I was intrigued to read this in the comments section of Big Pinots’ wine blog yesterday: a high-profile winery – biodynamic Felton Road, from Central Otago – that is totally rejecting ‘social media’ as part of its marketing strategy.
At the bottom of its homepage, there are Twitter and Facebook buttons crossed out, and the following message pops up if you hover over them.
“After a lot of thought we have decided not to use Facebook or Twitter. We like longer conversations and for them to be personal, not public. If we did it, it would be because it is a fashion and not because our heart is in it, and that doesn’t feel right. So please email, or much better come and see us.”
[*Felton winemaker Blair Walter, above - clearly too busy actually living life to waste time tweeting about it.]
A statement like the one above seems unthinkable in an age where businesses are inundated every day with advice from all quarters on the crucial importance of social media to commercial success, and where fuddy-duddy firms who opt not to bother are as good as laughed at (if they are noticed at all).
And social media is apparently for every industry too, not just ‘sexy’ ones like media and (ahem) wine. Plumbers – think you don’t need a Facebook page? Wake up! – create one today or watch your business flap impotently and crash like a one-winged pterodactyl!
We at Bubble Brothers haven’t been as brave / foolhardy as our Kiwi friends in throwing out the social media bathwater / baby. We have this blog (views modest but increasing, sometimes), a reasonably successful Twitter account (almost 1,700 followers, and regular interactions – is that success?), a far more sluggish Facebook page (‘Likes’, if they happen at all, come from staff members), a moribund Linked-In account (no one currently at the company really knows what to do with it), and a dormant YouTube channel that we promise to resurrect before the next full moon (or the one after that).
But if the ultimate business purpose of social media activity is to bring in dollars (and it is of course) we could probably do just as well quitting the lot and switching the hours spent ‘doing’ it to something else. Like the shoddy e-marketers we are, we haven’t accurately quantified the sales all our beavering away online generates but what we can say is that the figure (whatever it is) is dwarfed by that for sales unrelated to digital toil.
Obviously this is just our own experience. You don’t need to look very hard for examples of companies whose social media marketing does appear to be paying its way. But the area seems to be something of a dark art, and I think that more companies are wasting their time online than not.
Back to Felton Road and its owners’ Twitter / Facebook position seems to be more philosophical than financial – but they probably surmised too that abstaining from daily tweeting and status updating wouldn’t hurt their bottom line very much. And that it’d be two less things to worry about.
With their in-demand wines fetching between €30 and €60 a bottle here in Ireland, it seems as though their policy of only communicating with people in person over tea and biscuits (or over pinot and lamb, I suppose) is paying off.
What do you think – is social media just a load of trash?
_________________________
p.s. It was Gavin Quinney, owner of Bordeaux estate Chateau Bauduc, whose comment directed me to Felton Road’s website.
p.p.s. We don’t sell Felton Road, but our Brightwater Nelson Pinot Noir is currently reduced to €20 from €23 on our website.
Hi Paul,
I can understand the frustration, “where’s the ROI?” your nasty boss is shouting. However, forget about Facebook and Twitter for a moment, they’re tools and fairly nascent ones at that. You’ll also need to think about Google + at some point and managing a presence there.
The point though is that the web (and not just the “social web”) is about people. It’s not about interrupting people or marketing to them or expecting an instant click and purchase. That would be way too easy. What the web has become is more of a place to build relationships. The clever businesses who understand this are the ones that will thrive. Like offline, relationships take time to blossom. They require commitment, they require hard work and they require trust.
What that means practically is that it’s fucking hard work. If you get a question on Twitter, or Facebook you have to respond to that comment and quickly. What’s expected of you now is far greater than what was expected of traditional marketeers of 2 years ago. The difference now is that you actually have to care. You have to care about your customers, who they are, what matters to them and how you can best meet their needs.
So, social is not a passing fad. For the moment, like Felton Road, one can ignore it. But that ignores what is happening around us. Another thought that has come to me is the closure of rural post offices. There is the commercial or economic argument that they simply don’t process enough transactions to be viable. But then there’s the argument that these places aren’t really about transactions, they are a place to meet your neighbours and friends to have the social interactions that are important nay vital to us as humans.
And that’s the way we’ve been for thousands of years, inherently social- bazaars, markets and websites aren’t just about the transaction, they are thriving centres of human interaction. If you think about the haggling that goes on the middle east is it about getting a good deal or is it about fun.
On most ecommerce sites the values are ease of use, speed and price but you’d rarely describe them as fun. Maybe it’s time we started to think about how we could make them a little bit more human.
Tune into Paul Adams’s blog, Think Outside-In – his most recent blog posts have informed a lot of my thinking about social in recent months. He also has a book out called “Grouped” which is worth investing in, for a third of the price of a Felton Road Pinot.
[...] comment from Lar Veale on the importance of social media and the [...]
Thanks for that, Lar – it’s nice to finally have some cussing on A Terroirible Beauty
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that you couldn’t meet a pleasanter, less shouting-prone fella than the Bubble Brothers boss – it’s like working for a ‘Wine Buddha’.
That being clarified let’s move onto the meat!
Google + ? Yeah, I tried to set up a BB account shortly after it came out but I couldn’t – you needed someone to invite you or something? So that stalled that for a bit and in the meantime I read on some respectable-looking tech blog that Google+ was useless and not to bother with it. Is that not the case so? Am I correct in saying you don’t need to be invited anymore?
You are making very fair points there about the whole social media thing involving a long-term view and a commitment to building relationships etc. We’re not so green as to expect to be snowed under with orders the second we tweet a link to a product page (etc) – especially seeing as barely anyone will even click the link. But I just think that for many companies – including ourselves at times – the balance between messing around online / social networking and doing old-fashioned ‘real world’ work isn’t ideal.
But obviously the issue here is the way people are executing their social media strategy, and not social media per se.
It’s a very good point that even if a company can get away without doing anything online today they probably won’t be able to tomorrow.
Thanks for commenting, Lar!
And for the links! Will check out for sure.
Another linky-poo for you is nakedwines.com – their whole business is built around people. Their customers are called “Angels” who invest in winemakers (and get wine as a result). You can see the amount of customer engagement on their site. They’ve literally built their business around people.
Yeah, I’m familiar with them. I wonder will any other wine company be able to replicate what they’re doing …
Our old blogging friend Eamon / Grape Escape works for them, I’m sure you know …
Hi Lar, Hi Paul
enjoying this.
On the Google + side of things – I have tried to se tone up for us, but when I get to the age criteria and click ‘Alcohol related’ I get the message ‘Our product is not available for you yet. Please come back later’ This had been going on fro some time, I checked again today and it’s still the case.
Hi again, I’m not anonymous, ity’s Emma from the WIne Store
Hi Emma – I recognised you anyway from your syntax.
Re http://www.thewinestore.ie/ being unable to set up a Google+ account all this time – is that the sound of lost sales and unformed relationships I hear?
Hang on, actually, it’s just the printer here next to me.
I do this for a living and I still applaud them for that decision. They know their time limits and their priorities, and I’d rather see no social than abandoned or stretched too thin social (For what it’s worth – you sound like you’re stretched a little thin. You don’t have to be on every site.)
As a wine lover and wine marketer I love when I can I can find wineries and wine sellers online to talk about wine, food, etc but as long as other people on social are talking about their wines, they are’t losing out.
They should have some listening tools in place though to capture mentions, even if they reply to the important ones with a phone call
Hey Leslie,
If we did very much on all of those platforms we would indeed be stretching ourselves too thinly! Twitter is the only one we use to any great extent though. That’s not to say it’s the best place for us to hang out, but that’s where we go for now anyway!
I doubt Felton has anyone listening out for mentions – if they were that needy they’d just cut out the middleman and join Twitter, Facebook etc themselves!
Felton Road is quite within its right to not partake in social media, but my question is whether it is a good idea to ignore what people are saying about your brand? People will tweet about you whether you’re listening or not; don’t you want to defend yourself when it’s critical? It sounds like they’ll survive due to their supply & demand situation, but many can’t be quite so bold/self-assured.
Thanks for the reference.