Is pushing wine into the digital age leaving too many behind?

The following is an exert from an opinion piece I wrote in The Buyer this month on those being left behind in the digital media drive in the wine trade. As ever, comments very welcome 🙂

“The ever-evolving landscape of digital media and the opportunities it offers is seemingly endless.  Whatever trade you’re in you’re always looking for, and often finding, new or improved ways of communicating with your target audience. All kinds of e-marketing strategies, pioneered by the fashion trade or the music industry, has all us wine-os drooling over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and all the rest.

We take pictures of bottles and share it round our mates. Will that lead to a sale or increased brand awareness?  Probably not, but right now it appears no-one gives a shit?! We’re embracing new technology and feeling like we’re a more engaging industry because of it. We’re shaking off the label of a stuffy camp of oenophiles in the salmon pink chinos and boldly telling the digital world that we’re here and here to stay.

I’m a huge admirer of guys like Paul Mabray. We don’t know each other personally. He wouldn’t know Mike Turner from Adam, put I’ve seen him ‘perform’ a few times now. He’s up there on the stage, in front of a room of winemakers and journos and showing us the endless possibilities of embracing digital marketing and the success that lies in wait for you if you just nail that online strategy. He’s also written a fabulous piece for our very own The Buyer on the joys of monitoring consumer trends and how he, rightly in my humble opinion, believes it’s the future of the wine trade.

I wrote a piece a while back about embracing the value of social media to bring international winemakers to your very own screens through Google Hangouts, or Facebook Live events. No need for those expensive and ridiculously eco-damaging long haul flights when we can sit round a nice evening dinner in London, and rustle Kiwi winemakers out of bed in the morning and ply them with questions about their 2014 Pinot vintage.

Wow, what an age we live in, all these amazing things we can do…

…but I’m afraid I might have to slap the brakes on a bit here. We’re forgetting something. Or someone. Or both…”

TO FIND OUT WHO’S BEING LEFT BEHIND, HEAD OVER TO THE BUYER TO READ ON…