To-and-Fro

On January 1st we celebrated our two year anniversary in business.  

Wine. Technology.

It’s been an amazing journey trying to merge wine and

technology.  

Wine. Technology.

And two things have proven true in the last couple of years: we believe the synergy between

wine and digital will move our industry forward and we encourage wineries every day to

improve their use of technology to sell and market their product DTC, DTT, and in the trade.

Our industry has experienced two years of

turmoil and challenges.

And as a result, the often ignored digital channel is now increasing in relevance to our industry every single day.

Wine online. We believe.

To all the people who believe in us, our clients, our friends, and

especially our family.  Thank you for supporting us along our two year

journey. We are so grateful to work with you and have you part of the

VinTank family.

*

*State of New Hampshire

And a special nod to

Who spend their money to support our efforts to research and manufacture

these reports.

We’ve been busy.

We have produced:

We have produced:

We are here, We are HERE, WE ARE HERE: The State of Wine Industry Social Media

A report that explains the state and impact of social media within the industry. This “herculean labor of

love” was intended to introduce and inform the wine world on the upcoming business trends within digital media, breaking down the Who’s, the What’s and

the Who Cares free for the industry.

Check it out: http://bit.ly/fZoMe5

2 Major Reports

We have produced:

Wine on the iPhone: What’s the Best App?

A summary and analysis on all the relevant iPhone applications for the wine industry. We searched and pulled together applications and split them

into categories based on their capabilities, functionality, overall performance and impact on

both the market and the consumer.

Check it out: http://bit.ly/ep3yU0

2 Major Reports

We have produced:

Our views on new technologies that announce themselves to the wine industry. We do our Pulse

Reports from a winery or consumer-centric perspective.

Check them out: http://bit.ly/iimb1U

12 Pulse Reports

We have produced:

Sharing our thoughts on wine and tech. Including 3 videos from our UNFILTERED series.

You can expect this to exponentially grow in our content output in 2011.

Check these out:

Twitter voices that influence our thinking...

“Inherit the Wind”- The real interview with Craig Wolf

Is Snooth scraping data from CellarTracker?

Over 25 Blog Posts

We have produced:

Unfiltered VideosUnfiltered #1 withEvan DawsonWHAM News Anchor and Editor of the NewYorkCorkReport.com

Unfiltered #3 withCraig WolfeWSWA President

Unfiltered #2 withRob McMillanFounder of the SVB WIne Division

Unfiltered #4 withBarry Schulerformer CEO of AOL and owner of Meteor Vineyards

Watch Video

Watch Video

Watch Video

Watch Video

We will produce:

We will be generating more content including:

Frequent blog posts and Pulse Reports on topics we see that are important to the industry and make a

technological impact. We have also confirmed the following for our Unfiltered Video Series:

Be on the Lookout

Jennifer LeggioMichael Brito

Aaron StroutJancis Robinson

Meg MakerRandall Grahm

and more....

All FREE to help wineries and consumers understand the

intersection between wine and digital.

We also have mad love for other firms who create or aggregate FREE content

and insight to help wineries.

paulrickett.wordpress.com

We also have mad love for other firms who create or aggregate FREE content

and insight to help wineries.

paulrickett.wordpress.com

Speaking of free love,

The only social media monitoring service tailored EXCLUSIVELY for

the wine industry.

✓ Measured over 128 million conversations to distill to 13 million wine conversations

✓ Profiled over 3 million online wine consumers

✓ FREE if you participate in yourwineyourway.com

✓ Revenue model – yearly subscriptions or fees for cleaning wine data

✓ Measured over x conversations to distill to y wine conversations

✓ Profiled over 3 million online wine consumers

✓ FREE if you participate in yourwineyourway.com

✓ Revenue model – yearly subscriptions or fees for cleaning wine data

✓ Measured over x conversations to distill to y wine conversations

✓ Profiled over 3 million online wine consumers

✓ FREE if you participate in yourwineyourway.com

✓ Revenue model – yearly subscriptions or fees for cleaning wine data

Created by Cruvee for wine companies,

enabling brand control.

Wineries can enter their data for FREE and it syndicates to 50 partners (and growing) with an aggregate user base of 1.4 million wine consumers. One place, fifty outlets.

ANY wine tech company can tap into the API for FREE and without the requirement to send traffic back to Cruvee.

Why do they do that?

It helps wine tech companies

focus on building BETTER software and services to help

wineries SUCCEED online

Why do they do that?

Why do they do that?

What’s in it for me?

Serves as a free data portal for wineries to share normalized information and allows wineries to leverage this rich tool at no cost.

Added bonus: Data in the platform can also be used to enter multiple wine competitions without having to fill out their competition forms.

Own your message. Save administration time. Present your product properly and efficiently on the internet.

But that’s not all. Cruvee has also given us...

Turn Fans into Customers

Turn Fans into Customers Wineries can leverage

yourwineyourway.com for themselves.

Easy as 1.2.3.1. Put your wines in yourwineyourway.com2. Add the FREE Facebook app that adds a

wines tab to your winery’s Facebook Fanpage with links directly to your site

3. Turn your Fans into Customers

We know crowds.

We know crowds.

Tribes.

Taste Tribes.

The 100 point system is easy to understand but flawed. Out of the 250K + wines produced annually throughout the world, only 30K-40K are professionally reviewed.

Recommendation is the #1 catalyst for wine buying.

People adhere to Taste Tribes. Bloggers aggregate wine lovers that

match their “Taste Tribe.”

Taste Tribes.

A rating system that is Binary (like it or don’t).

Either the wine earns a badge based upon reviewers’ criteria, or the wine doesn’t, creating a taste taxonomy that recognizes that we taste differently.

Then syndicate these notes and “digital neckers” for FREE to help give people meaningful recommendations and help e-tailers convert sales through digital merchandising of reviews. Psst – wineries can use this on their sites TOO!

Why not try Badges?

Why will it work?

The badge data is syndicated (for FREE) through digital distribution channels to

anyone who wants to receive and use it.

Distribution is the key to change.

Here are the pioneer bloggers who are leading the Badge initiative. Feel free to

submit your wines to them.

Joe Roberts (aka 1 wine dude)http://www.1winedude.com/

Ward Kadel (aka- Dr. Xeno)http://www.winelog.net/blogs/drxeno/

Steve Paulo(aka Notes from the Cellar)

http://notesfromthecellar.com/

“Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures”

- Franklin Roosevelt

“A Social Experiment”

Social Commerce Experiment

Predatory Flash Sale sites were asking wineries to offer deep discounts and pay extraordinary fees while only presenting the highest rated wines.

So we asked:

Can a major social network be used for social commerce?

Facebook released its new upgraded groups!

Thus was born Deals from the Vines – A Facebook group that allows ANY winery to present its wines for sale to the group with NO FEES.

A special thank you to our partner wineries that allow us to experiment and share the

efforts and learnings with the entire industry.

Here’s where to participate:http://on.fb.me/ec7MzM

Here’s what we learned:http://bit.ly/gCwpwh

to all the wine companies that have participated in this experiment!

Israeli Wine Direct (www.israeliwinedirect.com)

Cornerstone Cellars (www.cornerstonecellars.com)

Ampelos Cellars (www.ampeloscellars.com)

Charnu Winery (www.charnuwinery.com)

Marquee Selections (www.marquee.com)

Ortman Family Vineyards (www.ortmanwines.com)

JV Wine and Spirits (www.jvwine.com)

Robert Keenan Winery (www.keenanwinery.com)

Foris Vineyards (www.foriswine.com)

Wine Tasting (www.winetasting.com)

Bolen Family Estates (www.bolenlegacy.com)

Modus Operandi (www.moduswines.com)

James David Cellars (www.jamesdavidcellars.com)

Marita's Vineyards (www.maritasvineyard.com)

Passaggio (www.passaggiowines.com)

Twisted Oak (www.twistedoak.com)

Hanzell Vineyards (www.hanzell.com)

Bonny Doon Vineyards (www.bonnydoonvineyard.com)

“If you lik

e wine deals

and you are on

Facebook th

is one m

ay

be for y

ou!”-Robert D

wyer

“Crazy-smart wine biz innovators VinTank, have successfully launched a new route on

the Direct To Consumer (DTC) superhighway

with their Deals from the Vines on Facebook Group”

- Dr. Xeno

“The Best Idea To

Come Along In A Long

Time”

-Winethropology

Here’s hoping you participate in this FREE service.

Law and Order

HR 5034 &Craig WolfHR 5034 is the first real threat to direct shipping we’ve seen since 2005.

VinTank stands for wineries. VinTank stands for direct shipping. We decided to challenge the issue head on (the WSWA) in a fun and intelligent way.

Thus we made Craig Wolf a muppet, used his quotes, and challenged his logic: http://www.vintank.com/2010/11/unfiltered-3-craig-wolf-and-hr5034/

Craig Wolf enjoyed the “Tosh 2.0” version of his perspective and granted us a real interview to discuss the issue. The transcript can be found here and is INCREDIBLY important to read if direct shipping is at all important to you: http://www.vintank.com/2011/01/inherit-the-wind-the-real-interview-with-craig-wolf/

Constructive Discourse

& RevelationA great summary of the article by Eric Arnold can be found here: http://bit.ly/fOdWSB

PS – one of the most interesting disclosures was the potential partnership between Shipcompliant

and the WSWA which raised more questions than answers: http://bit.ly/hnrsjj

Transparency on the web

VinTank challenged the data Snooth represented as facts with the intention to surface the reality of #’s that affect advertising rates, data usage, and more with the intention to give wineries better context for making business decisions.

Our post here: http://bit.ly/et4t6P - what we discovered was that the math didn’t add up and data that wineries gave Snooth was being used to increase their SEO to outrank or rank incredibly high up in search results with messaging that is not an accurate representation of the SEO results.

As a result of the exercise we uncovered a huge problem with authenticity too: wine tech pioneer, Eric LeVine, and his renowned site, CellarTracker, appeared to be scraped to power Snooth’s database: http://bit.ly/gkeZla

The new web is about TRUE

transparency

Sneak Peek

Sneak peek

The following slides represent cool projects that are coming down the pipeline from VinTank. Things that excite us to the n’th degree.

Owners – two African-American women, one millennial, one Gen X, first CarboNZero winery in the world, presenting New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling for everyday enjoyment.

Launching an integrated campaign with an iPhone app (Share the Love) and Facebook/Twitter marketing focus that will create a true “pay it forward” campaign.

Do good deeds, earn rewards.

Share the LOVE

First ever augmented reality launch for a wine.

Random do-gooders will have the eco.love owners show up at their door with a gift of wine and a flipcam to share and celebrate their good deeds.

A lot of small deeds add up to big changes. Why don’t you share the love?

iPhone App Report 2.0

iPhone App 2.0 OVERLOAD

We analyzed over 450 iPhone wine related apps that add up to over $884.19

Believe us, there’s an app for that...

PalatePress.com will publish our evaluation...be on the look out for it!

Our Next Big Report!It will come...It will COME...IT

WILL COME!

Tentatively titled Crash! The report about the intersection of wine and digital will include:

Wine & dataMobile, mobile, mobile.

The history of wine

online

real challenges with wine online

EBITD

A

Cha

nnel

Sal

es R

etur

n

Social, social, social.

CRM

Tentatively titled Crash! The report about the intersection of wine and digital will include:

Wine & dataMobile, mobile, mobile.

The history of wine

online

real challenges with wine online

EBITD

A

Cha

nnel

Sal

es R

etur

n

Social, social, social.

CRM

COMING SOON

APRIL 2011

Social Gaming

Engagement through Social Gaming for wine?

The new EVOLUTION

There existed a huge hole in execution of quality customer engagement through digital.

We believe in social gaming as a new, relevant and improved type of engagement.

Wine tasting note, social, and decision support platforms were looking for better ways to service wine companies.

COMING APRIL 2011

VinPass is the first CROSS PLATFORM social game that engages and rewards consumers for tasting and recording their wine experience.

Early Adopters

2011 Predictions

Some insightPart of what we do is look forward to what is next in the wine/tech ecosphere. The challenges with making statements about the future of wine and tech is our industry’s very slow adoption rate.

So we often have to temper trends affecting other segments online with what we think is possible in the wine industry.

Here is what we think is in store for 2011 for wine.

E-commerce

The recession forced many wineries to rethink their strategies as related to channel focus. Many have shifted to prioritizing DTC business, with e-commerce of highest value.

Wine e-commerce is becoming easier due to the interstate challenges settling down, platform sophistication, and market understanding.

Wine e-commerce provides the HIGHEST return towards EBITDA vs. any other direct channel.

The second sale from a consumer after they return home is far more important than the first sale at the winery.

Wine e-commerce is the fastest growing DTC channel for wineries.

Prediction!

This focus will continue to grow and many wineries, even the largest enterprise wineries, will see tremendous growth in the channel and will reinvest for greater returns. Expect better customer service, more innovative marketing and promotional activities, and interesting spins on winery direct e-commerce.

A true and legal marketing agent for wineries like an

Expedia for wine.

Our Wish.. .

Social Media

“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.”

- Clifton Fadiman

“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.”

- Clifton FadimanWine is Social

There is no stopping the tsunami that is social media. Our industry is one of the most active

as a percentage of the whole in social media.

What a

re w

e

trying to

say?

ChrisCarfi

There are many, many, many great thought leaders

participating in helping educate wineries.

EvanDawson

Barry Schuler

Hardy Wallace

CatherineDavis

ChrisEdwards

MegMaker

JoeRoberts Aaron

Strout BrianSolis

Prediction!50% of US wineries (3000+) will be participating in social media in some capacity (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, other).

10% of US wineries (600+) will become proficient in 2011 in leveraging the medium for increased branding, customer engagement, customer service, customer acquisition, PR, and more.

0.25% (15) will start basic SCRM (Social CRM).

Wine-focused social platforms will build better winery engagement tools so wineries can “fish where the fish are.”

Our Wish.. .

Flash Sales

Flash sites dominated our psyche in 2009

and 2010.

Several were incredibly honest and legitimate outlets for overstocked inventories, including:

Other emerging outlets seem promising: gilt.com, ruelala.com and lot18.com.

The excess of super-scoring wines (over 90 by any of the major publications) is drying up. The 4 + 3 will capture the lion’s share of any wine inventory in this segment of the wine business.

The American consumer has drastically changed buying habits and will perpetuate services like this. How do Flash sales build image in a luxury category?

Social Commerce and “Flash in the Pan”

Prediction:The implosion of wine flash sales will start in 2011. Some companies will emerge just to service this

new channel (like http://www.preston-layne.com/& http://www.newmanwineandspirits.com/).

We hope that whatever models companies bring, they are not winery punitive models like many of the predatory flash sale sites of the last two years.

Our Wish...

Social Commerce

Social CommerceGroupon, livingsocial.com and buywithme.com are just a few. Group buying has started and now that the genie is out of the bottle, how will commerce and social intersect?

-photo courtesy redant.com

We will see a wine social commerce platform emerge in 2011. Some wineries might even experiment with it (kudos to Chateau Montelena here for trying a version of it - http://bit.ly/fvidrU)

Mobile...Mobile...Mobile

2011, thanks to the incredible adoption and selection of smart phones, the notion of mobile, mobile, mobile will finally become a reality for the wine industry.

There are now over 450 wine apps (or apps that have wine features) across all mobile platforms. Some of our favorites are:

HelloVino NatDecants

WSVintage Charts

Cor.kz Eco.love

Corkbin RedWhiteBoston

Wine in your

Pocket!

Drync

Mobile apps have been mostly

consumer facing and provided little if

any value to wineries. In 2011 that will

turn (heck, they need to make money).

Wine apps will become more social in

2011.

Prediction

Wishing that Apple and other App stores would

stop featuring useless wine apps and giving poor

customer experience to

consumers who choose to

download them!

Our Wish

...

Label Image Recognition

Image RecognitionImagine a world where you can take a pic of a label and it returns information about the wine. Sounds like science fiction? Almost.

The industry doesn’t use UPC codes well – either we don’t change from vintage to vintage or we don’t include them at all.

Sorting through images is ridiculously HARD.

The data for wine has yet to

be normalized and

organized.

A Good Start...

We predict that you will see wine label scanning tools get to 65% in 2011. Wine apps are sick of dirty data or data that are only used to drive traffic to other peoples sites. Expect to see more attention on wine data from the tech sector in 2011.

Our Wish...

That wineries would understand the importance of organizing their wine data for success of their brand online. This will help when image recognition becomes more prevalent.

QR Codes

QR Codes

Yes, I really work!

Quick Response (QR) codes are two dimensional matrix barcodes that allow different types of data to be embedded within them. The most common use is to embed a URL that can be resolved and loaded in a web browser when the code is scanned.

The proliferation of smart

phones equipped with cameras

and applications capable of

scanning and interpreting the

data within QR codes is driving

the adoption .

QR codes will gain a significant foothold in the wine industry in 2011 with many wineries printing them on back labels and marketing materials.

However, they should be seen as a least-common-denominator solution and just one part of an overall strategy for connecting consumers in the physical/product world with their digital brand experience.

QR codes are a tool, not a strategy!

Wineries must carefully consider their implementation of QR codes, especially when printing them on labels, since they become a permanent part of their packaging and ultimately reflect back on their brand. Since wine is a long tail product, wineries should ensure that they have control over the QR code resolution process.

Social Gaming (yes again)

Soc

ial G

am

ing

Platfo

rms

Heard of Farmville?

Foursquare? Scvngr?

Well if you haven’t, here are a few stats that might blow your mind:

Still think it’s aFAD?

In the words of Brian Solis:

We think it’s far from a fad, it is actually a new form of engagement

that has yet to enter the wine category.

The social gaming outlets will improve the level of engagement opportunities wineries

will have with their consumers as well as

give a clear indication of consumer purchasing patterns. This will all start with the launch of the

first social game for our industry, VinPass.

Prediction

That wineries would ignore the word “game” and translate it to “engagement marketing.”

Our Wish...

Critics Embrace Digital

VS.

For some reason over the last two years there has been a giant rift between traditional wine critics and bloggers (eg - http://bit.ly/dZoiWm)

Creating content and distributing it is cheaper than ever errr... actually make that FREE.

The distinction between blogger and traditional media becomes more blurry every day.

Many professional writers have ignored the power of digital.

The role of a professional writer is changing from paid content creator to audience aggregator, reader engagement, content distribution strategist, free content creator, marketer, digital connoisseur.

Professional critics embrace digital

Some key professional writers have understood that the marriage of digital and treating bloggers not as a competitors but as partners elevates their content awareness and personal brand.

Among

the B

est

Jancis Robinson Leslie Sbroco Jon Bonne Gary Vaynerchuk

Natalie Maclean Lewis Perdue Steve Heimoff Bill Daley

Eric Arnold Cyril Penn

In 2011 you will see the emergence of professional wine writers entering the digital space. The ones that take the time to understand digital will elevate in mass awareness. The ones who don’t will be inundated by what they call “mob mentality” and constant barrage of public criticism that will chip away at their credibility to this and the next generation of wine consumers.

Pre iction

Our Wish...

Would love to see innovative collaboration between professional wine writers, wine bloggers and old media publications.

Digital Reviews

Out with the old....reviews that is!

Ok – yes, the big boys dominate.

Yes, key critics have been the gate keepers to wine recommendations.

And yes, the internet, especially with social media, is beginning to level the playing field and introduce new ways to recommend wine.

In with the new...types of reviews

The Facebook “Like” function is a game changer in more ways than this one slide can demonstrate.

We predict more etailers and online platforms will start using new systems for recommending wine.

3 of the most influential review sites!

Our wish...

More wineries and wine retailers will start using the “like” buttons and CellarTracker scores.

Badges will get their time in the limelight and that etailers and other wine sites see this as an opportunity to leverage tech to help consumers.

Curated Content

Old media was the gate keeper to the content presented to you. Now your friends/network are the presenters of content on a daily basis.

“Everyone is a media outlet.” -Clay Shirky

Twitter is a “news platform” - http://bit.ly/hJDxwx

There is often too much content, so the emergence of new types of platforms for people to “organize and aggregate” content for their friends/networks (paper.li, http://bit.ly/gCGZQZ, or to make the stream of content easier to read are emerging, like:

FludFlipboard

Blend of content curation...

Even in our own industry we have

strong content curation.

and creation.

Even mobile applications procure content from key bloggers and feature it in their platforms.

Prediction

There will be a new push in content curation for wine sites in 2011 due to the flood of wine information on the internet.

Our Wish...

We hope to see companies like Flud and Flipboard add wine as a major category. Imagine them aggregating all wine tweets?

We REALLY hope to see them make business development deals with super content manufacturers like Jancis Robinson, Natalie Maclean, and CellarTracker.com.

We would also love to see respected wine celebrities aggregate and curate content. Imagine “Best Wine blogs and tweets by Jancis Robinson” or the Institute of Masters of Wine aggregating all content from students of the MW program.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management has been a

mythical dream to the wine industry.

The wine industry has one of the most complicated CRM needs due to the diverse nature and needs of the channels it services (ecom, wine club, telephone, tasting room, direct to trade, traditional 3-tier).

The industry is gated by disparate systems where the lowest common denominator is legacy systems. Even with the most sophisticated CRM tool (e.g. Salesforce.com), it continues to be gated by the systems it needs to integrate.

Currently CRM in our industry is loosely described as “identify consumers, segment, send an email, telemarket or send a mail offering.”

Prediction

CRM will actually start to materialize in 2011 and the industry will begin leveraging it for the benefit of DTC sales.

Our Wish...

Instead of business intelligence CRM we dream of a wine world that has an

actionable CRM.

I M A G I N E . . ....a world where a wine club member calls, and you know: how long they have been a member, their LTV, their preferences, their RFM, and more to extend quality service.

I M A G I N E . . .

I M A G I N E . . ....that data leveraged by an e-commerce platform

presents better offers to club members and recent visitors.

...the new world of SCRM (Social CRM) and the ability to service customers based upon more than buying history but also on conversations.

I M A G I N E . . .

There is much more to this story...

But 2011 will reveal more to us as technology matures and our industry uses it and gains real learnings. We are lucky to be part of this journey.

Thank you!VinTank | info@vintank.com| www.vintank.com