Sonoma endowment for wine market research

Long-time SSU teacher Liz Thach named to new Korbel professorship

Rohnert Park, Calif.—An endowment funded by a venerable Sonoma County winery will support continued wine marketing research at Sonoma State University (SSU). At SSU’s spring mixer April 7, the news was official: Dr. Liz Thach, a professor of management affiliated with SSU for 11 years, was named the first-ever F. Korbel & Brothers Professor in Wine Business.

Thach is already ensconced in the new position. “I started when they announced it,” she told Wines & Vines. The three-year professorship, funded by Guerneville, Calif.’s 1.7 million-case Korbel Champagne Cellars, reduces Thach’s teaching load from three to two courses per year: Introduction to Wine Business for undergrads, and Global Wine Business, a Wine MBA elective addressing wine industry issues around the world. SSU is among only three universities in the world currently offering a master’s degree in wine business, according to Ray Johnson, director of the Wine Business Institute.

With the additional time and budget allotted the Korbel professor, Thach (pronounced “T-ah-sh”) will be able to hire undergraduate research assistants and travel to distant industry events. “They pay my replacement teacher,” she said. In that way, the position is something like a part-time sabbatical.

Speaking of—and to—Millennials
During her tenure, Thach will continue her research on the vital issue of marketing to the Millennial generation (generally defined as those born from 1978-1996). Despite the seeming ubiquity of this topic at industry seminars during the past decade, this mine is not yet played out. “Only half of the Millennials are legal to drink yet,” she pointed out. This provides a rich area to look into in terms of market segmentation.

“You can slice and dice it many ways in terms of market research,” Thach said. There are already notable differences in buying and consumption patterns between those 21-26 and older, presumably better established Millennials now in or about to enter their 30s.

Addressing the Millennials’ much-touted reliance on social media communication, “I agree that it’s not going away. It will just expand in ways we haven’t yet imagined.” The wine industry must continue to embrace social media, but must adapt its social-media marketing to fully engage that audience.

“Millennials have a high ‘spam’ meter,” she said. “If they smell anything pushy, it’s a turn-off.” Wineries (and other businesses) must be authentic, tell their story in a down-to-earth way and not like used-car salespeople.

She cited a statistic she heard recently from a student who handles social media for a high-end Napa Valley winery: “For every eight times you twitter, only one time should be about your product.” As an example, the student said he’d posted a tweet about SSU’s forthcoming Green Music Center, which just received a $12 million gift from philanthropists Joan and Sanford I. Weill, enabling the university to complete the concert hall and adjoining lawn and commons performance venues within the next year.

Sharing interests aside from your business or products, Thach said, allows online followers to see you as an authentic person, instead of a commercial entity, and help build your audience and clientele.

Many wineries remain dubious about actual sales engendered by social media. She referred to a recent quote from wine media maven Gary Vaynerchuk. Asked by a fan at a Sonoma book signing last week “What’s the ROI for social media?” Vaynerchuk snapped back “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

Return-on-investment for social media has yet to be quantified, Thach acknowledged. “I know a couple of people who are working on social-media ROI for other industries, but there’s no clear statistical information yet, no comprehensive studies.” Social media, then, is still a work in progress, but a labor worth pursuing.

Like Vaynerchuk, Thach is a well-known speaker at industry events including the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium and the Wine Industry Financial Symposium. She is also a prolific author now completing a book about the 10 top vineyards of Napa and Sonoma.

Among her other goals is to work during the 2011 crush at one of Korbel’s still-wine producers, where she hopes to help make Pinot Noir. (In addition to Korbel Champagne Cellars, F. Korbel & Brothers also owns 100,000-case Heck Cellars, DiGiorgio, Calif., 600,000-case Kenwood Vineyards, 23,000-case Lake Sonoma Winery and 50,000-case Valley of the Moon Winery, all in Sonoma County.)

With a hobby vineyard on Sonoma Mountain in the Petaluma Gap, Thach is a self-proclaimed garagiste producer. “I keep winning silver medals” in amateur competitions and would like to up those scores, she admitted.