Feature Article : On the Road Again

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On the Road Again

Nerds abhor marketing. Isn't it enough just to make it right? On the Road - in Hawaii, at the beach Do you mean we have to sell it - you mean they won't just beat a path to our door because we know it's great? Of course we like pats on the back and they can come on the road. But marketing means people and I must have missed the "socialization" gene. Once a year the requirements of the real world pull us out of our comfort region and plug us into business class, on Delta or United.

This [1999] is the second straight year we've done 3-4 weeks on the road in March or April, meeting people and understanding how different one part of the country is from another. Sure I took geography, but knowing Sacramento is California's capital and that the Mississippi divides Missouri and Illinois and that Ohio produces lots of tires (or did then at least, when I made a plaster replica of the state on a board, complete with a toy tire stuck somewhere near Akron) doesn't necessarily help me understand markets without visiting them.

Understand why a huge wine distributor who has our wines in 3 states can't sell enough to make our top 25 sales states (when we only distribute in 28!), whereas operations with fewer than 10 persons make up our top 5 states? Or why one state can't get enough Chardonnay, while another can't get people to even taste it? Or how self-confidently one region selects wines by personally tasting, whereas others appear "born again" with a copy of Parker under the crook of their arm, ready to reference the gospel or even recite memory passages, complete with paragraph and score on a 100 point scale.

The necessity is clear: we go on the road to understand our customers and to tell them why we exist and why we are special enough to be considered. We end up telling people stories of who we are, how we do things and why we think its important. And then we pour them wine. They indicate somehow whether there is congruence - between our story and our wine, between us and them. Making wine is an artisan and technologist's business, selling it is a relationship business. Making connections.

I have concluded that Marketing is:

about people and stories and striking a balance.
deciding you have to do Toronto in January because you like the people and the city (plus, that's when they're holding the wine event).
deciding to do Hawaii in February ( a quick decision on this one!), because you like yourself, haven't seen the sun in four months, and are intrigued by island-hopping with seven other stark-white Oregon winemakers in what was called the Oregon Invasion (imagine a flotilla of Oregon surfboards zipping, careening, exploding in the Waikiki surf, pulling a body behind, blindingly white but grinning) pouring great wine and telling not only your own stories, but those of your friends.
about shaking hands and sharing stories and feeling awkward until you feel like a friend - a little like cocktail parties where you don't know anyone at first and do at the end, and only then are you glad you came.
hotel rooms where there are TV's and phones in the bathrooms, (plural, since there is an inner sanctum room within the bathroom) and a collection of complimentary cosmetics so diverse I have been unable to grasp their use.
or, . . . motels which look out onto the building next door and does reflect the glow of the promised Pacific sunset, with a room that smells of some chemical that was sold because it could perhaps remove the smell of smoke, which it couldn't, and with surly innkeepers locked behind an inch-thick plexiglas window.
admitting defeat at last when confusion leads you to bet the hotel rooms were in a maze to the right of the elevators, but Cheryl says to the left, and you realize that was Chicago, or was it Boca Raton or Calgary or New York or St Louis?
flights where newer planes mean smaller seats, where you're glad you've flown enough to be some metal card member (Platinum or Palladium or Palladin - Have Winebag Will Travel) so you don't have to wait in line and can board early to beat the we-plan-to-repopulate-Nevada-ourselves family to the overhead bins.
being familiar enough that airport security waves you through the bag inspection belt and the airline attendants ask you to help demonstrate the safety features on the Boeing 767.
being gone from home so much you've begun giving your cellular phone as your home number and the last call was from your dog, asking if you're ever coming home.