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Given the huge number of wines, the risk of an un-marketed, non-discounted wine going unnoticed is very significant. One favourable mention by a leading writer might, however lead to a significant leap in sales.
Sue Harris of Westbury Communications illustrates this with sales figures from ASDA, the UK chain owned by WalMart. When Anakena Varietal Chardonnay from Chile was featured in mid-market tabloid The Daily Express, in October 2004, sales rose from 741 bottles per week to 1034. The following week, the same wine was recommended in featured in the Sunday Times, which has a larger circulation and a more sophisticated readership. Sales went up to 1128. In November, they slipped back to 938, at which point a mention in another quality newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph pushed it back up to 1205. In each case, the change in the wine’s fortunes could be directly attributed to the newspaper coverage rather than the effect of the writers’ words appearing on shelf-barkers. ASDA regularly sees growth after articles by Matthew Jukes of the Daily Mail – and has just recorded a 4,000% increase in the throughput of an Italian white following a glowing endorsement by Tim Atkin of the Observer.
While favourable press comment will help move bottles off shelves, there is no Robert Parker/Wine Spectator influence of the kind that exists in the US, and no individual critic who can single-handedly transform a wine’s fortunes. Some consumers follow recommendations from presenters on television whose names they may not even remember, while fans of particular wine styles will learn to follow critics who share their interests and tastes; Jancis Robinson, for example, has a well-known affection for German Riesling.
Wine critics and the public
In October 2008, UK-based Wine Intelligence attempted to throw more light on the issue as part of a study entitled Decisions Decisions, in which it asked the over 1500 members of its Vinitrac panel - regular wine drinkers all - about the greatest influences on their wine buying behaviour. While 29% said that the critics were a major influence on their buying, 30% followed the advice of staff in wine shops and 34% said their purchasing decisions were driven by printed material on shelves. None of these came close to competing with the 68% who rely on recommendations from friends and family.
Yet these statistics only paints part of the picture. First, of course, there is the fact that the shelf-talkers – the ‘printed material’ on the shelves– usually consists of quotes from wine writers. But second, there is the little matter of where all those friends and family got the information they were able to share with the respondents. Experienced public relations specialist Rosamund Hitchcock of R&R feels that the friends are almost certainly “heavily influenced by wine writers. Where else would they get their on-going knowledge of wine?” For Hitchcock, the |
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potential effective influence of wine critics/communicators is actually a huge 97% (68% friends plus 29% critics).
As PR Yvonne May says, “the friends who shape most people's drinking are most likely ‘wine-aficionados’ who take insights from leading writers and broadcasters. Were I to be purchasing a car, there is nothing on earth that would persuade me to buy a heap of car magazines. I'd ask my brother-in-law for some leads, as he is a car-enthusiast".
The crucial question is how many of the 1500 Vinitrac respondents are people who effectively share the information they have absorbed. The most useful of these will be what US marketing guru Seth Godin calls ‘sneezers’: talkative people who naturally tend to spread the virus of their experiences to those around them. In other words, one assiduous reader of Decanter Magazine – UK circulation less than 25,000 – who tells all of his colleagues and friends about the wines he has read about in a column by a specialist writer like Steven Spurrier, might be responsible for far more sales than the person who casually buys a single bottle for himself after seeing it on television. This may be particularly true of the higher-price and/or more esoteric wines that are more likely to be mentioned by more specialist critics.
Wine Intelligence may not have segmented its respondents by what they spend on wine, but it did try to use them to segment the wine writers. Which of these, the analysts wanted to know were most familiar to consumers? Here, they discovered an interesting phenomenon. 29% of the Vinitrac panel may have said that they followed advice from critics, but 82% were unable to name even one. The best known, by far, was Oz Clarke who scored 18% thanks largely to his exposure for over 25 years on a series of widely watched television programmes, followed by 9%, 7%, 6% and 5% respectively for Olly Smith, Sarah Jane Evans MW, Matthew Jukes and Malcolm Gluck, none of whom has the kind of global recognition enjoyed by Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, Steven Spurrier and Tim Atkin, who all scored 4% or less.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these findings disconcerted some of the writers concerned - and those members of the wine industry who delude themselves that the people who drink wine are as obsessive about its background as they are. Victoria Moore, wine writer for the Guardian newspaper, and one of the few wine critics who earn most of their living from general journalism, took a more level headed view. "How many people who buy CDs could name a single music critic? Do people who own lawnmowers know the names of anyone who writes about gardening? How well would 1,500 drivers do at naming a motoring critic? And if you asked the same question about almost anything from fashion to books I'm sure people would mostly say they listened to the advice of their friends. What's wrong with that?"
Public relations specialist Emma Roberts makes a |
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similar point: "I have to say whenever I speak to my friends who all like wine and read the papers, very few of them read or take any notice of the wine columns, which in some ways is surprising but also isn't because there are a lot more interesting things to read in the papers than the wine columns…".
Who cares about wine writers?
At this point anyone with ambitions to sell more wine in the UK might be forgiven for feeling confused about the importance of the UK press. To succeed, it is essential to devote significant effort on defining the part of the market one is trying to reach – and the consumers to whom one is aiming to sell. Unlike mainland Europe, where there is a tradition of drinking cheap basic wine during the week and much more premium fare at weekends, it is not unusual for financially comfortable wine drinkers in the UK to limit almost all of their vinous spending to under £7 or £8. Britain is one of the few countries where it is socially acceptable to serve relatively inexpensive wine at dinner parties whose hosts and guests all drive Jaguars. This phenomenon helps to explain why, despite the sophistication of many UK wine drinkers, critics never embraced the £50+ super-premium wines that were routinely recommended by their US and some of their European counterparts in pre credit crunch days. Even wine writers like Jancis Robinson of the Financial Times regularly recommend best buys at £5 or so – and criticise premium California wines for being over-priced. But these are precisely the critics that producers need to be addressing if they want to sell wines beyond the supermarket. As Yvonne May points out: “We have had UK agents tell us about calls they’ve received from European distributors when articles have appeared in major broadsheets or Decanter magazine. Jancis [Robinson] is the journalist most frequently cited by those speaking to us from continental Europe”.
For sales in supermarkets, nothing will ever beat the numbers that the widely circulated media can deliver. It is no accident that publishers talk about costs-per-thousand when selling advertising space. The more people who are exposed to any kind of information about wine – whether in the form of an advertisement, an article, or a recommendation on television, the greater the number of bottles that is likely to be sold. The newspapers that helped to sell the Chilean Anakena wine in Asda all have circulations of between 1m and 1.25m copies. The Independent newspaper, for which the highly respected Anthony Rose writes, can only claim sales of around 250,000, so it is hardly surprising that it has less impact. Newspaper editors acknowledge that the proportion of their readers who follow wine columns is, in any case, limited (which is why the size and length of these columns has shrunk in recent years). Television viewers are more likely to absorb the wine component in a programme that is generally focused on food, |
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which helps to explain why Oz Clarke, whose most recent TV series attracted an audience of 3.4m viewers and Olly Smith, whose Saturday Kitchen show has 1.6m both came top of the Wine Intelligence poll.
Talking to the press
Having chosen the critics that seem most appropriate to their wine, how should a producer approach the UK press for the first time? For this article, we canvassed leading UK writers including Jancis Robinson, Tim Atkin, Anthony Rose, Joanna Simon, Simon Woods, Steven Spurrier, Sarah Jane Evans, Jamie Goode, John Stimpfig and Christine Austin. They were asked to imagine their likely response to a range of possible approaches from a producer with whom they are unfamiliar – and from a region they do not already know well. First, the good news, in budgetary terms at least, is that they don’t want to be entertained at one of London's top restaurants – or the ballet. One critic admitted that a major rugby game or tennis match might work greater magic, but had only accepted one such invitation in the last year. A one-on-one interview with the winemaker was also generally rejected, as was the chance to join them in a private tasting of their latest vintages. Sarah-Jane Evans generally “really dislikes” meeting winemakers, however famous, “in anonymous hotel rooms in London… Always the conversations are less interesting than you get in the winery". There was marginally more keenness to taste old vintages with the winemaker, but not enough to justify pulling out precious mature bottles. Some were slightly more tempted by the offer of a talk by the winemaker on the soils, rootstocks, clones or terroirs of their region or a tasting of the producer's wines for a larger group of writers, "providing" as Simon Woods' of Wine & Spirit says "I'm not obliged to talk to anyone". There was a similar lack of excitement at the proposal to sample the wines with a specific style of cuisine.
Apart from simply posting a bottle and fact sheet and hoping for the best, the approach that it most likely to succeed with the critics was tasting the wine alongside others from the same region. Most of the critics would consider taking a brief trip to visit the wineries and vineyards - provided that it was organised generically. As Jancis Robinson said: "I'd want to know exactly who was funding this as I try not to be beholden (other than for tastes and the odd meal) to individual wine producers”.
When to call in PR
Sarah Jane Evans’s comment about the PR raises another crucial question. Should a winery approach the writer directly, or should it employ a public relations company? In theory, there is little reason for not going it alone, and a significant financial incentive. PR companies charge £600-£1000 per day, plus costs to put the winery and critic in contact with each other. Simply subscribing to |
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the database of UK wine writers from the Circle of Wine Writers – from administrator@winewriters.org – would cost a mere £95 per year, a sum that would enable you to contact them all personally. But before you rush to adopt this strategy, listen to Jamie Goode of the Sunday Express and wineanorak.com “It depends who's asking. For me, one of the main determinants in whether or not I'd accept the invitations below is my relationship with the PR companies in question, and my judgement of their competence. There are some who I trust to the degree that I know they wouldn't waste my time”. And this is a point echoed by Sue Pike of Pike PR. “An important part of our role lies in persuading clients not to waste particular critics’ time with invitations or information that might actually be counter-productive”.
For anyone with serious ambitions in the UK, the use of a good public relations company is almost essential. Their fee does not only cover the insight a professional can provide into the market (an alternative view to the one offered by the producer’s importer) and the relationship they have with the writers. It should also pay for local knowledge such as the best choice of when and where to hold tastings. A skilled PR knows which venues are most likely to be convenient for critics, and which time and date will attract the greatest number of invitees. The challenge of hosting events that do not clash with other tastings is huge in the UK, and the better PRs actually work together on occasion to enable the writers to move from one to another. Finally, though it goes beyond the scope of this article, a PR should be able to introduce a wine to writers who are not specialists in the subject. As Sophie Vallejo of A la Carte Public Relations says, “When I started looking after the PR for a young brand of Champagne a few years ago, I was surprised to discover that journalists from women’s magazines were not contacted much by Champagne companies. Unlike wine writers, they did not receive many invitations to Champagne events or many wine samples for photos. Consequently, they responded very well to our campaign to build a new brand of Champagne.”
This is a version of an article which appeared in Meininger's Wine Business International, June/July 2009 edition. Data tables, including lists of prominent commentators in the UK, can only be found in the magazine.
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