In vino, veritas!

I owe today's post to the ever-observant Mark Ferris at Ascendant. Mark's a great guy, and he pointed out a nice little blog post by the Stormhoek people in South Africa (do they make wine there?). I'm often asked about how businesses can make social media work for them - and the Stormhoek guys provide an excellent example.

The most recent post talks about the way they approach their wine. They recognize that a global, informed conversation has grown up around wine - in a world where lots of people are making good wine, they believe that the worldview about wine has changed. For them, "handcrafted-ness" and terroir are of course important. But with the paradigm shift they described, they believed there was something "far deeper, human and visceral". Sound a little like what I was talking about in this post?

So they decided that they wanted to let people know what making wine meant for them in their view of the world ... and printed it on the back label. For them, wine means:

LOVE
BEING PASSIONATE
DREAMING BIG
BEING SPONTANEOUS
CELEBRATING
CHANGING THE WORLD

Guess what? People loved it.

Stormhoek provides something beyond another marketing channel with their blog. They provide a human, aspirational face. Something that wine lovers all over the world can identify with, and share. Six simple realities about wine that start a million conversations, and inspire customers to engage with the brand. Stormhoek gets it, and gets it big!

I have never bought any of their wine - but you can bet that I am now going to make the effort to track some down. And tell other people about it.

p.s. They also provided some tips on blogging for a friendly rival which I recommend you read.