The Furrowed Brow seems to be the official wine industry response to the new social media tools. And why shouldn't this be the reaction? If you've been in the industry for even only a few years these new tools are so untested, so new and so unlike previous marketing tools that few people understand anything about them.
VinTank is hoping to unfurrow a few brows.
Vintank is a new company formed by Paul Mabray, founder of Inertia Beverage Group, and Joel Vincent, founder of the OpenWine Consortium. Vintank is a new media consulting firm that focuses on wine industry issues. Their first project will be a Social Media Matrix White Paper. The project is described this way:
"In the VinTank Social Media Matrix Report, in particular, we are in the process of evaluating Social Media as it relates to the wine industry. We are creating an overall picture of the wine "Social Media" landscape in which we will be establish a directory of which micro-publishers (blogs) are interesting and worth wineries spending time with as well as evaluating "social networking" sites related to wines in order to enable the mapping of their particular strengths to a wineries business objectives and strategic marketing plan."
Not a bad idea.
Today, wineries and wine companies are struggling with whether or not wine blogs are worth addressing in their PR efforts, whether they should actually maintain a blog, whether networking sites like Facebook delivers a worthy Return on Investment of time. Where blogs are concerned, I think they must be incorporated into communications campaigns. But which blogs? Which are worth engaging. I also believe that Facebook and other Social Networking sites are worthy of engagement. But note the word I just used: "Believe". I don't have anything to measure my gut reaction. My gut is pretty practiced. But I like numbers.
The Idea behind the VinTank Social Media Matrix White Paper is to provide solid information that marketers can use to evaluate these new tools. And I think the time is right.
