Now, a Word from Our Sponsor – Please Respond!

Many might suggest that a wine company sponsoring a consortium of bowling centers is a sure sign that the apocalypse is upon us.

These same people might also suggest that a winery sponsoring a team in a NASCAR race is a sign that not only is the apocalypse upon us, but the locusts have blanketed the hills.

Announcements related to wine and the bowling center and wine and NASCAR happened in the last few days.

Of course, Adobe Road winery sponsoring a car for Sunday’s NASCAR race at Infineon in Sonoma is small potatoes compared to sponsoring the entire lead-in race on Saturday as Bennett Lane Winery did with the eponymous 200 mile precursor to the Sunday NASCAR main event.

Doubtless, none of these wine companies will be the last to use sponsorship to create mindshare as the flattening out of the wine demographic curve combines with the continued penetration of the value play in wine.

Indeed, I think we’re in for a lot more sponsorship from the wine industry.

Amongst the influence play options in advertising – display ads, direct response, endorsement and sponsorship, it appears likely that as display advertising shrinks based on the decline of readership; those dollars will be re-allocated to direct response and sponsorships, even more so than today.

Anything to create an associational connection in the mind of consumers and spur them into action.

Everything old is new again – it was sponsorship that was predominant on 1950’s television before commercials took rise.  It was direct response advertorials that were effective before brand-oriented image-based print ads.

Advertorials, a form of direct response marketing, is the secondary aspect of advertising, outside of display ads, that acts as a book-end of effective with sponsorship, a sort of “high-low” approach.

The other night I stopped by a barbecue joint on the way home, picked up a slab of pork goodness, poured a glass of the ’08 Carmen Rosé, a revelation with the BBQ by the way, and turned on the Food Network which was holding a BBQ marathon.

What Rosé is going to sponsor the Kansas City Barbecue Society, I wondered?  And, when are they going to create a Facebook fan page and ask me to join?

This sponsorship movement will become predominant as individual wineries and even varietal groups, like ZAP or Rhone Rangers, look to target large groups of constituents in a way that that feels more quantifiable and more true to a customer base than a full page ad in a glossy wine mag. next to an ad for Cartier watches.

And, it makes good marketing sense, too.  With a magazine, you get a broad brush of people, crossing all types of demographics and psychographics.

I subscribe to Wine Spectator, mostly, because of the columns – Matt Kramer primarily and James Laube to a lesser degree. 

However, if you look at Wine Spectators readership overview that’s where the disconnect occurs because even if I fall into a portion of the demographic profile, I definitely do not hit any of the psychographics – I’m not rolling in an Lexus, not wearing a watch that costs more than a casual dinner for two, not vacationing at Ritz Carlton’s, nor am I likely to purchase any of the above.

To a Wine Spectator advertiser, I am the wasted portion of the advertising budget.

Yet, sponsorships allow you to target “your” audience with a much greater degree of specificity.  An advertorial or a direct response allows you to call them into action.

With the growing wine community online that allows for self-selection – i.e. Twitter friends around distinct interest areas, Facebook fan pages around specific interests, etc. wineries have the capability to target a wine enthusiasts that are dog lovers with a “green” sensibility, amongst a zillion other affinity areas.

Look for winery marketing to continue to fork off into this duality of sponsorship coupled with advertorial call to action as marketers look to create an association, build mindshare and then incent to activity.

The folks that take the brunt of this collateral damage are, unfortunately, the paper-based portion of our popular wine media, reliant on display advertising.

Make no mistake, the fact that the wine industry isn’t an advertising-reliant business makes this shift incremental and not monumental and if nothing else, the 100-point system will keep our wine magazines around for years into the future, but, undoubtedly, the market is changing around them.

And, where do wine bloggers come into this wine magazine, display advertising, sponsorship, direct response equation, particularly if display advertising, on or offline, isn’t effective?

In a word:  endorsements.  And, that’s where things get really interesting.