Have you ever seen a sign or advertisement for a restaurant that said, "Open For Business During Construction," and immediately thought, “Ooh! let’s try that place, darling!” Probably not.
The slew of "We are open for business after the fires" winery announcements are about to rain down on our wine customers all over the country. My Inbox already contains a deluge. People who are into wine are typically on more than one list or have joined multiple wine clubs, so these e-mails are going to multiply the message across the nation in addition to the news media.
My two favorite winery communications so far are both from Sonoma. One said, "We all face challenges in life, thanks for caring, far-flung customers like you are part of our community too." Well stated. It avoided effusively thanking everyone and their brother, and it didn’t ask for business or any wine sales. It rang true. The other took a straightforward approach and said, "This event is going to hurt us, we are going to see less of you, and we have multiple families to feed, so come and see us and buy some of our wine.” It also rang true, as showing your vulnerability takes some guts.
My least favorite winery fire e-mails are the ones that are dripping with a heavy glaze of "grateful and humble" while talking endlessly about themselves and how they feel. We would do to remember we exist for our customers; they don't exist for us. In one message, I added up 18 references to 'us/we/our' in their short grateful, and humble e-mail. There were only 3 ‘you’ references for the customers it purported to address. One of the 'you' instances was to tell the customers how they could help 'us.' Another gem was from a region nowhere near the fires saying that they commended all the brave folks who went through what they did. They noted they were never in danger and were all safe and grateful but had endured five days of power outages. This e-mail ended with an ‘Early Bird’ offer to an upcoming wine event.
These fire prompted e-mails have pulled me in two directions. Do they help our cause or not? The Wine Industry Advisor had an interesting article on “disaster empathy” and how we might consider reaching out to our most loyal customers as they seem the most moved to act. If we pursue this effort to go after the 'pity purchase,' we may indeed achieve short term gain by saying, "Support us in our time of need." However, is there a greater cost of pushing the fire narrative? Does it all further cement the feeling that arranging a visit to the Wine Country in the fall carries a high risk of inconvenience and disappointment?
Many I had spoken to before the current calamity said that although their visitor numbers were down, their average spend was up. Not sure how true that might be across the whole wine region, but if it is, it might support the idea that the wine loyal do indeed keep coming back, and it is the wine experiential who are not packing their bags.
So, what’s the solution? Some have suggested we should now promote experiences outside of harvest time. 'The Magic of Bud Break' or 'Let's Go Suckering in May' and 'Return of The Mustard Festival.' We could stop building new wineries with tasting rooms, that would help. (We’ll have to let the pain of the marketplace take care of that one.) No doubt, many will be packing their toothbrushes and getting ready to take their show on the road in 2020. Finally, once the flurry of post-fire e-mails is over, perhaps the most straightforward thing we can individually do is stop talking about or referencing the fires or the power outages of 2019. The damage is done. Without denying the heartache it caused so many, we could focus on how little impact it had on our industry, and our winemaking, relative to the whole. Shake it off, it was briefly inconvenient; we got past it, we made great wine. Ask our front-line staff to either avoid or talk down the event rather than instinctively finding a way to place themselves in a big story. Show the usual beautiful views and blue skies and add the customary “Looking forward to seeing you here” language. Up the frequency and work tirelessly at making the carrot more tempting.
We cannot deny the negative PR this event has had on our region. It is truly awful. It’s just if we want to recover quickly; we shouldn’t add fuel to the fire in people's minds if we can avoid it.