August 20 2008
Many readers of this blog may have noticed that there is an experiment underway in which Rodney Strong’s new allocated wine offering from their “winery within a winery” concept, Rockaway, is being introduced to market with some participation from select wine bloggers.
It is a bold move, coming from Robert Larsen, Public Relations Director at Rodney Strong.
One thing is certain; Robert is getting a lesson on this crazy transparency thing in blogging. Before I review the wine on Thursday, I first wanted to tell how this mini-program came to be and what the guidelines are—in typical PR the journalist almost never talks about how the “sausage was made.” Transparency is a fun quirk to blogging when done right.
In June, I got in contact with Carole Loomis, former colleague and friend at Inertia Beverage Group (RS is their client) and she mentioned that Rodney Strong had an allocated wine coming out and they might want to do some outreach to bloggers, could I get in contact with Robert Larsen to discuss?
This piece of interaction coincided right around the same time that I had some independent thought about a Wine Blogger Review Coalition. You can see posts I wrote on this here, here and here.
In talking to Robert we talked about a number of different things—the first being just simply sending off sample bottles to bloggers if I could give some insight into bloggers who were doing good work. I think most wine bloggers that have been at it a while forget or do not realize that this jet stream that we’re in is somewhat forbidding and not a little bit mystifying to others not in the loop.
I am, however, diametrically opposed to just sending samples off and cannot advocate that for a winery. If the wine is a hand sell, then so is the work with writers. Sending samples willy-nilly is not a model that really works for wineries and traditional media and it is not a model you really want to try to replicate with bloggers.
In my mind, and what I proposed to Robert is to get a small group of bloggers together, I would do the coordination, and solicit their interest in receiving a sample. If interested, I would then do programmatic coordination.
Now, mind you, getting a $75 dollar bottle of allocated Cabernet is not a tough sell, though some did decline to participate, but the proviso with each of the bloggers participating in receiving the sample is you have to write about it. However, the bloggers have full and free editorial control. Nobody is going to ask you to write anything specific. You do not have to like the wine, you do not have to say anything good, but in the give to get for the program, you have to write a post in length from 300 – 500 words and the timing would be coordinated to a set week on the calendar, this week, the week of August 18th.
Why do it this way? Well, because blogs are not limited by space constraints so it is not like you can fall on the canard of their not being enough ink and space. So, if you’re agreeing to accept a sample, it’s a small matter to write about the wine, particularly when you are free to say the wine tastes like twice filtered swamp water, if that’s if your opinion.
I think Robert and Rodney Strong were betting that the wine would deliver, and so was I.
I have been enamored by the way Cameron Hughes has handled sampling, and while they do not request posting, it is clear that their success rate in sampling to post content is stupendous. And the deliverable as a result is very nice. Check it out here. So, that is kind of what I was thinking in terms of execution with Rodney Strong, albeit on a smaller basis.
Is this the correct model? Bloggers have to write about a sample they received? Take the specific winery out of the equation. Is this a scalable model? I am not sure, but I do know that experimentation has to occur and this is as fine of an idea as any. Likewise with the experimentation, you have to have a winery willing to give it a try, and on that count regardless of what anybody writes about the Rockaway wine, good or bad, Rodney Strong has won for taking a risk.
Oh, and yeah, I will write about the actual wine tomorrow, somewhere in between 300 – 500 words.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (9) |
Sheesh El Jefe,
I need to spell it out?
* Rodney Strong, traditional winery with reputation and legacy
* New Allocated offering
* High price point
* New marketing introduction w/ bloggers
Don’t get me wrong, I love the twisted juice, but Stormhoek and Twisted Oak don’t fit into any of the above categories.
Maybe it’s not bold to you, but I think for Rodney Strong and Rockaway to do this, it took some stones to get over the digital divide.
Jeff
What I see is an old school PR guy who couldn’t be bothered to discover on his own the right bloggers to send samples to - in other words, to establish relationships in this new media channel that match the relationships that he no doubt already has with “old media”. I bet wonder if he will even see these comments. (Granted, for the dude to even have the idea in the first place deserves some notice. He probably read an article someplace.)
I’m just having a hard time seeing that anyone took a risk here. Unless they sent out total crap (very unlikely), RS wasn’t going to get totally panned by bloggers or the traditional media. But sending wines for review to whatever channel is a risk wineries take every day.
And high price point? I thought the story was that $75 was a LOW price point for a limited production Napa Cab?
Among other things, this thread is a reminder that PR is an old-school craft, struggling to retain relevance in the new media landscape. The topic/meme is well-documented, including this post by Michael Arrington (http://tinyurl.com/6q9sv2). Ultimately, this RS effort makes good marketing sense, while validating the power of bloggers and the theory of social media.
The RS effort made totally good marketing sense. It’s why I do what I do! But I don’t see it as risky for reasons already stated. And, I think the fact that they threw wine over the wall and are not engaging the bloggosphere directly makes it even less so.
I don’t think they threw it over the wall. We all were able to talk to RS about the wine, ask any questions we want, and RS has been participating in the conversation. RS has been quick to respond to any questions I had. RS came to my blog and answered questions a reader had about the wine, and was over today at Heimoff’s blog responding to his post.
RS was always available to the bloggers involved to interact with us.
Hi again from Rodney Strong… Robert Larsen the not-hiding PR guy here. I did post to this site earlier today, but haven’t seen it appear yet. I believe, since Jeff worked with me on this blogging activity, I should put my response to some of the posts on his site as well as Steve Heimoff’s. It was long and in a different section (comments on MS candidate’s review) or visit Steve’s site.
Regardless, a variety of media still exists and navigating this new medium is just as important as the traditional ones. And, anyone that knows me will tell you I don’t ignore people. I also don’t want to over react. All of the “dialog” has been pretty darn compelling, really.
What’s funny is that a transparent communication with and through the blogging community has stirred up quite a lot of emotion. Ultimately I think that’s good and points to the fact that the medium of communication is powerful.
Robert
Thanks for the comments, all. I think Sonadora (Megan) nails it. It’s hard to play poker when all your cards are laying face up on the table and that’s the situation here, which makes me wonder why the cynicism, particularly from Jeff at Twisted Oak.
The fact of the matter is that too many bloggers sniff their own exhaust so I don’t fault Robert Larsen for not having his own rolodex of blogger contacts. He’s smart enough to work with Inertia, just like Jeff and Twisted Oak, and use his Client Development Manager to help him out. And, frankly, he felt me out to qualify me as a legitimate influencer, so I feel like he did due diligence.
Next up, I’m keeping an eye out for a package from El Jefe whereby he samples The Spaniard out to a bunch of bloggers.
I would have been completely stunned if those private conversations had not occurred.
But isn’t the real power of blogging found in the public conversation?
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hi Jeff - I guess I must be missing something because I’m not really seeing anything new here. Stormhoek was the first winery I was aware of that had a blogger sampling program, and Twisted Oak has had a standing offer to bloggers who want to receive samples for over two years.
If you look at our (twistedoak.com) web site you’ll see that many of our wine pages feature blogger review quotes. This is because these bloggers wrote high quality detailed reviews that are not limited to the 2-3 sentences found in a wine magazine.
Also, any time a winemaker throws their wine out for review there’s a risk of a bad result, whether blogger, magazine, or competition. Nothing new there and it is part of the business. And trust me, there’s no guarantee a magazine will write about the wine you send them either. Bloggers actually have a much better track record in my experience!
The only thing I can see here that is unique is that a PR director of a big winery leveraged a couple of trusted business contacts to get samples to bloggers - something the PR director could have done if he had taken the time to discover who these key bloggers were himself. And something that smaller wineries like mine have been doing and will continue to do.
Sorry, I’m just not seeing “bold moves” here!
ps: I was planning exactly such a sampling program for some of our new releases, but I was waiting for the summer heat to abate a bit. Please do let me know if you would like to be in on that!
