Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/333548
w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m J u l y - A u g 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 9 the luxury market, but that doesn't mean it's going to help you sell a lot more wine. Sailing would seem to be an ideal target audience, particularly for wines from New Zealand, for example, which has a strong sail- ing culture. But few sailors are core wine drinkers. For many cultural reasons, they tend to drink beer or rum. (Dry Creek Vineyard, with its sailboat logo, is a notable excep- tion; the winery has found a niche in its support of sailing events. – ed) NASCAR is another special-interest concept that has attracted wineries' PR efforts, only to run into the same kinds of issues. Motorsports fans are not generally interested in wine. Then we come to the arts, where more likely there will be more wine drinkers, and we regularly try to develop strategic alliances with everyone from major museums to the world of music. Museums are almost always nonprofit, and need SPECIAL INTERESTS But often a local market or two is not enough. Now it's time to start thinking about that stadium in all its glory. Think about where people are sitting. There are the true fans who sit right down close to the field, because they love to see the players up close. There are the cheap seats, full of people who love the game, or the team, but not quite ready to mortgage the farm to enjoy the show. And then there are those luxury boxes, often owned or used by people who may not know as much about the game as the most dedicated fans, but you know they have the money to afford your product. How do you play to them? There is something very reward- ing about seeing a client's wine poured in the showrooms of Ferrari, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, Maserati, etc. From a lifestyle PR perspec- tive, that's a home run. But there is something we always notice at those sorts of events: that many of the people in those elegant show- rooms are not all that interested in wine. They are not core drinkers. They many not even be wine drink- ers at all. You might be reaching Small wineries must do something different on the field to capture the crowd's atten- tion. Photo: Thinkstock/Jason Stitt UNCORKING PR PAUL WAGNER