My Annual Harvest Fair Rant

Last night (Saturday, September 24, 2011), the winners of the Sonoma County Harvest Fair were announced:

• Wilson Winery: 2009 Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Sawyer Vineyard
• Kenwood Vineyards: 2010 Pinot Gris, Russian River Valley
• Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards: 2007 Brut Rosé, Carneros

As I write this on Sunday morning, this story is the most-read news article on the Santa Rosa Press Democrat website.

BUT, not a single one of these wineries has the good news on their websites (either on the home page, or on the "news" page of their site).  People are reading the news, searching for the winery on Google, visiting their home page, and finding...nothing.

(Update: as of 8AM Monday, 9/26, Wilson Winery has updated their home page.)

Consider the lost PR value of this oversight.  It happens once a year -- you'd think people might plan for it.  And yes, it's a weekend, but last time I looked, wineries are open for business on the weekends.

To their credit, Wilson Winery and Gloria Ferrer have updates on their respective Facebook pages (here and here), but unfortunately, these updates will only appear in the news streams of people who already Like them, and will disappear fairly quickly in the news stream.

As Vin|65 pointed out, your winery website is the hub of your (online) marketing activities.  Something as newsworthy at this award should be featured on your home page for a week after the event.

Obviously, these winning wines may soon be sold out.  A winery in this glorious position should still have an offering of some sort for people who missed out (a different vintage, a special deal).

You lose the value of publicity when you fail to engage the people who look for your winery and wines as a result of that publicity.

(previous rants: 2009, 2005)

Comments

[Andrew Kamphuis]

Like your previous rants - Amen. You hit the nail on the head (and thanks for the mention).

I suspect one reason that wineries update Facebook before their own website is because either their websites doesn't have a content management system (and so they have to call their web designer) or their content management system is overly difficult to use.

[Mike Duffy]

I agree with you, Andrew. Ease of change is a huge factor.

I notice that Wilson Winery has now made the change. Kenwood has the stupid age-verification screen, but no news. Gloria Ferrer has yet to update.

[Eddy Lewoski]

Really something of a non story. The Sonoma County Fair is more of a feel good event than it is an actual judgment or competition. The mere fact that there were some 1000 wines submitted to competition, and approximately 850 were awarded a medal!!! What real value could those medals have?? Consider that nearly 200 wines were awarded GOLD medals. What other "competition" awards 20% of its entrants the implied top prize. Think of the Olympics where only the bottom 15% do not get a medal!!

It is time to give such competitions value. Into the sub structure of the medal system there should be a scoring system. Maybe for each wine category there should be 10 judges. For each wine the judges should assign a score out of 10. That way each wine not only gets awarded a pretty medal, but also has a rating that supposedly separates within a category. It will all still be opinion in the end, but it will at least offer a comparative system for analysis rather than just saying "Everyone is great"!!

[Mike Duffy]

Eddy: to the extent that the award drives traffic to winner's websites, they are losing a chance to engage new customers.

Whether the award means anything is irrelevant to my point.

[El Jefe]

Even the best web site CMS is more trouble than a Facebook post.

On FB, you can pick a random phone photo and upload it with the news as a caption. The photo needs only to be adequate, or you can "fix" it with Instagram etc. You can do this all from your phone wherever you happen to be (assuming internet access is available) and you don't even have to be sober (but it helps.)

On your website, there's a different expectation (even for me). The picture must be chosen and sized, and suitable copy written, and the parts uploaded and arranged. Not something you're doing from a phone...

I don't disagree that the sites should have been updated ASAP, but I can understand why it didn't happen.

And to drive Mike's last point above home, people care about awards whether we like it or not. At the very least, our most committed fans feel like their team won when we win something.