Do you have an Editorial Calendar for 2010? If not, consider creating one.An editorial calendar is a listing of what will be featured in future issues of a magazine. All the food and wine magazines have an editorial calendar, and they (usually) post it onto their website for easy downloading. This means that you can see what the magazines are planning, all the way from January to December 2010.What’s the advantage of this? When you know what they’re planning to write about, you’ll know the types of stories to propose to them. But the only way to know what stories to propose and when to propose them is by setting up a calendar of your own. Your editorial calendar doesn’t require anything fancy; just something that you can put dates and story ideas into so that you know what to say and when to approach the media.Occasions to Include:- Holidays: Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.
- Events: Super Bowl, World Series, etc.
- Seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
- “Special” events: For example, September 29th is National Coffee Day. June 6th is National Donut Day (really!).
When a specific date draws near, give thought to a food item or a wine that might go well with the occasion (romantic wines for Valentine’s Day, cool meals for the hot summer, etc.). Write up a release and send it to the media. It’s as simple as that.By planning your stories around the dates that the media plans theirs, you’ll increase your chance of getting coverage. So take a moment and plan out your own editorial calendar. It’ll pay off in the long run.
There’s still time to get your products onto the local TV programs by positioning them for Christmas. I watched the local (AZ) TV talk shows (Channel 3 and Channel 15, to be exact) this morning and here are two of the topics I saw:- Holiday Cheese Trays: simple and elegant (Channel 3)
- Holiday desserts: Traditional and imaginative (Channel 15)
Here’s the opportunity for you:During the section on holiday cheese trays the hostess asked: “What does this pair with? The guest suggested breads and fruits. I thought “NO WINE???”And one of the suggestions on “holiday desserts” was a cheese tray. The hostess said “I’ll bet this cheese would go well with wine”, but SHE HAD NO WINE TO PAIR WITH THE CHEESE…and neither did the guest.So there’s a HUGE OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU: Come up with some wines that would pair well with holiday cheeses (gouda, brie, smoked cheddar, etc.), contact the TV stations, and tell them that you can talk about fast-and-easy wine pairings to holiday cheese trays. They’d probably go for it because this is a “follow-on story”. They’ve talked about cheese, so they can now add in the wine.Follow-on stories are always popular with the media - a good follow-on story keeps audience interest because they build on a previous story. Audiences will say: "Oh yeah! I remember that earlier story!" When you provide a good addition to a previous story you'll get considered as a guest.
So take a look into opportunities like this. Every story on TV has the potential to mean coverage for you. Just watch for areas where you can add your expertise to something they're already talking about.
Happy holidays to everyone!
Channel 15's "Sonoran Living" program today had a cooking segment in which the chef prepared a dish that included white wine. As the chef stirred the dish cooking in the pan, the hostess of the program poured in some white wine. When the hostess put down the wine bottle the label came into view, and I would swear that it was a bottle of Arizona's Page Springs Cellars wine. I couldn't quite tell, but Page Springs has a very unique label, and this looked just like one of them.This brings up a very important point that will increase the amount of publicity you get: When any of your customer-restaurants are on a TV program, ask them to mention the name of your wine while they're cooking.Ask them to say something like: "Add some white wine to the pan....I'm using Page Springs Cellars' Chardonnay...". It's really that simple, and your wine has just gotten mention on TV.People remember products through constant repetition. Even something as simple as hearing it mentioned on a cooking program will add to their familiarity so when it comes time to select a wine, they'll look for yours. By asking chefs to mention your wine when they're cooking for a TV program, you're building that familiarity and ultimately building your sales.- Gordon
Christmas is less than two weeks away (!). Now's the time to begin expanding your dollars-per-sale by encouraging your current customers to consider stocking-stuffers.Most wineries and wine stores carry a variety of smaller wine-related items: foods, wine-serving accessories, glasses, etc. These items are perfect for the harried Christmas shopper to pick up as inexpensive gifts for their friends and families. It's up to you to make the suggestions to them because if they're in your store to buy a bottle of wine, they may not think of the other items. So make the suggestion and increase the dollars-per-sale.Ideas that you might want to think about:Food items:
Make food suggestions whenever someone buys a bottle of wine. Say something like: "I see you're buying a Merlot. Good choice! You know....this particular Merlot pairs really well with our smoked gouda cheese. Here...try a sample of the cheese. This cheese makes a great stocking stuffer, and it's discounted right now." This works really well. McDonald's significantly increased their sales with the famous line "Would you like fries with that?", and you can do that too.Wine-Serving Accessories: Combine items that make sense, but most people don't think of until it's too late. For example, corkscrews and bottle-stoppers, or corkscrews and vacuum pumps. If someone is going to open a bottle of wine, they're going to need to close it off, so putting these two together makes sense. And discount the price of the pair so that it's cheaper to buy both now than to buy one now and come back later for the other.Gift Packs:Bundle together specific items for gift packs. Wines and cheeses, accessories, etc. Offer your own, and also offer create-your-own gift packs. (Remember, we saw this at the Arizona Wine Festival: http://winepr.blogspot.com/2009/12/good-marketing-techniques-seen-at-az.html.) Offer a discount if they bundle together their own wine and cheese selection. Final Thoughts...
1. Always openly promote the stocking-stuffers. Tell visitors about them. They might not notice. Remember, 'tis the season to be running around like a maniac. Your suggestion may be just what they're looking for.
2. Engage as many of their senses as possible while they're shopping. The longer they're tasting and smelling and viewing your offerings, the closer they are to purchasing. Get them engaged, and your sales will improve.
Hope that gives you some ideas! Best wishes for a happy and prosperous holiday season!
- Gordon
Last weekend I attended the AZ Wine Festival at the Tempe Festival of Arts. It was great! Lots of good wine, and plenty of friendly people.
I checked out the marketing techniques that the food/wine booths were using, and I'd like to share a few with you. There were plenty in use, but these particularly caught my attention.
Best Technique for Gathering Lots of Potential Buyers:
Send "walkers" out into the crowds with samples. One of the food vendors had hired a couple of teenagers to walk through the crowd handing out product samples. This is a great technique because it draws people in from all over the event - especially people who may not have even gotten near your booth while they were there. Excellent! Granted, you can't send samples of wine out into the crowd, but what else could you do? (Hat tip: Eleanor Joseph Confections)
Best Technique for Enhancing the Customer Experience:
This is for wineries: Include something that the wine can be tasted with. Have a couple of food items available for the samplers to taste with the wine so they can taste how well it pairs with food. One of the wineries had chocolate (M&Ms) in a bowl that could be tasted with their wines and port. Nice! (Hat tip: Jerome Winery)
Best Technique for Stimulating More-Than-One Purchases:
Offer "create-your-own" gift packs. We've discussed gift packs earlier. This company made it an option for the customer to create their own customized gift packs ("Pick any three sauces"). Here's the advantage to that: customers are more likely to buy if they aren't locked in to only a couple of choices. It's easier for them and easier for you too....you don't have to dream up a bunch of combos for gift packs! (Hat tip: Sweet and Saucy)
There were a bunch of other good marketing techniques that I saw, including a *great* one for stimulating continuing sales after-the-festival. They are, however, too numerous to mention here. Also, I've posted photos from the festival on Twitpic.com. You can see them by following me on Twitter: @WineAndFoodPR.
Great job, everyone!
Christmas is approaching quickly. Here’s a fast way to increase your sales.Create gift packs. Put together a bundle of special holiday-themed items and sell it for one price. You’ve all seen gift baskets, I’m sure. It’s the same principle.Holiday shoppers like buying bundles of items because they make great gifts. Also, people throw a lot of food-related parties during the holidays. If you can provide a wine/cheese combination or a wine/snacks combination, you’ve just saved the home chef a bundle of work. They’ll buy it just for that.Taste your wines, figure out what will go well with them, and then put those items together. For example, one of the Arizona wineries has a Merlot with a light smoky flavor. Pair that wine with a smoked gouda or a smoked cheddar cheese, and you have a great match. Put it into a colorful package, add a holiday ribbon, and you can sell it for more than the cost of the two put together.However, don’t just bundle products together without thinking about it. Take the time to put together winning combinations. Remember, YOU are the expert in the wine/food area. Customers look to you to help them have a satisfying wine experience. If you bundle together some great flavors, they’ll remember you and come back for more.This will help with your PR as well. The local daily TV programs (Channel 3, Channel 15, etc) are always looking for stories that will help the home chef. If you can provide suggestions for improving their viewers’ holiday parties, the TV stations will be interested in talking with you.And remember: Actively encourage your potential customers to *experience* the gift packs. When you’re displaying the product gift packs, provide tastes of the wine and cheese together. Tell the tasters that those are the items in the gift pack and that they’re specially chosen to go together. The more senses the customer uses (taste, smell, sight) to experience your product, the more likely they are to purchase.And it doesn’t have to be just cheese. Sausage, chocolates, fruit, cakes; whatever goes well with your particular wines will work.So before you head out to that next tasting to show off your wines, put together a couple of gift packs and offer them to your customers. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many more sales you’ll gain by doing this.
You still have a couple of weeks to pitch the newspapers with Christmas story ideas. If you get your ideas to them soon, they may consider them for the holiday edition.Last Wednesday's AZ Republic demonstrated how to think of creative variations on the Thanksgiving theme. We can use this to come up with new ideas that can be submitted to the papers to get coverage for our businesses.Food section front page story:"Chefs elevate Thanksgiving leftovers to grand gourmet".This article wasn't about cooking turkey. It was about how local chefs create gourmet meals with leftover turkey. Three chefs from the Petite Maison in Scottsdale were asked to create three gourmet meals from leftovers. The chefs created the meals, and the AZ Republic published them. Included in the article were:- The chef's names and photos
- The restaurant's location
- The owner's name
It would be good to get that kind of exposure, wouldn't it? Well, nothing's stopping you! The owner of the Petite Maison probably contacted the Republic and suggested a story idea, and got asked to do something with T-day leftovers. If I were going to contact the AZ Republic with a Christmas Dinner story, I'd come up with something a little different, such as variation on the side dishes, or unusual ingredients instead of the standard potatoes and yams. The more unusual and interesting, the better.Sidebar Story:"Help for Baking Pies"
This little sidebar, also on the front page, posts a toll-free phone number that hurried and harried home chefs can call to get help with their baking. It's sponsored by Crisco. This hotline helps with everything from soggy crusts to weeping meringue.
Here's a secret: Local newspapers like to cover local businesses before they write about big national companies. It builds community, and the reporters like to help out local businesses.
Therefore, if you set up something like this, you could very well get some coverage. And why not? Again, nothing's stopping you!
- Wineries and wine stores: Set up a hotline to help home chefs select the perfect Christmas wine.
- Restaurants: Set up a hotline to help with Christmas dinner preparation (or to suggest new ideas for home chefs who want to do something different).
Does this work? You bet it does! Consumers LOVE to have a phone number to call when they need help. If you provide a "help line", it places your business firmly in their mind - they'll remember you.Remember: Our job is to get and keep clients coming in our door, buying from us, and then coming back for more. By providing this kind of help, we're showing that we care about the customers. They're not just a credit card number (!), but someone we really want to help have a great dinner.And the beauty of it is....if you're the only one doing it, one quick call to the newspapers could generate enough interest that they'll cover your story. And that's a winning scenario for everyone: the paper, the customers, and you.
The AZ Wines Festival at the Farm happened last Sunday, and it was awesome! A large number of the Arizona wineries and winemakers were there, showing off their excellent wines. Great wines and great people! A good time was had by everyone. I'm looking forward to next year!Public-oriented events like this are perfect opportunities for good marketing. Everyone did a great job, and I'd like to point out some of the best marketing techniques I saw. 1. Flyers and handouts. Almost everyone had something to give to the people who stopped by their booths. That's very good. Always give your visitors something to remember your wines.Special Mention: One winery handed out a list of "Our 2010 releases", circled their name, and told me the month the wines would be available. Very good move. It made me remember them.
2. Collecting email addresses. Almost everyone had an email sign-up sheet to collect the email addresses of the visitors. Great! You always want to collect the contact information of people who stop by your booth.
3. "Best Method": The best marketing technique went to one of the wineries who handed out a card that entitled the bearer to a free gift when it was brought into the winery. Excellent! Makes me want to visit them. Plus, they weren't handing them out to everyone, so I felt like I was "special".
Good job, everyone!
A couple more ideas:
I'd like to add a couple of ideas that could make your marketing efforts even better (If you don't mind, of course. I *have* had a little practice doing it: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gordon-parlova/0/1a/4a3 ).
1. Actively encourage people to sign up for your emails. Everyone had their sign-up sheet there, but nobody pointed it out to me.
- Work it into conversation with the tasters: ("If you sign up for our email newsletter, we'll send you recipes to go with this wine").
- Print out a copy of the newsletter (so they can see what they'll get), and a short "pitch". That'll sell the newsletter without you having to talk. It's a "silent salesperson"!
2. Immediately send an email to the people who signed up. The next day is best. People will remember you better if you remind them of you right away. We all see hundreds of ads and meet lots of people so we're going to forget who we met and what we did. If you email them right away, they'll remember you. A couple of tips:- Send them a "Thanks for Stopping By Our Booth" email the next day.
- Two to three days later, send them a coupon or a recipe via email. Anything that has *value for the recipient*. This will cement your winery in their minds, and they'll look forward to the next email they get from you. This is also an excellent time to send them a list of stores where they can find your wine.
Again, the AZ Wines Festival was great! Arizona has wonderful wines and wonderful winemakers! Let's do this again and show the world how great our wines are!
You should always include your logo and your contact information in your press release. Just don't put it at the top of the release.Why? Because the top of the release is the first place the reporter looks for the "newsworthy" item - the potential story. He/she is looking for the *headline*, not your logo. Reporters are always looking for stories, so you make sure that they see one the moment they look at your release.Reporters are very busy people. They don't have time to read every release line-by-line looking for the story. They glance at the release quickly, and if they don't see anything interesting, they move on to the next one.Therefore, the first thing they should see is the potential story. That belongs in the headline, and the headline should be at the top of the news release."But Gordon..." you say, "I was told in my 'marketing your brand' class that I should always put my logo at the top because then they start to recognize my brand". Trust me, they don't care about your brand. They care about finding good stories. I was a TV news anchor for eight years. I looked for the story in the headline. I didn't care who sent it to me. If I found a good story then yes, I cared who sent it. But not before.So our lesson for today is: Make the reporters like you. Put the story idea in the headline where the reporter can see it. Put your logo and contact information at the *bottom* of the news release. If the reporter likes the story idea, they'll look for your contact information and call you.
Thanksgiving is this week, so the chance to get a story in the papers or on TV is pretty much over. Now is the time to pitch Christmas stories to the newspapers and TV. Newspapers have a 3 - 4 week turn-around time, whereas TV programs have about a 1-week turn-around time (meaning, they can get you on in about one week). So now's the time.For prioritization, I recommend that you pitch the newspapers NOW. Right now. November 21. Put together a press release and email it to them right away so they can start consideration. Then I'd start pitching the TV stations: programs like Your Life A-Z on Channel 3 and Arizona Midday on Channel 12. These people like cooking ideas, recipes, and wine.What types of stories do they like? Interesting and unusual items work best.- Wine pairings for smoked or deep-fried turkey (not just roasted).
- White or red for roasted turkey? Two experts offer their opinion.
- Cook all the "trimmings" in under an hour.
- How kids can help making dinner.
- Christmas Souffle' for dessert!
- An elegant dinner on a budget.
Interesting variations on the wine and food theme will get the attention of the reporter. So start pitching your stories now. That'll give you plenty of time to get it to press before Christmas.
Here's something I hear frequently:
"I've sent press releases to the newspaper/magazine/TV/radio, but I didn't hear back. Why not?"
There can be several answers to this, but the most common one is this: the story you suggested to the media probably doesn't fit their definition of "newsworthy". So what's "newsworthy", you ask? Look at it this way:
The root of the word "news" is NEW. The type of story that will get the attention of the media is about something NEW. Something new, unusual, and/or different. Anything that will make the reporter go "Really? I didn't know that!" will get their attention.
In the world of food and wine, that means new flavors, new combinations, new pairings, new uses, new methods of growing grapes, new methods of fermenting/bottling/etc., a major change in the decor' of a restaurant, a major change in the food, etc. Something NEW.
For example, here are a few story headlines from a few recent food and wine magazines:
- "Christmas Dinner in Under an Hour (Really!)"
- "Oak Meets Smoke: Great Wines for Grilled Food"
- "Crafty Competitor: New Restaurant Concepts Stay Ahead of the Pack"
- "Five Tasty Glazes for Your Thanksgiving Turkey"
- "The Valley's 50 Best Dishes"
Christmas dinner in under an hour?? How can that be done?? Turkey *glazes* instead of just "turkey"? Sounds interesting! The 50 best dishes in the Valley? Oh yeah?? Sez who??? They're all unusual and attention-getting.
The media creates interesting and compelling stories to keep their audiences interested. If you can provide that unusual twist to your stories, you'll get more notice from the media.
So the next time you release a new wine, add a little creative spin to the press release. Don't go with the standard "....handcrafted wine....flavors of black cherry and cinnamon....smooth finish....". Instead, think of some creative ideas for interesting pairings.
Make sure the creative ideas are *real* of course - don't just make things up. But be creative in your approach. I promise, if you send a press release with a headline that reads "This Wine Pairs Great with Peanut Butter and Jelly", you'll get some media attention!
