January 17, 2006

more stormhoeky goodness

6 Comments

Decan­ter Maga­zine wri­tes about the “Blog­ging Dou­bles Stormhoek Wine” story.
And one of my favo­rite wri­ters in the Blo­gosphere, Anil Dash wri­tes about it on the Six Apart Blog:

Last year, Stormhoek, a popu­lar South Afri­can wine, star­ted a busi­ness blog powe­red by Mova­ble Type and sent out one hun­dred com­pli­men­tary bott­les of their wine to blog­gers across Europe. With the assis­tance of well-known blog mar­ke­ting expert Hugh Mac­leod, Stormhoek bet big on blog­ging, coun­ting on the influence and voice of those blog­gers to help get their mes­sage out.
The result? As you can see in Hugh’s Mova­ble Type-powered blog and in today’s story on Decan­ter magazine’s web­site, Stormhoek dou­bled sales of their wines.

PS. You should read the blog post Anil wrote the week after he got married. Pos­sibly the most moving blog post I read in 2005.
PPS. Anil wouldn’t know this, but it was him who got me using Mova­ble Type. Long before he went to work for Six Apart [the com­pany that makes MT soft­ware], I read his blog avidly; I was a real fan. Noti­cing that he was an MT user, I said to myself, “Good enough for Anil, good enough for me.” This was the first time I ever came across MT. True Story.

6 Responses to “more stormhoeky goodness”

  1. Anil says:
    January 17, 2006 at 5:38 am

    Hugh, thanks for the link and for the extraor­di­na­rily kind words. One of the great satis­fac­tions of wor­king at Six Apart and wor­king on Mova­ble Type is seeing that it has an impact on the work peo­ple do. You’ve cer­tainly made one hell of an impres­sion on peo­ple with the crea­tive stuff you’ve done since you star­ted blog­ging, so I’m really glad for any small role I might have had in you get­ting star­ted down this road.
    Now the hard part for me is fin­ding enough time to keep blog­ging as much as I’d love to. If for no other rea­son, I’d like to do jus­tice to the peo­ple who’ve told me they enjo­yed rea­ding my site in the past. All of this is a big part of why wor­king with MT and wor­king with blogs still feels more like par­ti­ci­pa­ting in a com­mu­nity than “just a job” to me.

  2. Frans says:
    January 17, 2006 at 8:36 am

    The wine blogs are very inte­res­ting. We are the cus­to­dians of the first black white joint ven­ture in the South Afri­can wine industry. We have just launched Soweto White & Imbongi wines.
    I would like to com­mu­ni­cate on a regu­lar basis.

  3. hugh macleod says:
    January 17, 2006 at 10:50 am

    Anil, no worries, thanks for the men­tion. Yeah, I know all about that phe­no­me­non, when your blog­ging pro­pels you to somewhere that you no lon­ger have time to write your blog.
    Frans, thanks, glad you like it.

  4. Eitan Segal says:
    January 17, 2006 at 1:58 pm

    I must say Hugh, I am impres­sed with your results. Please e-mail me how you can help our com­pany, Royal Wine Corp., dou­ble its wine sales via blogs.
    Awai­ting your reply…
    Thanks
    –Eitan

  5. raving lunacy says:
    January 17, 2006 at 4:20 pm

    Mar­ke­ting Stormhoek

    While I am wai­ting for some­body to rent my roof Image remi­xed from Goo­gle Maps. Did I men­tion that I am under the three lan­ding pat­terns for Phoe­nix Sky Har­bor Air­port? Image borro­wed from Sky Vector.com I have been kee­ping my eye on Hugh and the Storm…

  6. Riverbelle says:
    January 20, 2006 at 5:02 pm

    Hey are you guys still accep­ting comm­ments here?