Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/299589
w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m M a y - J u n e 2 014 | V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T 1 7 ing on sales. Your winemaker will leave, or will announce she is preg- nant, and you will have to change the travel schedule. The proposed trip to Chicago will get snowed out, or your owner will decide to change the focus of your business from dry to sweet wines. Take this work plan and start edit- ing, item by item, page by page. All that spare time you had scheduled into the calendar to allow you to get your head above water will disap- pear. You'll have to swim harder. But that's PR. Ain't PR fun? Paul Wagner formed Balzac Com- munications & Marketing and is an instructor for Napa Valley College's Viticulture and Enology Depart- ment. He has been a columnist for V&WM since 2003. Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. Enter these dates as black- outs, when nothing should be scheduled as far as PR activi- ties: Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, and during har- vest. Nobody in their right mind wants to deal with winery PR peo- ple during the holidays – not the trade, not the media and not the winery spokesperson. (This is a great time to work on the calendar and materials for next year.) While the harvest is a good time for some media to visit, and also for hosting events that take a d v a n t a g e o f t h e e x c i t e m e n t around the vintage, most wine- makers don't have a spare second during this time. Black it out. PLAN FOR CHANGE Now you've got the basic bones of the annual plan. You still have to add in key events you hope to host at the winery, wine writers you want to invite to visit your property, and any additional spokesperson travel that might occur outside the normal sales trips. Once you do that, you'll begin to see where the crunches are going to be, and when you might have some spare time to get a head start on a project or two. It's at this point that you can also add in the final cost estimate for every element in the program, so that you have a full and accurate budget for the year's activities. I like to enter these costs in a spread- sheet, and fill the nearby columns with the results we hope to achieve for each element of the plan. That's a great way to look at the overall budget for cost effectiveness. If you have to cut your budget, you can check this spreadsheet and see which elements cost the most and deliver the least important results. Now you have a pretty good pub- lic relations plan for the year. You have a budget, you have estimated results, and you know what to do during the year ahead. It's time to get to work. There's only one problem: Things will change. It's not a question of if, but when and by how much. The release dates on wines will get pushed forward or back, depend- INCLUDE COMPETITIONS Enter the deadlines for all the major wine competitions you want to enter for the year. Count back at least two weeks to give yourself time to track down all the informa- tion needed on the forms, cut the entry-fee checks, and have the wine packed and shipped to arrive well before the deadline. Count back even further and have a discussion with the team about which wines to enter and in which competitions. Fill in the editorial-calendar dates from every major wine publication, so that you can track when they are going to write about wines that you make. That will give you time to submit samples and perhaps chat with the appropriate writer before the story goes to press – rather than after it has appeared. Then add the dates for any major charity events or projects that you have planned for the next year. Count back three months or more to make sure you have time to develop the PR materi- als, contact local media and get your local and regional salespeople involved. Add in the follow-up activ- ities that need to be done in the days after these events. Adding all your important PR activi- ties to your planning calendar a year in advance will help make your work flow smoother and more predictable. Photo: Thinkstock UNCORKING PR PAUL WAGNER