“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” … Mitchell Kapor
One of the strategic issues currently under discussion in wine marketing meetings is how to address the fact that winery CMOs and brand managers face significant points of friction in our wired world. A wired world where a winery’s brand message is often modified by users across the universe of sites including mobile apps, marketing agents, ecommerce portals, bricks & mortar retailers with an ecommerce presence, blogs, forums and social networks. The same passion that you put into the production of your wines is mirrored in the story inherent in your wine brand. However, user-generated content often retells this story in a way that obfuscates your unique, value added proposition that differentiates your wine products in a crowded and increasingly difficult market. This all too common outcome is not unlike the results achieved in the traditional dinner party game of ‘Telephone’, where a
short story is whispered into the ear of the person next to you, and repeated through a chain of individuals until the final person in the chain is asked to then tell the story, often to the laughs of all involved. The facts have been so modified, having passed through the filter of each person, that the final story bears no resemblance to the original tale. But the act of having your winery’s product information modified in this manner is no laughing matter and tends to diminish brand identity, and will effectively erode brand image and value. But just how can a winery effectively standardize their brand message and brand image across this vast, fragmented information cloud without imposing an onerous work load and cumbersome time management restraints on staff?
The unintended consequences of Moore’s Law
The simple idea, in the late 1960’s, of migrating from germanium, or the by then the more common germanium/silicon mix as the primary material for solid state electronics, to silicon as the base material for integrated circuit design was the genesis of a movement that had significant unintended outcomes. By 1965 Gordon E. Moore at the time head of research at Fairchild Semiconductor and later co-founder in 1968 of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years. This was likely based not only on his own observations but on earlier predictions including the pioneering work of Douglas Engelbart the co-inventor of the computer mouse. Moore’s paper was the foundation document used by the semiconductor industry as the targeting platform for future planning, research and business development. Caltech professor, Carver Mead coined the term ‘Moore’s Law‘ in the early 1970’s. Moore’s Law has driven innovation in ways never foreseen by these early Silicon Valley bootstrappers, from the exponential development of processing speed and memory capacity to new miniaturization technologies, impacting the development and the worldwide use of digital tool
s by both businesses and consumers. This rapid development of technology made possible by the research of the post WW II generation of scientist has led to the development of tools and products that reach and impact our lives daily, and not only in obvious ways. Integrated circuits are in our cars, our toasters our washing machines and refrigerators. Integrated circuits enable the technology that heat our home or allow municipalities to efficiently deliver utilities to end users. So many ways, that we now accept these developments without much fanfare or notice. They just are.
Old school goes new school
When I was in college in Morgantown, the campus was wired to an IBM 360 computer. As a student who wanted to make use of the computers, I had to take courses in the then evolving computer coding languages of BASIC, Fortran and COBAL. The WVU Computer Center’s IBM 360 was in a building a block square and 6 stories high. I now can hold that computing capacity in my hand, no longer waiting 24 hours for a 10 lb report printed on a daisy wheel printer, but I’m now able to receive instant feedback to an inquiry or a search. I can go down the wine aisle at JV’s in Napa and using an iPhon
e wine app take a picture of the UPC or the label, and get immediate information on that specific wine, 1-2-3, just like that. Smaller, faster, better seems to be the mantra driven by robust competition between large and emerging technology companies. We’ve been climbing this graph of technological development that has colored and shaped the current wine marketing landscape. One of the developments that has come on the scene is the development of user generated content. Starting out with FTPs then BBSs which evolved into forums, then migrating to usenet, and then 
through a variety of ISP pipes such as Netscape, AOL, MSN and Yahoo. A movement that gained traction with the development of broadband availability and use, was topic specific blogging using services such as Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr. In 2006 Twitter introduced microblogging to the world, basically taking old school instant messaging meant to be used within a small group of friends or utilized as a business communications tool in lieu of e-mail and making it available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Facebook emerged as a college based IM service that allowed friends to communicate on a closed circuit basis. That was your dad’s Facebook. Facebook is now a marketing powerhouse platform for individuals and brands.
Modern wine communication modalities
As an example of how brand communications have evolved, on January 28, 2010, I took part in an online multi-media wine tasting experience featuring Walter Bressia who is a winemaker of note in Mendoza, Argentina. The tasting was a live, real-time online event with feeds on Twitter, USTREAM, and GoToMeeting. Invitations were initiated through the Vines of Mendoza Facebook Fan Page. The event included a number of wine and
wine business bloggers who actively participated in the tasting of three of Walter Bressia’s wines. Conversations occurred between the tasters and the winemaker, and between each other. It was fun, informative, and a best practices use of technology. But, this wasn’t my first online interaction with winemakers. On Earth Day 2009, I was engaged in a beta test with Lisa Mattson and Wilson Daniels with Nigel Greening of Felton Road who was in his home office in Wanaka, NZ and Bernard Lacroute of WillaKenzie who was in his winery office in Yamhill, OR. So an online connection and conversation on sustainable faming practices occurred between St. Helena, Sonoma, Wanaka, NZ and Yamhill, OR took place, and a personal connection was forged between the winemakers and a wine business writer halfway around the world from each other.
The Wine Directory
A constant comment that I get from winery clients or winery friends is the amount of misinformation concerning their brands that they find in online searches. The old saying of garbage-in – garbage-out has never been truer. Incomplete or misconstrued information plagues the wine industry. And this has been exacerbated with the proliferation of consumer and ecommerce generated input. Real and false information alike is replicated in the blink of
an eye. The methods of communication between brand owners and brand users has changed. Consumers now have access to tools that empower their input, and help create and influence brand discourse. The idea of brand while still evolving, is still based on a set of attributes promised by you the brand owner to the end user. This is a basic concept that may be lost in an age of instant consumer input. But the fact remains that you are the brand owner, and an inherent attribute of ownership is your responsibility to factually shape the conversation 
concerning base information, also known as data, for you brand and products. This has been addressed by the team at Cruvee with OwnIt, changing the way your wine is viewed online. And now, 9 weeks into the launch and adoption cycle, of OwnIt, as a member of the Cruvee Board of Advisors I had a chance last week to sit with the Cruvee team to do a dry run through the release of the Wine Directory. In explaining the Wine Directory, Cruvee CEO Evan Cover said “ the directory is intended to show you how your products and your winery are visually represented online. If your information is accurate here it will be accurate across all of our partner sites and applications. This means controlling your brand’s image with millions of customers visiting the biggest social networks, tons of mobile applications, online retailers and more.”
In conclusion
Registering your brand and inputing information into the OwnIt database, which is free other than the allocation of time to correctly input your wine brand and brand product data. James Jory, Cruvee VP of Technology sees OwnIt and the Wine Directory as “the chance to eliminate the
Balkinization of your wine brand data within the online community.” This is a solution with a low barrier to entry that enables you the brand owner to control your winery’s product information facts. The idea of passively sitting by and letting others define any brand is a notion that is anathema to me, and it should also be unacceptable to you the brand owner. So, step up, sign-in and take control of your wineco’s brand information, and OwnIt!
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