Good Grape Wine Company

June 25 2007

Stay Gold, Cameron Hughes!

Taken collectively, both Cameron Hughes and Oriel Wines hold plenty of interest and intrigue for wine lovers.  Their business models, new, different and interesting to the wine industry are practically ‘kissing cousins,’ yet their position to market for consumers is radically different.

As a brief aside and a blogging disclosure, Cameron Hughes proactively sampled me several bottles of wine a few weeks back.  In November of last year, I wrote a post on them completely independent of any outside influence.  Later, I noticed that they turned my honest and uninfluenced post and turned it into a downloadable pr piece on their site.  I think their sampling, in small part, was probably a goodwill gesture since I don’t do a lot of wine reviews on this site.   

Cameron Hughes, the Costco huckster and Internet sensation, focuses on the value consumer—a species of wine lover that transcends demographic boundaries, but generally can be found at Costco buying a 10 lb pork shoulder, 48 rolls of toilet paper, a $1000 grill AND wine for $11.99 that drinks like it cost 3X more. 

Meanwhile, Oriel Wines focuses on value, but with a more upscale, educated, globally-centric twist—and a bent more towards the restaurant wine list while trying to be less hoi polloi than Hughes.  Though, price points remain reasonable.

I’ve studied both of their business models and aside from the sales channel differentiation and the slightly different marketing twist, about the only different between the two that I can find is that Hughes focuses on the bulk market while Oriel Wines focuses on contracting winemakers for one-off batches.  In the end, that difference might be in and of itself more alike than different.

Regardless, both are at the consumer center of the nascent Wine 2.0 movement having both sponsored the recent wine technology gathering held in San Francisco in early June.  And while they are not in any way competing with each other, they are fighting for mindshare from overlapping customers.  So, in a sense, the comparison is inevitable. 

In a benign and friendly way this pairing of Cameron Hughes and Oriel, authors of differing, but compatible non-winery business models of selling wine, has the potential to be our Ali/Frazier, an enduring rivalry that everybody looks to in order to provide a framework for our times, in this case, our wine times.

The compare and contrast reminds me of the movie “The Outsiders”—the classic movie, based on the book of the same name by S.E. Hinton, where the Socials (Socs) and the Greasers (Grease) battle in neighborhood class warfare, set against a backdrop of moral redemption. 

Or, if two brands like Old Navy and Brooks Brothers squared off with moral purpose, it might be something like the difference between a graphic t-shirt (Hughes) and a button down oxford (Oriel).

If the battle to be fought is measured by ink on paper, then both are certainly landing plenty of punches measured by clippings.  You can hardly read a magazine, newspaper, or online article without running into a mention of one or the other.  The blogosphere has certainly supported Cameron Hughes and to a lesser extent Oriel Wines, who is still navigating this jet stream to figure out how to best engage.  Nonetheless, the PR for the both of them is breaking a sweat, for sure.  To see press clippings for Cameron Hughes, click here.  To see press clippings for Oriel Wines, click here.

And, in many ways, public relations are my concern for both of them.  In the mad dash to build sales and a distribution channel, while supporting the Wine 2.0 movement, I hope the Wine 2.0 movement can in turn continue to support them, even as their business expands beyond what can reasonably support one-to-one engagement that is so dear in our slice of the world. 

As both brands press to create consumer mindshare that drives sales, the discovery factor leading to a brand comfort level is certainly going to wither the bloom from the rose.  It’ll take some work on both sides to not make this a carpetbagging affair into and out of the blogosphere on to bigger and better things.

Nobody wants to see what I call the “derision decision”  of a wine brand when it moves to the end cap at the retail behemoth (akin to the decline that artists see when they go from consumer popularity to mass acceptance:  See Alanis Morrisette and Hootie and the Blowfish) and that might be the eventual result if the early brand champions aren’t groomed into long-term ambassadors. 

One of the key pieces in the movie version of “The Outsiders” is a poem by Robert Frost called ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ that also happened to introduce legions of teens in the 80s to Frost and poetry, in general.  It goes,

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The pivotal scene in the movie has one of the characters saying to Ponyboy, one of the protagonists who risked his life to save others in a burning church, to “Stay Gold.”

The point is to always fight the notion that there is a lifecyle to all things, a birthing, a growth, a maturity, a decline and an eventual death.  ‘Stay Gold’ is a plea to remain true to whatever roots you come from; stay young and of pure essence.

My hope for both of the brands, supporters of the tenants of wine direct and Wine 2.0, in addition to surgical channel development, is that they don’t forsake the hand-to-hand development that creates ongoing relevancy for a brand in the new millennium.  If Cameron Hughes, and Oriel for that matter, can grow nationally while still staying in tune with the Wine 2.0 movement then we all wine … er … win.

Or, as S.E. Hinton might have put it, “Stay Gold, Cameron Hughes.”

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