Is Your Brand Just in Your Bottle?

Imagine 1500 people coming to your winery after hours over the course of several weekends.

Imagine most are there for the first time and only because someone else asked them to come.

Imagine virtually every staff member they meet is not associated with your winery and has another primary agenda during the course of their stay.

Imagine it’s sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold, but sometimes just right.

Imagine 5 hours later 600 glasses of wine have been poured at each of these evenings, 7500 glasses in total

And imagine once everyone is on their way, or at their destination that evening, the next day or in the coming weeks, what will they remember about you?

Most likely they will remember something about the weather, something that surprised them, someone that they connected with, but very few will speak to others (or themselves) about the connection they now feel about your winery and your wine.

A disaster no, a lost opportunity, definitely. If typical tasting room wine club subscription percentages hold, 60 of those guests would now be wine club members, in aggregate purchasing about $78,000 of your wine annually for the duration of their membership.

So, what could be done with this information?

1. Nothing, I just want the event revenue during the event and do not think we can capture any incremental income.
2. Something, perhaps I should look at how to create incremental improvement in my event guest wine club participation rates.

If the answer is A, there is not much to say. If the answer is B, please consider the following.

The biggest missing ingredient from the events held at your property was you. While the author is not suggesting you crash the party, perhaps it might be useful to include some message from you to your guests. Your story is uniquely yours, share it on a personal level, in whatever manner you can.

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A typical 120 person event is staffed with approximately 15 service personnel.  Almost all of these personnel have some customer facing time.  Since you and your staff are typically not around, why not produce some training material for these service personnel?  By making them ambassadors of your brand, you increase the likelihood of nice things being conveyed, positive images being created and the hope that the connection is at least a pathway stomped into the underbrush.

And finally, in your tasting room your bottles and wines are handled with care and poured with style. At your events are they too? Is it possible that in many cases the label is palmed and the wine dispensed like a refueling stop at a NASCAR race? If so, again, some simple expectations, training and spot monitoring can significantly help.

We have found that these simple actions done in conjunction with willing team oriented suppliers is at a minimum showing the wine the respect you show it as a matter of course.  We believe it is also having a positive effect on guest experience which can do nothing but help with future wine club pick up and    sell-through at the retail level.

As will all things that help create a positive improvement in one’s business, they are neither as simple as we wish or as singular where doing just one gets it done. They are not, however, costly other than the time you allocate to seeing that others treat your brand as you would expect everyone associated with your winery to treat it.