or Y that completely forsakes the newspaper or magazines ... I think we’re at least a decade off from the mass digital adoption that you speak of.
Nonetheless, again, excellent comments and please feel free to engage more at Good Grape!
Jeff
I would agree that we have some time before being completely paperless, but to emphasize more on Ruarri’s point, I believe WineX failed to be more engaging with their Online Audience. Taking into consideration that there has been a massive shift from paper to internet… ie. I read online newspapers, magazines, etc… Because its available whenever I want it (I do have a pda) and I am looking at it from both a convenience point of view as well as a global environment point of view. Why should I support a printed edition when my generation needs to push the digital editions and more eco-friendly solutions. Furthermore.. I don’t want to just read the magazine.. I want to interact with it.
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In my opinion this is more of a medium vs. message paradigm. The message was right, but he couldn�t have been more off with the primary medium he chose to communicate it. Personally I haven�t subscribed to a magazine other than Decanter and Wine Spectator in 5 years. To try add another magazine to that heavyweight category was either brave or plain stupid. I think in these days of global warming and mass deforestation, the last thing the world needs is another physical magazine. With banks and corporations going paperless and switching to electronic-statements and PDF, its not a long before the Green crowd broadens their criticism of SUV�s and gas-guzzling and focuses their critical lens on the mass-wastage caused by daily-newspapers and magazines. We live in a world that is becoming waste-conscious, and once media tools like the iPHONE, Treo and Blackberry replace the ordinary cell-phone there will soon be no excuse to not switch to digital for news and culture consumption. The only time I ever read a physical newspaper is on the subway, because I don�t have a palmtop (something I hope to change.)
As Generation X grows older, the Millenials and echo-boomers are storm. We�re linked in with friends from afar and close through digital communities and our tastes for media consumption change everyday with Digg, there�s nothing we can�t find the answer to with Wikipedia and there�s virtually nothing we can�t have access to (except wine online.) Wine X failed because it�s a magazine, and their target market is already decreasing their consumption of magazines. Mr. Roberts� assertion that the wine industry is stuck in the eighties is rather amusing, considering he himself seems to be deeply entrenched in the nineties. Y2K never happened and whilst we spent our last days in the nineties scared of what would happen when the bios clocks hit 2000, we could never have known how drastically the world would change.
I speak for myself, but I feel that this is true amongst many other millenials: I want to be hooked in, I want to learn something new everyday, I want to exchange ideas and I want to interact with the media I use. Having grown up around the wine industry in South Africa and now being in New York as a part of this exciting industry in this rapid and exhilarating time I can�t help but feel that Mr. Roberts was wrong. There is a great opportunity out there, someone just has to have the balls and the vision to grab it and make it happen. You can�t immediately interact with a magazine. You can�t connect with other readers of similar interest with a magazine. You can�t order wine directly from a magazine. You can�t watch videos and have unlimited access to all the audio-visual you could possibly wish for with a magazine. Magazines are a static medium, and we�re an electric generation. Thus I�d have to concur with you Goodgrape � Wine X�s failure was due to the fact that it didn�t live up to its promises, and the Wine Industry evolved before it had the chance to�