Good Grape Wine Company

April 10 2009

The New, New Thing for Winery Marketing

A year or two back I had an exchange with winery owner who was staking out some new marketing territory on the edge of progressive with a desire to do something “first” and leave a path like a slug trail.

He explained his desire to go into relatively uncharted marketing territory because the wine industry is rife with trailblazers, people whose knack for leading a movement, or at the least, getting in front of a movement is legendary and the opportunity to attach your name to being the first at something is relatively difficult.

Well, I just saw some technology and a new marketing technique that a winery needs to jump on and quick.

Suffice to say, generally speaking, I am not easily impressed.  In fact, mostly, I am an insufferable lout.  However, if you strip out hyperbole, what you are left with is less revolution and more tactic, but just the same, “augmented reality” is cool.

Winery marketers have long been handicapped in their marketing efforts.  The reason is two fold – for years, wineries have built their brand around their winery back-story and their property – their vineyards, their winery and their tasting rooms.  However, the ability for a winery consumer to get to the tasting a room and experience the winery experience first hand is relatively finite, mostly left in the minds eye of the consumer, and largely intangible. 

The fact is most winery visits leave an indelible impression.  With no visit, you are left with a circumstantial impression; one that you hope resonates by virtue of the rest of your marketing and the quality of your wine.

Of course, a web presence can take you to a certain point, but it is a 2D medium, as well.  Dynamic, yes, but still rendered statically.

Last week, I wrote a post on what seems to be an explosion of 3D items in our consumer consciousness – movies, games, etc.  I suggested that wineries could buy a 3D attachment for their camera and shoot 3D photos that they could giveaway or sell in conjunction with a Viewmaster – kind of a kitschy cool tactic that can add some dimension to winery marketing, but perhaps not worth the effort.

This week I saw some new technology, ready to be implemented today, that is also 3D oriented, with a serious sizzle factor, that can transcend the boundaries of winery marketing in 2D.

Augmented reality is so new it squeaks.  I have only been able to find two marketing based applications in usage – one for the GE Smart Grid and another for Topps baseball cards.

According to an Online Media Daily article from last month regarding augmented reality and Topps cards:

Attempting to attract a generation of kids growing up on Twitter and text messages, The Topps Co. has introduced a series of baseball trading cards whose players come to life through a standard Web camera and technology.  Consumers who buy the Topps 2009 Series 1 deck of baseball cards for $1.99 have an option to pull the “magic” card from the deck, sign onto ToppsTown.com with a code, download a browser plug in and pitch, bat or catch in games served up from the Web site. The cards, which sport members of major league baseball (MLB) franchises, also are available through the Topps Attax baseball card game.

The consumer’s Web camera pointed at the two-dimensional card laying on someone’s desk or in their hand projects the picture of Tampa Bay’s Evan Longoria to the computer screen, for example, allowing the picture of the baseball player to come to life in 3D.

It is seriously fun stuff.

Excerpted from “How Stuff Works,” augmented reality is:

In the next decade, researchers plan to pull graphics out of your television screen or computer display and integrate them into real-world environments. This new technology, called augmented reality, will further blur the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell.

On the spectrum between virtual reality, which creates immersible, computer-generated environments, and the real world, augmented reality is closer to the real world. Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptics and smell to the natural world as it exists. You can expect video games to drive the development of augmented reality, but this technology will have countless applications. Everyone from tourists to military troops will benefit from the ability to place computer-generated graphics in their field of vision.

The reality is that this ability isn’t overly complex.  If you have a web camera and a designer that can do some 3D animation, you can implement this technology on your web site.

To me, the application for wineries are innumerable.  To get your head around it, visit and test it out at the GE Smart Grid site where they show off a model of solar panels and wind turbines.  It’s super simple and only takes a couple of minutes.  Essentially, you print off a sheet from the website that has a graphic on it.  When you hold up this graphic to your web cam, a 3-D model is produced on screen, by moving the paper you can look at different views of the 3-D model, zoom in and out, and if you have a microphone set-up it will react to other actions like blowing into a microphone. 

Would a winery want to show off its tasting room, its barrel room, its vineyard, anything at its property?  Would they want to do it in a way that is immersive and wrapped within a brand experience online? 

Absolutely.  Do it from a computer today?  Absolutely.

The technology exists, it’s not overly expensive and somebody in the wine business gets to say they did it first.  At the least, the bane of many folks existence is the winery press release touting the new solar array.  At least this way, I could see the darn thing in a cool way.  Which winery stepping up?

For more information Google “Augmented Reality” or search for the same on YouTube

What I wrote about a year ago:  The IBM Value-Chain and its Translation to Wine

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