Stormhoek

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Winery that is cited as an example of success through the use of social media.


Description

From Fast Company:

"Jason Korman makes wine. He's made wine his whole life. That's how he knows it's a terrible business.

Success in running a small winery is pretty close to impossible. There are thousands of new wineries all around the world. Distribution is challenging. Awareness tends to come from magazines like the Wine Spectator, where it can take months to get a review -- if you're lucky. So when Jason Korman started his winery, Stormhoek, in South Africa in 2003, he knew he needed a different approach to reach people. He decided his wine would be the first to succeed through the groundswell.

Jason realized the key was to concentrate on the experiences wine is a part of, not the wine in the bottle. "Wine is a social lubricant," he says.

"While we care passionately about wine quality, we really believe that wine is about what happens after you open the bottle." The groundswell thinking in Stormhoek's approach was to encourage people having a good time with his wine to talk about it. That's why one of his first strategies, in June 2005, was to send bottles of Stormhoek vintages to 185 bloggers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Try our wine," he told them in a little booklet that came along with the wine, suggesting that they write about it if they liked it, or even if they didn't.

The result of all this activity was that by the end of 2005, 305 blog posts mentioned the wine. Stormhoek had created a new meaning for "wine buzz."

One key to this success was the connection Jason made with Hugh McLeod, an American blogger who draws devastatingly sarcastic little cartoons on the back of business cards and posts them regularly on his blog at www.gapingvoid.com. Hugh partnered with Stormhoek. The assets Hugh brought were his international following, his catchy graphics (which now grace many of Stormhoek's bottles), and his intuitive feel for what works in the groundswell. Hugh's little pamphlet that accompanied the gift wines gave the whole exercise credibility and authenticity, which probably led to the wine being featured in so many blog posts.

Two years later, Stormhoek's $1 million wine business had grown to a $10 million business." (http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/06/groundswell.html?)