Conference Focuses on Social Media

'License to Steal' speakers advise on marketing to a new demographic
 
 
Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio -- Newspapers are shrinking in size and content; some are going bankrupt. The Christian Science Monitor is now available online only; wine columnists are being reassigned to cover other areas far from the news of wine and food. Television stations are reducing the number of anchors and reporters; radio is doing the same. Where should a winery go to advertise and market its wines?

The answer: Social Media.

This new area for marketing wine turned out to be the focus of the License to Steal conference held in Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio, last week. From Tuesday to Thursday noon, approximately 110 people including winery owners, marketing directors and public relations managers met to share their best ideas for promoting their products.

Social networking, according to Jamie Rule, director of Channel Intelligence and Integration at Hughes, an advertising and marketing company in St. Louis, Mo., is the most important way to make connections with the millennial generation. Millennials, defined in this case as being the population between the ages of 20 and 29, both like wine and have disposable income to buy it, but they do not respond to traditional forms of advertising and marketing. Instead they prefer to establish communities on sites such as FaceBook, Flickr or Classmates Online, and then will respond to information they get from these groups of friends.

"The Internet is not just a tool," Rule noted, "It's a culture. The Internet is alive, and as a winery, you have to make sure that your website is alive too. You have to have a great product, good service, and then be able to respond to different social media communities where authenticity is most important."
 
Elizabeth Slater, owner of In Short Direct Marketing, spoke about the importance of making an emotional connection with people to get them to buy a wine. She noted that people are looking for communities, for other people they can relate to and be friends with: Wineries that create that community will get people to come back. Wineries need to define who they are, both on their website and on social media sites.

In her talk on "FaceBook, Twitter and More," Karen Malone Wright, president of Odyssey Creative Communications Consulting in Cleveland, Ohio, identified three types of social media: Participants can share, publish or network. The most important for wineries is networking, and there are many different sites available, with FaceBook currently the most popular. Wright stressed the importance of authenticity and of responding on a regular basis to posted comments. Wineries need to establish a page for the winery business and also separate pages for the winery owners and other personnel.

License to Steal is a participatory conference. All attendees are asked to share their ideas and experiences. Over the two and a half days, literally hundreds of ideas, big and small, were discussed--from different types of events for wine trails, to how to use ads on Google, to reaching out to bed and breakfasts and Slow Food groups.

Donniella Winchell, director of the Ohio Wine Producers Association and the organizer of the conference, was enthusiastic about the response to the speakers. "This year's conference was a big success, and we're looking forward to getting even more people to come to the conference next April," Winchell told Wines & Vines. The next License to Steal conference will be held April 13-15, 2010, at the Geneva-on-the-Lake Lodge and Conference Center in Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio.