(An editorial by Guillaume Jourdan)
eG8, a two-day forum that brought together the biggest names in Internet business and new media, was a great opportunity to understand our future. The future of our economy in general. And consequently the future of the wine business. A few years ago, Robert Parker mentionned among his predictions that internet would change dramatically the future of the wine business. He was partly right as Internet has already changed the way we communicate about wine and the way we do business in the wine industry. But Digital is shaping this unprecedented, fast and global revolution that will change forever the way wine estates (small, medium estate or conglomerates) are doing business.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech was important. He mentionned that the digital transformation of every economic sector has become one the most powerful driver of economic growth and innovation. Then business leaders, who created some of the most powerful brands over the last few years, gave their view of the e-revolution. With a “wine business” perspective, it is crucial for me to understand how what they say and foresee could impact the wine industry. The new era of the wine industry is finally in front of us. Internet was a great opportunity for wine estates. Digital is an unrivaled revolution for the entire wine industry. Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon, said only 5 per cent of transactions happened online and 80 per cent of people’s disposable income was being spent within two miles of their house. The rumoured partnership of Groupon with location service Foursquare is definitely something the wine industry should try to analyze to better understand its own future. Mason said several times that what Groupon wants to do is “unlock the city for everyone.” His ambitious plans to “capture impulse” is exactly what the wine industry needs. Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, said that social media was an enormous source of new ideas and had “created a new relationship” with viewers and customers.”In our business, word of mouth is critical and in that the social media is an extremely powerful tool.” Word of mouth is also increasingly important for wine brands and social media will be a huge leverage for the wine industry in general. Sean Parker, Napster co-founder and first president of Facebook :”I think that there is a pretty dramatic change in the way music is monetized that is on the cusp of happening.” I would say Sean Parker’s point of view regarding music is approximately much the same for wine. New wine business models will appear and will leverage on this digital revolution. The recent launch of a new offer from UK Naked Wines (read the editorial) as well as other initiatives are showing a new way of promoting and selling wine. Meeting and talking with internet leaders is a unique opportunity. “How come? Wine brands are not already using these tools?” “Just a few, I have to admit…” Quite often this discussion with internet players comes to the point that the wine industry has to get into this modernity which is now reality in fact. When I decided two years ago to propose DIGIWine – a high profile service dedicated to implement a successful digital strategy – to some of our clients, I understood that some did not really catch the point. They agreed that Internet was becoming even more important and that they had to innovate and move forward if they did not want…to lag behind. But at that time, they did not catch the point: DIGIWine is about leveraging on Digital to make differently and better their current business. DIGIWine would impact smoothly the entire system of their wine estate (production, sales and marketing, communication, HR…). “How did we do before? How could we do without those tools?” Two years after, their reaction is much different. They feel concerned by this value added service because they understood it impacted their way of doing business every day. Let’s take a simple example: The weekly report for all their online listening & analysis needs. This report helps wine estates see the big picture, the full conversation: Websites, blogs, social media platforms, discussion forums.The learning curve for wine estates was tremendous and they now start developping new ways of doing business globally thanks to this new information. The list of examples is long but one thing is sure: This service has changed the way they look at internet, the way they learn from their customers, the way they approach wine consumers… The way we learn about wine, the way we sell wine, the way we buy wine…Things change rapidly in the wine industry. As Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google said “Technology will move faster than governments”. So it is up to wine estates to find new ideas for communicating, new ways of doing business through this technology. It is true that topics related to eG8 could look far from the daily reality of wine estates. But, in fact, all those developments will impact very soon the wine industry. Group learning platforms that Rupert Murdoch mentionned in his conference about online education are already helping thousands of people to learn about wine. The wine world needs more. “Someone waking up from a 50-year nap would find the world had changed beyond recognition … not in education where our schools remain the last holdout from the digital revolution“, Murdoch said. Let’s make sure the wine industry also considers the digital revolution. Hey, wake up ! (You can reach the writer at info@vitabella.fr)
eG8: The Wine Industry has still to reinvent itself for the Digital Age. Wake up !
