The Long Story Long;
Marketing Across Generations: The Great Wine Panic.
The big question on everyone's minds at this conference was, "Are Gen Z and Millennials drinking less?" And more unspoken… “Should we be worried about that?” The long and short of it is that the younger generations are indeed drinking less BUT, they are spending more on what they do buy.
One of the best panels of the conference was essentially a mini focus group of real wine consumers: One Boomer, one Gen X, Two Millennials, and One Gen Z. The moderator asked these folks some of the most pressing questions we in the wine industry have. I'll cover what was discussed in the next email because it was extremely juicy, so stay tuned for that, but a big takeaway from it was that no matter the generation consumers want great customer service, unique/different experiences, and for us to go beyond sustainability in our messaging.
AI in the Winery: Is it coming for our jobs?
AI has been around since the 1950s, but it wasn't until November 2022 and the launch of Chat GPT that it lodged itself into the collective consciousness. Over the last year and change, there has been a real concern across industries that AI would take jobs, but AI is also creating jobs, giving us tools to work with, and honing all of our bullshit meters.
Rishad Tobaccowala, keynote speaker on day two, made a great point, that moving forward in this new world of AI, people will ask themselves, “is it human or is it AI?” about every piece of content they see. So, the more human you can make your shit, the more you will succeed. He also mentioned that the beautiful thing about wine is that it isn’t (entirely) built on math--which is what AI needs to work; wine is built on emotions, story, and memory, all very human things.
Again, I'll go more into depth about AI in a future email, including how you can use Chat GPT to help you with your marketing without sounding like a robot. Spoiler, it includes getting really specific in your prompts and not copy and pasting what it gives you directly.
Boosting Tasting Room Traffic: “WTF Do We Do Now?”
Finally, the million-dollar question: How do we get more folks into our tasting rooms and our wine clubs? We've seen a drastic drop in tourism to wine country over the last couple of years and new wine club sign ups are down across the board, leaving many wineries feeling extremely concerned over how they can reverse those trends.
In a town hall at the end of the conference, we all gathered to exchange ideas on these pressing concerns and some of the ideas were extremely novel. Things also got a bit heated when discussing if children should be allowed at tasting rooms (the verdict is still out but I myself don't think it's a great idea to alienate an entire demographic--people with young families--when we are trying to increase tasting room visits).
We also touched on if wine tastings are getting too expensive, if food experiences enhance or detract from wine tasting, and if wineries should incorporate no/low alcohol into their portfolios. 'Twas insightful.
