Oregon wineries turning to the grapevine
Updated: Mar. 26, 2019, 10:43 p.m. | Published: Jul. 22, 2009, 6:34 p.m.
By Dana Tims | The Oregonian/OregonLive
HOLLAND STUDIOS
With a large number of tickets to this year's Indie Wine Festival unsold the day of the event, organizers used Twitter to offer half-price tickets for the second half of the day. Most of the tickets were quickly snapped up.
Social networking sites started with teenagers in mind are revolutionizing the way Oregon wineries are marketing their products.
Internet sites such as Facebook and Twitter are increasingly becoming just as important to wineries as national distributors and direct-sales teams in promoting brand awareness and reaching new customers, winery owners say.
And social networking, which costs relatively little, carries the bonus of resonating with younger, tech-savvy adults who constitute the golden-hued "next generation" of wine consumers."This whole phenomenon is still in its infancy, but we can already see it taking off," said Ronni Lacroute, co-owner and self-described "grape sorter" at WillaKenzie Estate Winery in Yamhill.
"We created a Facebook page just to see what would happen and almost immediately all these people I'd never heard of started joining."
The 100 or so "fans" who have signed up on Facebook to follow the winery get instant access to photographs from the 420-acre estate's vineyards, same-day videos of winemakers and vineyard managers talking about the development of this year's crop and e-mails giving them first shot at upcoming events and winemakers' dinners.
"It's a very powerful and accessible way of controlling your own message," Lacroute said. "If sites like Twitter can start revolutions in other countries, just think about its potential for businesses."
In the past, many Oregon wineries religiously sent samples of their latest pinot noir or pinot gris to influential industry publications such as Wine Spectator. The subsequent reviews packed the power to make or break a particular vintage.
The rapid rise of the Internet is fast changing that traditional model for generating buzz about new offerings, winemakers say.
At Dobbes Family Estate in Dundee, use of print advertising has all but vanished. Joe Dobbes, the operation's founder and winemaker, estimated that 99 percent of his advertising is now done through Internet sites such as Facebook.
"Instead of sending wines once a year to Wine Spectator, we're now thinking, who are the influential bloggers out there we should be getting our wines in front of?" Dobbes said. "The days of absolutely relying on some guy in a backroom to taste our wines and write up a review are long gone."
Dobbes also credits the technology itself for helping solve the industry's age-old conundrum of how to cultivate and capture the next generation of customers. As proof, he points to the groups of younger people -- often toting iPhones and tweeting as they sip -- now flocking to his winery's tasting room.
"The Internet is second nature to younger people," he said. "It's what they grew up on and how they communicate. It's all a really good trend that should net all of us a lot of new customers."
Correlating Internet usage with sales increases is difficult, said Cornelius Geary, CEO and founder of Wine 2.0, a San Francisco-based coordinator of wine events. But in terms of efficiently and cheaply reaching consumers, nothing else comes close.
"You can push your brand in front of millions of people on Facebook basically for free," Geary said. "For the dollars involved, I don't think there has ever been something as powerful as this type of media."
Geary pointed to the recent hype created by Sonoma County's Murphy-Goode Winery, which offered $10,000 a month for six months to the applicant who could best "demystify wine" using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites.
Murphy-Goode's Web site got hundreds of thousands of hits, along with nearly 1,000 video applications for the job, which will be filled in August.
"You still need outreach through traditional sales channels," Geary said. "But wineries not taking advantage of the Internet are really missing out on a bet."
At this year's Indie Wine Festival in Portland, a substantial number of tickets hadn't been sold when the public wine-tasting portion of the festival rolled around. Lisa Donoughe, founder of LAD Communications and the festival's creator, decided to experiment by using Twitter to offer half-off tickets halfway through the day.
"Our followers on Twitter saw the tweet, showed up almost immediately and bought out most of the remaining tickets," said Lota LaMontagne, a LAD Communications senior account executive. "It was a huge success and generated money we wouldn't have had otherwise."
In May, the Oregon Wine Board launched a "fan page" on Facebook. Within weeks, nearly 2,000 fans had signed on to the Oregon Wine Country page. The promotion was so successful that wine board administrators are now sponsoring a contest with prizes featuring cash and a $2,000 trip to Oregon wine country.
At Brooks Winery in Amity, the Internet is now integral to doing business, said Janie Brooks Heuck, managing director.
"We'll never stop doing newsletters because they appeal to certain people," she said. "But just this week, 10 people bought tickets to one of our events who had never tried our wine before. It's definitely here to stay."
-- Dana Tims,
danatims@news.oregonian.com