The federal government has announced funding for the publishers of Wine Access magazine which will assist in the production of the Canadian Wine Annual and further development of the Wine Access website. This type of assistance should prove to be a valuable benefit to the wine industry because it will ensure that one of the leading voices for Canadian wine continues to grow. It’s my view that this type of marketing assistance is exactly what the Canadian wine industry needs. Thanks Ottawa!
I just watched the video below which is a brilliant explanation of why the internet and social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) is dramatically changing the landscape for retailers and for government. Think about the wine industry while you’re watching it …
Marketing professionals are always reinforcing the importance of “telling your story” when it comes to promoting and marketing your winery and wines. Well, it’s even better if you can get a real author to actually write your story for you. In the case of this book, that’s exactly what happened for the Veuve Clicquot champagne house. Tilar Mazzeo, an American cultural historian, has written a really engaging and fascinating story of the champagne house and the widow who was its visionary young founder. This book is a marketing dream - the cover is Clicquot orange and the title font reflects the font on Clicquot labels. To boot, it’s also a great read: here’s the “Widow Clicquot” on Amazon if you are interested. By the way, “veuve” means widow in French.
New book by Evelyne Resnick, a Paris-based marketing consultant for premium French wineries (but who has taught in the U.S. and is obviously well versed in Anglo-American marketing). This is one of the few books available that covers contemporary web and internet marketing including newer “Web 2.0″ technologies. An excellent read for those wineries that are working on internet marketing strategies. Here’s Wine Brands on Amazon.ca if you are curious.
I have just posted a paper that I wrote on Search Engines for Wineries on my companion site for my consulting business, Must Wine Marketing Group. This paper is a PDF document which explains the basics of search engines, search engine optimization and search engine marketing specifically for wineries.
If you have ever been curious about search engine advertising or internet marketing in general, please give it a read. And, of course, feel free to contact me if you have any questions at all.
I wrote earlier about some problems that various companies (such as MSN) were having with French internet marketing laws regarding wine. The problems continue as a leaked version of the proposed French internet marketing laws will treat wine and other alcohol in a category along with porn. Apparently, an organized anti-alcohol lobby has been effective in creating severe restrictions on all alcohol related marketing and advertising on the internet. Basically, wine producers will be permitted to market using web sites in a restricted fashion but no third parties will be permitted to promote those sites so the sites will become lame ducks. Intense criticism is now coming from the wine industry and there are hopes that the laws will not be passed. For the full story see this Decanter article on the proposed marketing laws. As I noted earlier, apparently we don’t have a monopoly on foolish liquor laws in Canada.
Just in case you thought Canada had a monopoly on dumb wine marketing laws, here’s one from France. Apparently, the French laws on wine marketing pre-date the internet and are permissive in nature such that you can’t do what isn’t specifically mentioned. As a result, there is an argument that wine (and all liquor) cannot be marketed on the internet.
This interpretation would seem to be widely ignored since pretty much all French wineries have web sites but that hasn’t stopped MSN from getting spooked and banning wine advertising on MSN France: see this article from an Irish newspaper. Google has not followed suit and MSN’s reaction seems extreme but this does provide some perspective as I usually assume that Europe has much more sensible wine marketing laws than North America.
