Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
[A print idea for #evilplans. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
EUREKA! I had my EVIL PLANS road trip idea, but it was lacking the social object it needed to really work.
Sure, driving around Texas with a video camera and an idea about “Dream Big” was all very well, but it needed something to work as a totem for the Stormhoek wine. IDEA: Hand-painted wine bottles.
I’ve drawn on Stormhoek wine bottles before, using painting sticks. They looked kinda cool. While I travel around Texas, I’ll be making them to hand out to people who went to all the trouble to support this enterprise. See image above to get a rough idea what it might look like…
This is exciting. The road trip idea is suddenly A LOT More interesting, all of a sudden. Rock on.
[Update: Just added this blog post to EVIL PLANS.]
[UPDATE: Of course, I can’t do this alone. I’ll be needing the help of the Texas Twitter community to help me. If you have any ideas to help make this act of futility somehow less futile, please email me at gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks!]
My long-term plan is to continue living out here in Alpine, Texas, writing books and making paintings. An ideal West Texas “creative” life and all that…
BUT BEFORE I settle into that role, I have one LAST marketing fandango to pull off. Namely, making Stormhoek the best-selling South African wine in Texas.
How am I going to do that? Basically, get in my car and drive. Start visiting with people. Start spreading the word. Start finding allies who can help my little adventure along. Stay on the road until I reach my goal. You can read about my adventures on my EVIL PLANS blog page.
When David Brain asked me what was the appeal of writing books, I replied:
I certainly didn’t expect to make any real money from it, and how much it would “help” other people is pretty debatable. But sometimes in your life you have these defining moments, where you draw a line in the sand and declare to the world, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what’s important to me.” I think we all need these moments at some point, to make us better understand who we really are. Writing a book is a good way to force these moments to the surface. That was really the key driver, here.
I have found that marketing can be a pretty good “key driver” in this department, too.
Especially “Futile Marketing”. Yes, this undertaking is insane and futile. It’ll probably fail. I’m going to do it anyway. [The Futile Marketing archive is here.]
[Never a dull moment in West Texas etc. A video of me telling some local people down in Terlingua all about Stormhoek.]
I recently made the acquaintance of the proprietors of both The Starlight Theater and La Kiva, two prominent bars down in Terlingua. The meetings went well– I liked them both, they seemed to like me. So it looks like we might be selling down there, fingers crossed. Hurrah!
Terlingua, 100 miles South of Alpine, Texas, right on the Mexican border, is probably the strangest place I’ve ever visited in my life– it has an unreality to it quite unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. But there’s a wonderful appeal to it, that’s for sure. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be living in the old Wild West, this is probably as close as you’re going to get, first hand. The people, architecture and landscape seem right out of a Sam Peckinpah movie.
So why try selling South African wine in Terlingua? “Futile Marketing”, of course…
2. Everyone’s definition of “smarter” will be different. I’m OK with that. To me, it means continually engaging the customer at a higher level, continually raising the bar.
3. The brilliant thinker, Russell Davies identified four keywords that will govern the future of the advertising business. About as succinct a list as I’ve ever seen:
Blurry.
Useful.
Interesting.
Always In Beta.
“Always In Beta” is a popular term in Silicon Valley. In an ideal world, it would be equally popular in the wine trade as well. It’s unfortunate that this is not the case.
The problem with most wine marketing, as I see it, most of it is product-driven, not principle driven.
Most wine makers make what they make, as best they can, then try to find a buyer, somewhere. Anywhere!
Stormhoek wasn’t conceived as an act of love for the Western South African Cape. Stormhoek was conceived as a very simple idea: That if you took New Zealand wine tech, and used it with South African grapes, you could make a wine JUST as good as the New Zealanders, for about two thirds the price.
Idea-driven. Not product-driven. Not geography-driven. That’s what “Smarter Wine” is all about.
Once we had this “Principle” nailed down, it became a LOT easier to market it. Because not only did we get “Smarter” about how we made it, we got “smarter” about how we talked to people about it, how we related to the existing market and the customers about it. Which explains the cartoon below.
It’s REALLY hard to market something, if there’s no higher purpose-idea behind it. Products are not just about price and quality. As I’m fond of saying, every product is some sort of idea amplifier. Every product, whether we’re talking German cars, cans of beans, laptop computers or bottles of wine, is an expression of human potential.
At least, it is, if you want it to be successful.
I don’t think any of this rocket science, but it sure got our competition scratching their heads. Plus ca change… [N.B. This post was written as something to keep in mind, while I plan my “Texas Road Trip”, which starts at the end of this month…] [UPDATE: Just added this blog post to “EVIL PLANS”.] [Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[My pal, Jeffro singing at Harry’s Tinaja, Alpine, Texas.] I’m taking to the road. Here are some notes:
1. Now that IGNORE EVERYBODY is done and in the book stores, it’s time to do something else. In the last couple of days, I’ve gotten several emails from people that they saw the book selling in airport bookshops. Wow. It doesn’t get any more “mainstream” that that, I’m happy to report. At least I can’t accuse it of being “undiscovered”. And for me, as a blogger, it’s nice to be able to break out of the Web 2.0 echo chamber. Exactly.
2. So I was having a drink with a friend the other day, and he asked me what my next plan was. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that “I’m going to go on the road, and stay on the road, until Stormhoek is the best selling South African wine in Texas.”
3. I’m bringing my computer along. I’ll be blogging my adventures en route. Hoping to be posting travel-diary videos on YouTube as well.
4. I’ll be limiting my travels to the State of Texas. Luckily it’s a big State and there’s plenty to discover.
5. I’m bringing my computer along. I’ll be working on my second book while I’m traveling. I have a vague idea what it’s about…
6. I’m bringing my computer along. I hoping to meet other Texan bloggers and Twitters on my travels.
7. Hoping to draw a lot of new cartoons en route as well. Hoping that some new prints will come out of it.
8. I don’t really have a plan. But I am leaving as soon as I can get organized. You’ll be able to follow my adventure on Twitter easily enough.
9. This idea will probably fail. “Futile Marketing” etc. Rock on.
10. [Update:] Just Twittered this blog post: “@gapingvoid is proud to present: THE WORST MARKETING IDEA EVER!!!!!” Yep. That’s about right… [etc: About Hugh. Interview. Newsletter. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
[Marketing. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it…]
With all the activity over IGNORE EVERYBODY and the prints these last few months, I was getting frustrated that I wasn’t spending more time on the Stormhoek project.
It’s hard to do everything.…
The wine is selling well here in Alpine, Texas. It’s a small town of six thousand, word is easy to spread if you’re doing something interesting. But I have my eyes set on bigger horizons.
Like I said before, I’m just going to focus the marketing efforts on the State of Texas. Doing the whole country is just WAY too complicated, not to mention expensive.
I’ve asked our distributors to send me a list of all the stores, bars and restaurants that they cover in Texas. I’m thinking of going on a road trip. I’m thinking of visiting some of these places. I’m thinking of bringing a video camera along. I’m thinking of asking Jeffro to come with me, at least for part of it.
I’m just thinking… [etc: About Hugh. Interview. Newsletter. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
[Jeffro, donning a Black Flagg t-shirt, singing at Harrys Tinaja, Alpine, Texas. Note the bottle of Stormhoek by his side etc.] So this is what’s been happening with Stormhoek wine on my end lately…
1. We currently have Stormhoek selling in six places in town (Alpine, Texas), including Harry’s Tinaja, Porter’s Supermarket and Twin Peaks Liquor Store. We’re hoping to double that number. We’re also starting to sell it in other neighboring towns like Marfa and Terlingua.
2. The “Dream Big” bumper stickers are a big hit. I’ve just ordered another thousand of them. Thinking of leaving them in hotel lobbies, for the tourists to take away en masse.
3. Re. Jeffro. Sure, I think a former-punk-rocker, ukelele-playing Texan is the PERFECT spokesman for a bottle of South African wine, don’t you? It screams “QUALITY & VALUE!” from across the room etc.
4. People from outside the State always ask me why I like Texas so much. Well, there are many reasons, but the one I cite the most is, “Here in Texas, you don’t have to be a billionaire, but if you have a cool, little business that adds something positive to the community, YOU ARE GIVEN RESPECT”. I’m a small businessman, after all, so this quality would be important to me. Sure, you can find this quality elsewhere, but I’ve never seen it MORE TRUE than it is in Texas.
5. I’m excited by the prospect of reaching critical mas here in West Texas, then spreading the good word throughout the rest of the State. As I’ve said earlier, I’m just focusing on Texas for the time being. That’s plenty of business for me…
6. With my book coming out in three days and my print business doing well, I actually don’t really have to be doing this for career reasons; I’m just doing it because I want to. Stormhoek and I have been through a lot these last four years, it’s already doing great in Europe, I think I owe it to both myself and to the brand to get it going over on this side of the pond. Besides, I’m a sucker for “Futile Marketing”. Rock on.
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
If you walk around Alpine, Texas (my current home), you might start seeing the “Dream Big” bumper stickers everywhere, the ones I made for Stormhoek.
Alpine only has about 6,000 people. We’ve distributed around 1,000 bumper stickers so far. Plan to do many more. Do the math.
Why can’t a small town in west Texas “Dream Big”? Ditto for a small winery in South Africa.
“Dream Big, Alpine, Texas” isn’t rocket science. But it seems to resonate with folk.
Yes, the bumper sticker is a “social object”.
Watch this space…
Hugh’s dedication to his work is inspiring to me. When he sets his mind to something there is simply no stopping him. Take Stormhoek if it kills him he’s gonna get the word out in Alpine.
My evil plan is have Stormhoek the most talked about wine in the history of Brewster County. You have my word on that, People.
[#futilemarketing]
[Alpine, Texas. Some of my Stormhoek “Dream Big” posters in the men’s room at Harry’s, complete with 1980’s beer porn. Hurrah!] It’s been a while since we first put up the Stormhoek sign up in the Far West Texas desert. “Made in South Africa. Drunk in West Texas”.
I liked that tagline, but I much prefer “Dream Big, Alpine, Texas”. It speaks more to people. It’s not about “Here’s why you should buy our wine”. Whether we’re selling wine, or working in a local garage, it’s more about something larger that we can all relate to, all of us who are lucky enough to live out here.
In small town like Alpine, where I live, word spreads. Real people talking about y’all etc.
When it works, Word-Of-Mouth Marketing works REALLY well. A story about a crazy cartoonist dude with this South African wine gives people something to talk about.
The one thing they do say about the actual product, though, that makes all the difference: “The wine tastes good”.
Granted, that’s not the most sophisticated sound byte there is, but it works well.
People like it. It’s a quality product. My secret, evil plan would die overnight if it wasn’t.
The good news is, in the United States, Stormhoek sold more bottles before April 1st this year, than it sold in the entire 2008. So something out here in Far West Texas is working. Exciting times, Indeed.
Here Loren Feldman interviews Andrew Suber, one of the first friends I made when I moved to Alpine, Texas.
Andrew is one of the smartest people in town. He pretty much raised and educated himself as kid down in Terlingua [His father wasn’t around much, so I am told]. Somehow by sheer force of will, he managed to get an undergraduate degree from UT Austin and a law degree from William & Mary.
He could have easily moved to the big city and gotten himself a high paying lawyer job. For whatever reason, he decided to stay in Alpine and live the life of an aesthete.
His main claim to fame is hosting the local Trivia Night every second Tuesday, down at The Railroad Blues. He takes it scary seriously, which is a good thing for the rest of us.
He had nice things to say about Stormhoek, when it first came to town. We like him for that. Rock on.
Is Andrew a “Crazy, Deranged Fool”? Of course he is! How could he possibly not be?
Dream Big. Alpine, Texas. Exactly.
[The latest Stormhoek video from Loren Feldman. An interview with Todd Elrod, blacksmith and harmonica player with The Doodlin’ Hogwallops.]
Alpine, Texas. I was telling somebody the other day over at Harry’s Tinaja that there was no way in God’s Earth that Loren’s insanely brilliant “Skater” video for Stormhoek would ever win a major advertising or marketing award.
Which is EXACTLY why it deserves to win one…
Re. Wine marketing: Usually, when an imported wine launches in the States, a familiar pattern emerges. Hire New York or SF restaurant for the evening. Organize wine tasting. Try to get the usual freeloaders, PR wannabe’s, and random warm bodies to attend. If a C-List celeb somehow turns up by some Miracle of God, become ecstatic. Send Press Release out to the usual suspects in the media. Watch Press Release be utterly disregarded by All & Sundry. Watch absolutely nothing happen afterwards. Witness the entire story disappearing into the dustbin of history within nanoseconds. And so on.
So we at Stormhoek decided to go in the exact opposite direction, as far away from the Usual Suspects as possible. “Hey, let’s launch in Alpine, Texas! Let’s see if we can get real West Texan cowboys to like South African wine! It’s totally insane! It’s totally futile! It’s totally wrong! Let’s do it anyway!”
[The official “Dream Big” t-shirt…]
2. Our campaign tagline is “Dream Big. Alpine, Texas”. Inspired by the back label on the Stormhoek bottle, of course.
3. I think you really need to “Dream Big” on some level to live out here in the high Texas desert, 400 miles West of Austin. This is true whether you’re working construction, waiting tables, teaching elementary school or launching a wine brand.
4. You may lovee the tagline, you may hate the tagline. Whatever. They seem to like it out here. A lot. That’s all that matters.
5. We’re just going to concentrate on marketing the wine in Texas for the time being. Trying to do it nationally is just too much work. This country is way too big.
6. We’re starting in Alpine, then we’ll ripple out. Next is Marfa, Texas, then Marathon, Fort Davis, Terlingua, Presidio, Fort Stockton, San Angelo, Midland-Odessa, Del Rio… If that goes well, we’ll get ambitious. Ozona, Sanoma, Junction, Harper, Fredericksberg… We’ll keep going till we hit the bigger towns: Houston, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Corpus Christi, El Paso, San Antonio, Amarillo…
7. Texans don’t drink a lot of South African Wine. They will by the time I’m done with them.
8. Dream Big. Alpine, Texas. Exactly.
[Update:] Talking about this blog post on Twitter:“I’m either going to make this thing fucking work or die trying.” Yes.
“Futile Marketing” at its finest, Folks…
Like I said earlier, instead of launching this Stormhoek campaign in New York or whatever, we decided to launch at Harry’s Tinaja, Alpine, Texas.
Last week Loren Feldman was in town. Here he interviews Harry. Rock on.
[A video still of the “Dream Big” T-shirt, from Loren’s camera.
Loren Feldman left Alpine, Texas this morning, heading home after a week in town shooting videos. The Stormhoek party was a great success. People really liked the t-shirts– it seemed to resonate. We printed up about 40 shirts– they were gone quickly. Most gratifying for me was how well the received the Stormhoek was.
“Damn good wine,” I heard more than once.
The owner of the biggest liquor store in town told me, “You may be on to something here.“
Loren has hours and hours of footage. Expect to see it online over the next few weeks– but that’s his department.
The first time I tried marketing Stormhoek, I did it mostly online, getting my fellow bloggers to help spread the word. This time it’ll be mostly offline. Me reaching out to real people here in West Texas etc. Trying to keep the whole thing interesting and meaningful.
If we can get West Texas nailed, we can get the rest of Texas nailed. And if we can get Texas nailed, ditto with the rest of the country.
The adventure has begun…
[The t-shirt design for tonight’s shindig etc.]
After a couple of weeks of back-and-forth between Stormhoek, our US importer and our local distributor, I am pleased to announce that Stormhoek is now available here in Alpine, Texas.
To celebrate I’m throwing a party tonight at Harry’s Tinaja, my regular local watering hole, at 8pm. There will be Stormhoek wine for the tastin’, cheese and crackers, plus my friend Israel has smoked up some awesome mango beef jerky for the occasion. I’ve also hired my favorite local band, The Doodlin’ Hogwallops to play live. [The Stormhoek billboard, currently leaning against the outside wall of Harry’s, right by the main road in town, where everybody can see it etc. Click on image to enlarge.]
Besides that, my buddy Loren Feldman is in town, wielding his video camera, so there should be plenty of footage uploaded online soon.
Re. the “Dream Big” t-shirt. Yes, that sentiment is printed on the back label of the Stormhoek bottle. It’s also a line that seems to resonate with people round these parts [Few people move to the middle-of-nowhere West Texas desert without some sort of alternative-lifestyle-dream-action going on, so there was a tangible alignment there.] As I’ve been saying for a while, “We’re into the same kind of things you’re into” works better as a marketing strategy than, “Here’s why you should buy our product.“ [Harry, with the first cases arriving etc.]
Secondly, Re. Wine marketing: Usually, when an imported wine launches in the States, a familiar pattern emerges. Hire New York or SF restaurant for the evening. Organize wine tasting. Try to get the usual freeloaders, PR wannabe’s, and random warm bodies to attend. If a C-List celeb somehow turns up by some Miracle of God, become ecstatic. Send Press Release out to the usual suspects in the media. Watch Press Release be utterly disregarded by All & Sundry. Watch absolutely nothing happen afterwards. Witness the entire story disappearing into the dustbin of history within nanoseconds. And so on.
So we at Stormhoek decided to go in the exact opposite direction, as far away from the Usual Suspects as possible. “Hey, let’s launch in Alpine, Texas! Let’s see if we can get real West Texan cowboys to like South African wine! It’s totally insane! It’s totally futile! It’s totally wrong! Let’s do it anyway!“
Plus ca change…
[UPDATE: We’ll be streaming the party live. Check mine or Loren’s Twitter for updates.]
“Stormhoek. Made in South Africa. Drunk in West Texas.”
3. I mentioned that there was no marketing budget to speak of, and that also I lived in West Texas, so with these limitations we were going to have to improvise.
My friend, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame and I have been talking on and off for the last while about me doing a lithograph for his wine business, in a similar spirit to all those Stormhoek lithos I did back in London.
Finally, yesterday, I stopped my dilly-dallying and just cranked it out. Voila!
Like I said a few weeks back, I’m getting more into the fine art print business. Social Objects at their finest. Rock on.
I hope Gary likes the design…
Stormhoek finally got a distribution deal here in Texas, and so now I’m back on the case.
Two problems: 1. No marketing budget to speak of, and 2. I live in Alpine, Texas, 400 miles west of Austin in the high desert mountains. Looks like I’m going to have to improvise…
No matter. Like I told the folks at Stormhoek, if I can sell South African wine to West Texas cowboys, I can sell it to anybody.
So last week I got me a 4-by-8-foot piece of masonite, and painted a billboard, which I’ll soon be putting up by the roadside. “Stormhoek. Made In South Africa. Drunk in West Texas.“
Expect photos and videos to follow… Rock on.
Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not “mission, vision, values” territory — it’s about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it’s personal. But it’s the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.
Real drives, passions and beliefs. Exactly.
The Blue Monster line, “Change The World Or Go Home” is not rocket science or literary brilliance. It just articulates a simple belief, a simple passion, a simple drive THAT ALREADY EXISTED, long before The Blue Monster ever came on to the scene. That’s all it was ever meant to do. [The Microsoft Blue Monster etc.]
Whether you agree or disagree with it doesn’t matter, the important bit is that people within Microsoft believe it. Unlike a conventional ad campaign, it’s not about you. It’s about them.
Why is something like this potentially valuable to a business? Simply put, if you believe something passionately enough, for long enough, articulate it well enough, and your actions are aligned, credible and consistent with your belief for long enough, it’s just a matter of time before other people start believing it, too. And next thing you know, you have an interesting conversation going on, both inside and outside the company. And as Doc Searls famously said, “Markets are conversations”. Ker-Chiing.
Again, none of this is rocket science. Talking to people never is. When people ask me what exactly is a Blue Monster, I tell them, it’s not necessarily a cartoon. It’s simply a social object that allows one to more easily articulate the Purpose-Idea. No more, no less.
I’ve been asking myself for years, what comes after conventional, Madison-Avenue-style advertising, now that we live in a post-TV, post-advertising, post-message world? “Creating Blue Monsters” is the closest I’ve ever come to finding an actual answer.
Besides drawing the cartoons, helping other companies create Blue Monsters is how I intend to spend the remainder of my career.
Cartoons and Blue Monsters. I really do have the world’s greatest job. Rock on. [More Blue Monster background reading here.]
About a year ago, I was at a geek breakfast in London with Steve Clayton and some other folk, including a few people from Microsoft.
Steve and some other geeks were talking about “The Cloud”. At the time Steve was making the transition from working in the UK Partner Division, to working in the “Software & Services” division of Microsoft, which is how the conversation came up.
Right then and there I drew the cartoon above. Steve saw it, and right away asked me if he could use the picture for his business card, which he now does.
That was the first time I really started paying attention to the term, “The Cloud”.
I would by no means call myself an expert or an authority on the subject, but in the last couple of months I’ve been getting increasingly aware of “Cloud Thinking”. It’s seriously interesting to me.
As far as I can tell, all three of the big tech companies I know best, Microsoft, Sun and Dell, seem to be betting a lot of their future on The Cloud. It was even just announced recently that Dell was applying to trademark the term, “Cloud Computing”. Heck, even my friends over at Techcrunch are looking to get a piece of the action.
Even today, I learned that Microsoft is now seriously planning for the post-Windows era, and you guessed it, The Cloud features heavily. And Businessweek just ran a big article on it:
A Sea Change in Computing
Some analysts say cloud computing represents a sea change in the way computing is done in corporations. Merrill Lynch (MER) estimates that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will surge to $95 billion. In a May 2008 report, Merrill Lynch estimated that 12% of the worldwide software market would go to the cloud in that period.
Those vendors that can adjust their product lines to meet the needs of large cloud computing providers stand to profit. Companies like IBM, Dell (DELL), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), for instance, are moving aggressively in this direction. On Aug. 1, IBM said it would spend $360 million to build a cloud computing data center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., bringing to nine its total of cloud computing centers worldwide. Dell is also targeting this market. The computer marker supplies products to some of the largest cloud computing providers and Web 2.0 companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo (YHOO). “We created a whole new business just to build custom products for those customers,” Dell CEO Michael Dell says.
I was also recently really surprised and delighted about all the discussion my last post, “The Cloud’s Best-Kept Secret”, seemed to generate. Not just the amount of discussion, but the quality of it, from some of the smartest people I know on the planet. People like Tim O’Reilly, JP Rangaswami, Dennis Howlett, James Governor, all piping in. Rock on.
And of course, there’s the “Cloud Portraits” I’ve been drawing recently. Clouds, clouds, clouds… Clouds everywhere. Like West Texas in the rainy season etc.
What does this all mean? Frankly, I have no idea. I have no intention of becoming a “Cloud Blogger” or whatever, I’m just start to feel a connection here. Connections are my lifeblood.One of my favorite cartoons ever exists simply because I saw a connection between ego, emotion and typography. In 2005 I was the first person to see a connection between $5K English suits and the blogosphere [which back then, I can tell you, A LOT of people thought that was a bit of a stretch]. In 2006 I saw a similar connection between a small South African wine brand and the geek community of Silicon Valley.
This year I’m feeling the same sort of connection between all of the work I’ve been doing in the last year. It’s hard to explain– it’s visceral; it’s like you can just smell it, even if it remains so far invisible. It’s just there. A feeling, not quite yet a fact. And a wee voice keeps telling me that The Cloud is at the center of it somehow. Wait and see.
The relatively small, southern French province of Languedoc produces more wine than the entire State of California. Thousands and thousands and thousands of vineyards. Italy alone boasts 500,000 vineyards, and 50,000 individual wine brands. That’s roughly one vineyard for every one hundred people!
This is one of the great things about wine is, of course. There’s so much choice out there, that once you get the wine bug, you easily can spend the rest of your life sampling thousands of them, and never get even close to sampling them all.
But on the other side of the coin, this makes your job as a wine producer VERY TOUGH. If for example, you have all your money sunk into an Italian wine farm, Congratulations, you’ve got half a million other Italians in the same boat as you. That’s a pretty crowded boat, to say the least.
The other day I showed the above cartoon to the owner of a large American wine importer.“What a lovely grain of sand you are. Too bad you’re lying on the beach.“
My thesis that came out of that conversation: Wine has become a commodity. But most people in the wine trade are too self-absorbed with their own wine schtick to acknowledge the fact. OTHER PEOPLE’S WINE may already be a commodity, but NOT OUR WINE, no no no no… Our wine is SPECIAL, yes yes yes yes…
If you want to remove the “commodity factor” from your wine, you first have to admit that yes, you too are also selling a commodity. And then work from there.
To quote a phrase I probably use far too often: “We’re not in the wine business. We’re in the decommodification business.“
So how does one “decommodify” wine? I have no idea. If I knew, I’d be a billionaire.
But what HAS worked well for me so far, is to stop thinking so much about the product– the grapes, the vineyards, the terroir, the hummingbirds gathering nectar in the early morning sun yak yak yak. Instead, I find it far more useful to be interested in the actual people drinking it. Who are they? What do they need? What’s their schtick? What works for them? What’s true in life is also true in marketing: If you want to be boring, talk about yourself. If you want to be interesting, talk about other people.
[Click on image to enlarge/download etc. Feel free to use badge for your own needs etc.]
Two years ago, Stormhoek sponsored geek dinners. They were a huge success.
We’re ready to get back at it.
This time, however, we’re going to sponsor Tweetups. If you’re one of the people following me on Twitter, are based in the USA and are planning on having a Tweetup in the next wee while, drop me an e-mail, and let’s see if we can’t get some wine sent there for the evening. Rock on. [For those of you outside the loop, a “Tweetup” is a spontaneous, self-organizing social gathering of fellow Twitter users, usually organized on Twitter itself. Usually food and drink are part of the equation etc.]
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc.]
This is a lithograph idea I’m playing around with for Stormhoek. The “Be Passionate” line comes from the Stormhoek back label. Rock on.
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc.]
Yep. I’m back working with Stormhoek again. It’s got new owners, but so far, so good. The good news is, they don’t want me doing anything too differently from what I was doing already.
Now that I’m based in the US, I’m hoping to do a lot more geek dinner stuff. And of course, the lithographs. Rock on.
The above cartoon a “Hugh” version of the Stormhoek back label. “The one with the back label on the front”. You can read the backstory here.
[Picture taken from the Marfa Plain, looking Southeast, about 15 miles West of Alpine, Texas. Cathedral Mountain in the distance.]
I’m writing this from Miami. Heading back to West Texas tomorrow. I woke up this morning looking forward to my return, so what the heck, I posted the photo above. JP Rangaswami is in town on vacation; Jason and I met him and his lovely family two night ago for drinks [Talk about well-brought-up children. Gosh. Off the scale.].
We talked briefly about me being in Alpine. “It seems like you needed to take your foot off the accelerator,” he said. Yup. That’s about it.
Yesterday I wrote about making more limited edition prints for Stormhoek:
2. Lithographs. We had a lot of good fortune creating limited edition, fine art prints. Everything from the Blue Monster series, to the Techcrunch party poster. Basically, I want to spend a LOT OF TIME in the next year, signing limited edition lithographs and getting them in to the hands of anybody who may want one. These lithographs will hopefully become “Social Objects”, which anyone who knows me will know, I believe is the future of marketing. It is my belief that, if we can get enough of them printed, signed and out there, they’ll create enough interesting conversations which will INDIRECTLY move a lot of cases of wine . The big question is, [A] How many prints would I need to sign in order to make that happen and [B] If the answer is, “A Lot”, will I have the time, discipline and stamina to go the distance? Yes, it’s a huge challenge. Then again, so is climbing Mount Everest.
And a few days ago I wrote about landing a book deal with Penguin. “Exciting News etc.“
The needs of being a cartoonist, and the needs of being a “Web 2.0 marketing guy” are very different. Though it wasn’t an overnight decision, recently I decided to re-adjust my life to something that was more conducive to being the former, as opposed to be the latter.
Was this a wise move? We’ll see. What is a Web 2.0 marketing guy, anyway? Somebody who gets paid to have “Ever-Fragmenting Conversations about Ever-Fragmenting Conversations.” Compared to tarring roofs in Texas in summer, it’s not a bad job, but… Whatever.
But one hundred years from now, I’ll be dead, and this website will be gone. Nobody will be talking about Web 2.0 anymore. But a wee voice tells me some of the cartoons will be still floating around, maybe online, maybe in books, maybe one or two of the originals will be hanging in private collections.
And God Willing, some of the jokes will still be funny…
After a couple of months’ silence on Stormhoek, I’m ready to start talking about it again. [The short version:] Stormhoek basically has new owners, Origin Wines of South Africa. They bought it when Orbital Wines, Stormhoek’s main importer in London, went out of business, due to cash flow problems. Origin Wines is owned by a guy called Bernard. He and I have been talking for these last few months, trying to work out a deal. Looks like we’ve finally made one.
In an ideal world I would’ve been a bit more talkative and transparent. Was it a bad call on my part? From the average perspective of a blogger with little direct interest in the brand, I could see why they would argue that position. But in the long run, me keeping my mouth shut probably saved the brand, the deal with Bernard, my interest in a company I dedicated three years of of my life to and, not to mention, the jobs of many dozen South African vineyard workers. So fuck it. Take the hit and move on.
So what’s the new plan? What will Stormhoek 2.0 look like?
Actually, not that different from Stormhoek 1.0. Between 2005 – 2007, Jason Korman and I tried out a lot of different experiments with social media. Some worked better than others. Some of the stuff we had high hopes for, utterly failed. Some of the stuff we had very small expectations for, caused major earthquakes in the wine marketing world, and sold many tens of thousands of wine cases. Like they say in the movie business, nobody knows anything. That being said, we did learn the hard way that there’s a lot to be said for keeping things simple. Ergo: Stormhoek 2.0 has three main prongs:
1. Getting bottles of wine into the hands of my friends and peers i.e. the bloggers and the Web 2.0 crowd. Sponsoring geek dinners, Web 2.0 parties, conferences, that kinda thing. 2. Lithographs. We had a lot of good fortune creating limited edition, fine art prints. Everything from the Blue Monster series, to the Techcrunch party poster. Basically, I want to spend a LOT OF TIME in the next year, signing limited edition lithographs and getting them in to the hands of anybody who may want one. These lithographs will hopefully become “Social Objects”, which anyone who knows me will know, I believe is the future of marketing. It is my belief that, if we can get enough of them printed, signed and out there, they’ll create enough interesting conversations which will INDIRECTLY move a lot of cases of wine . The big question is, [A] How many prints would I need to sign in order to make that happen and [B] If the answer is, “A Lot”, will I have the time, discipline and stamina to go the distance? Yes, it’s a huge challenge. Then again, so is climbing Mount Everest. 3. Blogging. Goes without saying.
Yes, Jason and I are still working on Stormhoek together. And Graham Knox, who was until recently the head of production down in South Africa, talked to Bernard this morning about keeping on working with Stormhoek as well. Go figure.
One final thought: For all the crap that went down over Orbital’s demise, I’m actually kinda glad it happened. A lot of dead wood was cleared in the process; I think Bernard will make a much better partner than some of the people, now moved on, that I’ve had to work with during the last three years. All in all, I think we’re in a much better position to carry out my “Evil Plan For World Domination” than we were a year ago, so I’m actually pretty happy and excited. Rock on. Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have any ideas which may help the cause. Thanks.
Robert Scoble and Dave Winer are in London on the 7th, so we’re all throwing a geek dinner.
The Coach & Horses
29 Greek Street,
Soho
London, W1V 5LL, UK
7.00pm [C&H’s Facebook Page here.]
It’s in the upstairs restaurant. To get there you have to go behind the bar and up the stairs, so tell the barstaff when you arrive that you’re there for the geek dinner etc.
The deal is, everyone pays £15 per head when they get there. There’s an upstairs cash bar and some sponsored Stormhoek Blue Monster wine.
Since I hinted about it last week, about 40 people have put already their names down via e-mail. We’ve got room for a dozen or so more.
It’s not a very big restaurant [securing a big space in London is IMPOSSIBLE during December, because of all the Christmas parties], but if you fancy coming, please drop me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do to fit everybody in. Thanks. [UPDATE:] As the restaurant is FAR TOO SMALL to accommodate everyone, the good news is, there’s going to be a photowalk/pubcrawl afterwards. So the alternate plan would be to turn up around 9.30 and start hitting some more pubs. I’ll continue hanging at the C&H till the end, but I might join the posse later on for last orders or something.
[UPDATE:] The restaurant bit is full up. Dang, didn’t take long. But feel free to turn up for the pub crawl, if you’re in the neighborhood. Apologies, Thanks.
Next time we’ll book a bigger place, well in advance. Right, Robert?
Should be a fun evening. Rock on.
Last night, in Johannesburg, the Council of judges for South Africa’s Marketing Excellence awards gave a gold medal and trophy to Stormhoek as the best Brand marketing campaign of the year (Small Budget).
They gave the same awards to other brands for Medium Budget and Large Budget and Extra Large Budget.
Finally, they gave a bigger trophy to the Grand Prix winner for the overall brand campaign winner and this went to Stormhoek.
Gold awards and trophies were handed out for sponsorship campaigns, arts and culture campaigns and an ex-advertising copywriter (now Absa Bank marketing manager) called Happy Ntshingila was crowned Marketing Man of the Year.
[The new Stormhoek front labels. Click on image to enlarge etc.] [The new Stormhoek back label. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
After many months in development, Stormhoek has finally got its new label designs.
The front label is a fairly classic look [our customers like that a lot]. We had a ball, however, with the back label. Notice how we put both the Blue Monster logo on the back [without any explanation], and also, the Unofficial International “Hacker” symbol. Oh, yeah, we also borrowed the “Change the World or Go Home” tagline from the Blue Monster [Disclosure: gapingvoid is more evil than Microsoft. Just so you know.].
The vast majority who see our wine on the shelf have never heard of us before, have never read gapingvoid, and don’t know us from Adam [The same is true for the vast majority of other wine brands]. So most of the marketing is done on the supermarket shelf. It’s actually pretty intense, thinking about it all.
The funny thing is, people in the trade like the back label SO MUCH there’s already talk happening about Stormhoek being the first wine to have itself stacked on the shelf with the back label facing frontwards.
So the Stormhoek hook becomes: “The one with the back label on the front”.
I love that idea… We’ll see what happens.
[UPDATE:] I’ve just learned– the new design will be arriving into the UK at the end of this month [November]. Expect to see them around the supermarkets [Tesco, Asda etc] soon after.
[“Big Love”. The Stormhoek label we designed for Valentine’s day 2007] [Reposting this blog from 2 months ago:]
In 2006 my client, Stormhoek, a small South African winery had a lot of fun sposoring “100 Geek Dinners”.
We like sponsoring geek dinners. We really do. So we want to do more. Lots more. [The “100 Geek Dinners” logo from 2006]
We’re not sure how many geek dinners we’ll be sponsoring. We chose the number “2000” just because [A] it sounds good and [B] it’s much larger than last year’s “100”. [Small Stormhoek-sponsored dinner, May 2006, USA]
The plan is to start doing it in Britain, via Facebook. So if you have an upcoming UK event happening on Facebook, and you feel you might want a wine sponsor there on the night, please drop me a line and I’ll check it out. It doesn’t have to be a big event; in fact I personally prefer the small ones. Just so long as it’s an interesting evening. Thanks. Rock on.
PS The event doesn’t necessarily have to be on Facebook. Just so long as it’s interesting etc. Thanks Again. [UPDATE:] In the end, we decided to bag the Facebook angle. Found out that Micromarketing via Twitter worked far better for us.
[One of the Stormhoek cartoon labels we’re doing for Valentine’s Day, 2008. Click on image to enlarge etc.] [IN OTHER NEWS: I’ll be in Paris in December, speaking at Lew Web 3. It’s quite an impressive list of speakers. Several people attending I’ve been wanting to meet for a couple of years now…]
It’s that time of the year again, when folks like me in the wine business start thinking about what to do for Valentine’s Day.
What we’ve done at Stormhoek is come up with some Valentine’s Day-themed cartoon labels, part of the much larger Stormhoek Cartoon Series we’re currently developing [Blue Monster Reserve is part of that].
So in the back of my mind, a wee voice is telling me, “Hey Kids, let’s do something interesting!“
Fair enough. Only, what constitutes “interesting”? I have a few ideas. How about yourself? I’m looking for input at the mo’. Please feel free to leave a comment below or send me an e-mail. Thanks.
[UPDATE:] Rik from Holland just sent me the following e-mail. Rock on.
Hugh. just read your post about the valentine’s ideas. Some thoughts:
Why not create a gift set of a nice box designed by you, with special valentines edition wine and a postcard on it (on a lovely ribbon of course) with one of your cartoons. Then create a website that lets people send one of these to the object of their affection, and lets them put a personal message on the card.
Shipping these things etc might take some doing, but you’ve got time to arrange for that
Or you could just send over the card and arrange for it to be a coupon for a bottle of wine at select wine grocers. But that may be slightly less romantic.
On a side note, seeing your whole plan to create social objects of/around your wines, why not do a quirky little wine bar in London. The city could use some decent ones, and this leaves you with a lot more options to do remarkable things. Tastings, in-house geek dinners, and when you make it cool enough (e.g. hire an exciting architect to do the interior) it will be a social object in itself.
imho. Have fun!
Rik
I like the greeting card idea. The second idea I’m less keen on [we’re in the wine business, not the bar business], although we did think about doing something like that in the past. If we were to open up our own bar, we would make it like Bedales in Spittalfields, only with free WiFi. Secondly, we’d open it in SF/Silicon Valley, not London.
In 2008 I plan to do a LOT more socializing over there…
[Click on image to enlarge] The Blue Monster has been turned into a game. Ryan Anderson from Fuel Industries in Canada sent me the following e-mail:
Hi Hugh,
We’re just entering the early stages of the development of the game that will include the Blue Monster, and I just wanted to show you how he was being integrated. The idea of the whole promo is to take IT people through a game that shows them the benefits of Technet, which is one of their key IT support services. Right now, the Blue Monster shows up in one of the mini-games, where the hero IT guy has to destroy bad packet requests on the network, identified by port without destroying the real requests (I’m told it’s fun if you’re a geek).
He flashes on the screen and eats all the bad packet requests and leaves the good ones. There’s not much of an explanation of who the Monster is, other than that he’s on your side. I would like to integrate it into the dialogue of the quest game (think Leisure Suit Larry meets The IT Crowd) just as an acknowledgement of it. Mostly, it’s just meant to be a little nod to those who know it, and perhaps we can link to an explanation of what the Blue Monster is… that much is not decided.
I’d love to hear what you think about it, from “cool.” to “I think this is stupid.” Also, if you wouldn’t mind sending me an email that just states clearly that you’re okay with Microsoft using the image in a game in this context, I’d really appreciate it. As I’m sure you’re aware, MS has a lot of lawyers who need things like that, and apparently our exchange on Facebook isn’t enough for them.
I’ve attached a screen capture of the Blue Monster in action… though he moves quickly so I couldn’t get a shot with his mouth open. This is not a final screen design, but it gives you the idea.
Let me know if you have any questions / comments, etc., and I’ll let you know about any changes or additions we make with BM.
Cheers,
Ryan
I certainly don’t think it’s stupid. I think it’s wonderful. Totally. The only thing i would say is I’d love to see a few Stormhoek bottles in there somehow. But I would say that. Heh.
[Note to MSFT lawyers:] Yeah, I’m totally cool with the Blue Monster being used in a Microsoft game. Just in case you had any doubts etc.
Thanks, Ryan. Rock on! [PS: Yes, this is indeed a Social Object etc.]
The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,” while the vin du table was “weak, short, light, flat and faulty”. Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.
The one thing that separates human beings from other mammals is our capacity for metaphor i.e. the capacity to tell stories. These forty-odd “wine experts” were telling themselves a wine story. The molecules in the bottle didn’t matter. What mattered was the narrative.
With hundreds and thousands of wine brands all telling the same story [“Our FAMILY has been making THIS kind of wine on THIS piece of LAND for THIS MANY generations yak ya yak…”] the only way we could get Stormhoek to rise above the clutter was to tell a different story altogether. Which in the end meant a rather unlikely cultural mash-up between a small South African vineyard and the US West Coast technology crowd, including Silicon Valley and Microsoft.
We’ve had some good results along the way, but the experiment is far from over yet…
[UPDATE] My Chicago friend, Vinny Warren left the following story in the comments below:
I worked in a bar in Ireland in my youth back in the 80s. There was a brewery sponsored inter-pub competition to see which bar could sell the most COLT 45 malt liquor which had just been introduced and was failing miserably. Malt Liquor in Ireland??
It was a very busy pub. So we switched the very popular Heineken taps over to the Colt 45 kegs towards closing time each night for a month.
We won the competition. The prize was a free trip to Spain.
And not a single punter ever complained about the taste of their Heineken!
For reasons unknown to me, suddenly in the last week the orders for Stormhoek Blue Monster Reserve have started flooding in, especially from Microsoftees in the USA. Rock on.
I’m getting on the case this week… if you’ve already contacted me about this, expect to be hearing from either me or my colleague, Tessa Soole in the next week or two. Thanks.
Some random thoughts:
1. I came up with the Blue Monster wine idea, as a exercise in creating a “Social Object”. What the heck, Theory is all very well, but actual real-life commercial execution is a lot more fun and interesting. I’m just lucky to have the groovy cats at Stormhoek who let me try out these crazy ideas. [My friend, Alison with a Blue Monster lithograph in her office.]
2. Earlier this year I created another Blue Monster social object, namely, the limited edition lithographs. I only made a thousand of them, and they went fast. As I didn’t want to print more of them [that would’ve cheapened the first edition], I had to come up with something else, something that could scale beyond one thousand people. Since I’m in the wine business, and since I had already been making cartoon labels for Stormhoek wine, it wasn’t too much of a stretch.
3. The Blue Monster wine is also part of the “Smarter Wine” conversation. The main thesis is that it’s not the wine per se that is interesting, it’s the conversations that happen around the wine that is interesting. And that is true for all social objects. People matter. Objects don’t.
4. If the Blue Monster wine idea is interesting, it’s because of a most unlikely mash-up between a small, obscure winery in South Africa, and the world’s largest software company. But it’s this very unlikelihood, this very unlikely swapping of Cultural DNA between two very different companies, that gives it its mojo.
5. Importing different Cultural DNA into an organization is a real balancing act. Too much of it makes it impossible for the company to focus. Too little and the company withers on the vine.
6. BL Ochman has a really good summation of the BM wine story here.
What’s important is that a lone blogger with a good idea was able to get a huge company to listen to him and to adopt one of his fairly radical ideas. It shows that social media is a viable force for change, for marketing, and for the new media than a lot of big companies may now finally begin to take seriously.
7. When thinking about applying social media to companies, “What social media tools should we use” should not be the first question. “How do we wish to talk to people differently” should be the first question. If you don’t have an answer to this, quit your job and go find something else.
8. None of this stuff is rocket science. Most of it is glaringly obvious. And sadly for folks working in the social software industry, “The people who get it, don’t need us. And the people who need us, don’t get it.” Which is why being a “blog consultant” or whatever is a lot less lucrative and rewarding than people often think.
9. I recently received the following e-mail:
Hugh,
As much as I like the Blue Monster, does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? I mean, we both know that no matter how big the Blue Monster gets, Microsoft is still going to continue being “evil”, and its software is still going to continue to suck. And no blogging cartoonist is ever going to change that.
Any thoughts?
Dave
Well, Dave, your low opinion of Microsoft notwithstanding, I’m not looking at this from the executive level. I’m coming at this from the perspective of a small-time cartoonist with a blog and an internet connection. And from where I’m standing, it seems to me that in a big company like Microsoft, even a small thing like the Blue Monster can create a lot of value for a lot of people. Not getting too carried away in the Expectation Department is what will keep things interesting.
10. No, I have no idea of where all this is going. All I care about these days is drawing cartoons, doing interesting things with interesting people, paying my bills, and keeping my sorry ass out of the hospital, the mental asylum, the morgue etc.
[Official “Smarter Wine” logo etc.]
At Stormhoek, the wine company I work for, our basic schtick is this philosophy we call “Smarter Wine”. This is what Mark Earls would call the “Purpose-Idea” of the company; i.e. the reason we get out of bed in the morning and go to work every day. Here are some thoughts on what Smarter Wine means, in no particular order: 1. Smarter Wine does not imply that we’re “smarter” than anywhere else. It’s an ideal that we aspire to, not that we embody. The idea is not something Stormhoek will ever “own”, like a tagline in an ad campaign. It’s an idea I think EVERYBODY in the trade should get their head around, be they makers, sellers or buyers, large or small. But hey, I would say that. 2. Everyone’s definition of “smarter” will be different. I’m OK with that. To me, it means continually engaging the customer at a higher level, continually raising the bar.
3. The brilliant thinker, Russell Davies identified four keywords that will govern the future of the advertising business. About as succinct a list as I’ve ever seen:
Blurry.
Useful.
Interesting.
Always In Beta.
“Always In Beta” is a popular term in Silicon Valley. In an ideal world, it would be equally popular in the wine trade as well. It’s unfortunate that this is not the case. 4. A word people like using in the wine trade is “innovation”. Some companies pay it only lip service, some companies actually try to embrace it full-on. But it’s harder than it looks. Wine is one of the oldest products in the world; change happens slowly and with great reluctance. Sure, putting wine in funky-dunky plastic or aluminum bottles might be technically “innovative”, but does the average wine customer actually want that? A more interesting question for me is how the wine connects with people on an emotional and intellectual level. That to me is where the real action is. 5. Big ideas start out as little ideas, and lots of them. What do companies like Apple, Nike, Innocent Drinks and Starbucks have in common? Superficially, very little. But one thing you’ll notice about them is that they’re constantly coming up with new stuff. Constantly trying out new ideas, seeing what happens, and if it doesn’t work out, they move on quickly. Their schtick is all about taking frequent small steps in the right direction, as opposed to betting the farm on the annual Superbowl ad. Creating a constant stream of “Social Objects”. We take a similar approach at Stormhoek [We’re a small wine company, frankly, so we have no other choice]. Different branding ideas, different cartoon label ideas, different sponsorship and PR ideas. On one level it’s a highly unpredictable way to go about it. On another level, it’s amazing how certain we are that SOMETHING good comes out of it eventually. 6. Eighty per cent of vineyards in the world do not make a profit. Eighty. Per. Cent. Other fun stats: There are 50 countries in the world that have wine industries. Italy alone has 500,000 vineyards. Sicily has ten times the vineyards as Napa Valley. Conclusion: The competition is off the scale. Besides making good wine [obviously], the only way forward is to somehow figure out, by any means necessary, how to rise above the clutter. The only way to do this is to speak to people in a way our industry has never spoken to them before. 7. I am not a wine expert. I am not a wine snob. I am not a wine bore. I am not even a wine geek. When I think of the business I’m in, I do not think of the vineyards, the lifestyle porn that’s famously attached to the industry, the “hummingbirds gathering nectar in the morning dew” palaver. My thoughts are more prosaic. I think about a person pushing a shopping cart through a supermarket, a teacher or a nurse, perhaps, who’s there buying food because she’s cooking spaghetti for her boyfriend that evening, who just wants a good bottle of wine for under ten dollars to go with it. Her needs, as simple and basic as they are, interest me FAR MORE than satisfying the vast sea of social pretentions that lives inside the wine trade. 8. Not everybody inside the trade will “get” the Smarter Wine idea. In marketing terms, it not that big a deal. As Oscar Wilde once quipped, “A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”
[Yon standard pack shot. Indeed.]
I mentioned previously that I would be announcing my “Next Big Project” sometime today, the 17th of September.The Financial Times beat me to it.. “Social Object”, Baby:
Microsoft launches a tipple for techies
Tonight, a select group will gather in a bar in London’s Soho to quaff a crisp, South African white wine bottled in their honour.
The hand-picked guests toasting the new vintage are not, however, wine connoisseurs but techies. The gathering marks the launch of the Blue Monster Reserve label, created by winery Stormhoek for Microsoft and its employees.
Own-label wine and personalised bottles have become increasingly popular in the corporate world, particularly among investment banks, as gifts to clients and offered to guests of corporate events. The companies hope the corporate vintages will add an air of class and sophistication to their image.
But unlike customised wine bottles given by banks and law firms to clients, this label did not originate in Microsoft’s corporate communications headquarters.
Hugh MacLeod, a cartoonist, blogger and marketing strategist for Stormhoek, created the Blue Monster image after getting to know Microsoft employees.
Mr MacLeod met these “Microsofties” through his day job. “We sponsored a series of ‘geek dinners’ for bloggers and techies in the US and the UK,” he said. “I met a lot of people from Microsoft through these dinners, and they all said the same thing: we want to change the world.”
[Print Version: Page 14 of the main section. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
That notion of a kinder, gentler Microsoft is at odds with its cut-throat corporate image. Critics have accused the software giant of abusing its dominant position and of stifling innovation in the industry. In 2003, the European Commission found Microsoft guilty of uncompetitive practices and levied a record €497m ($689m, £342m) fine. The result of its appeal against that decision is due on Monday.
The cartoon of a sharp-toothed blue creature and its tagline, “Microsoft – change the world or go home”, has now been adopted by some Microsoft employees and fans as a symbol of the company’s innovation.
“People see Microsoft as a big, bad corporate monster,” Mr MacLeod said. “Yet all the Microsofties I’ve spoken to say they just want to make great products and do good works. It was obvious that Microsoft had to get better at telling their story.”
“Wine is a social object, and so is the Blue Monster: they both inspire conversation,” he said. “And we thought the cartoon would look really cool on a bottle.”
Steve Clayton, chief technology officer at one of Microsoft’s UK affiliates and a nine-year veteran of the company, said Blue Monster reminded people that Microsoft “has a sense of fun and humour”.
Mr Clayton has been at the forefront of the Blue Monster movement: he uses the image on his business card and is the administrator of a “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group.
“[Microsoft’s HQ] has been very supportive of us using the Microsoft name alongside the Blue Monster image,” Mr MacLeod said. It makes sense; they’ve been around for about 30 years and are trying to reinvent themselves to embrace a new generation.”
Blue Monster-branded bottles will be available only to Microsoft and its affiliates. “We have no intention of selling the product outside Microsoft,” said Jason Korman, Stormhoek’s chief executive. “The wine itself only went live last week, and already we’ve had massive interest from different parts of the company.”
[A bottle of Blue Monster Reserve sitting on my desk. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Mr Clayton readily admits the Blue Monster movement, despite his involvement, is outside any influence from Microsoft: “[The cartoon] has encouraged a whole new series of conversations by people who are passionate about Microsoft, both internally and externally. Blue Monster is a community which has developed its own distinct identity.”
For Mr MacLeod, the Blue Monster represents a revolution of sorts. “We started an underground movement within Microsoft, and we knew one day the guys in suits would finally take notice. That moment has finally arrived.”
If so, it will be marked in true internet-era style: not with an act of anarchy but a clink of glasses.
[Blue Monster backstory here.][Blue Monster blog archive here.]
The wine is not a commercially available product, just a wee “social object” for geek dinners and people inside the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft’s Steve Clayton and I are still working on the final details of how we’re going to get the wine to people who want it, but for now, we’re just limiting its availability to [1] people who belong to the “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group, and [2] geek dinners we’re attending and/or sponsoring.
Personally, I like this idea because it directly connects to a lot of different things I’m interested in. “Social Objects”, Microsoft, cartoons, Stormhoek, Marketing 2.0, corporate-reinvention, geek dinners etc etc.
Hopefully, other people will like it, too. Watch this space etc.
A special thanks to all the groovy cats inside Microsoft who lent their support to this project. Rock on. [P.S. If anyone has any further questions, I can be reached by e-mail.]
[One of the Stormhoek designs we’re thinking of doing for next Valentine’s Day. What do you think? Click on image to enlarge etc. Click here to see the old 2007 version on YouTube etc etc.]
After a very hectic year, I am pleased to say things seem to be calming down again [Yes, that would explain the recent rash of new cartoons. Mentally regrouping etc].
Three years ago, if you said my main gig would be selling wine to British supermarket chains, I would have said you were nuts. Funny how life takes you in all sorts of wonderfully unexpected directions.
My main focus for the next few months will be on drawing more cartoons and organizing more Stormhoek geek dinners. Everything else will take a definite back seat, at least on this blog. So like I said last week, if you have a UK-based geek dinner or event planned, and you think some of our wine would enhance the proceedings, please drop me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks Again.
[“Big Love”. The Stormhoek label we designed for Valentine’s day 2007]
In 2006 my client, Stormhoek, a small South African winery had a lot of fun sposoring “100 Geek Dinners”.
We like sponsoring geek dinners. We really do. So we want to do more. Lots more. [The “100 Geek Dinners” logo from 2006]
We’re not sure how many geek dinners we’ll be sponsoring. We chose the number “2000” just because [A] it sounds good and [B] it’s much larger than last year’s “100”. [Small Stormhoek-sponsored dinner, May 2006, USA]
The plan is to start doing it in Britain, via Facebook. So if you have an upcoming UK event happening on Facebook, and you feel you might want a wine sponsor there on the night, please drop me a line and I’ll check it out. It doesn’t have to be a big event; in fact I personally prefer the small ones. Just so long as it’s an interesting evening. Thanks. Rock on.
[Outside Tesco’s this afternoon, Pinotage and Sauvingnon Blanc in hand etc.]
I’m not sure why exactly, but I always like it when I see new Stormhoek photos on Flickr. Something kinda affirming about it.
So what the heck, I was thinking, Stormhoek is now doing a wee promotion at Tesco’s in UK, where a bottle is going for £3.99 [£1.00 off the usual £4.99], for the next week or two. So maybe there’s an opportunity to have some fun here. Therefore, the first 500 people, aged 18 or over, who send me a pic of themselves in Tesco’s, holding a bottle of Stormhoek, will receive a £5.00 Tesco voucher from us, to cover the cost of the wine [N.B. These vouchers are not sponsored by Tesco’s. We’re covering the cost out of our own pocket].
And hey, you don’t even have to buy the wine if you don’t feel like it. You can spend the voucher on whatever you want. Nor do you have to blog it. Frankly, I’m more interested in the photos.
And to make it a bit more interesting, we’ll post our favorite pics on the Stormhoek blog, and each week we’ll send a complimentary case of wine to the person who took our favorite picture that week. [AFTERTHOUGHT:] To get the ball rolling, I’ll send a case of Stormhoek [6 bottles] to the first six people who send in a photo [on condition that you’re over 18 years old, of course]. Again, you don’t even have to buy the wine, nor do you have to blog it.
[CAVEAT:] Though this promotion is in most Tesco stores, it isn’t in all of them. If your local Tesco doesn’t carry Stormhoek, apologies in advance. Drop me an e-mail if this happens and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks.
[P.S. For all you Wine Geeks:] The Stormhoek Pinotage that won the “Best Pinotage in The World” award last year is part of the promotion. Rock on.
This might turn out to be quite groovy, it might not. Whatever. Fail fast, fail often etc. But it’s a cool enough idea to make it worth a try. Feel free to send your photos to gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks Again.
[UPDATE: Friday, 8th June:]
We have our first winner… Thanks, Wil! [Wil’s Flickr pic is here.]
[One of my cartoons, blown up large in vinyl etc.]
I’m at the London International Wine & Spirit Fair all this week. Pretty much the biggest Wine Trade event in Europe. Backstory here. More later…
I drew this cartoon for an internal presentation at Stormhoek. People liked it so much we’re now thinking of using it for one of the cartoon labels. Very cool.
Thoughts?
We’re having an internal discussion at Stormhoek about what the final tagline on the front label of “Couture Rose” should be. The main take-out is that we want to communicate in a fun, funky way that this rose tastes BEST with ice, expressed in as few words as possible. Here’s our shortlist:
1. Magic over ice.
2. So nice with ice.
3. Pour over ice.
4. Nice over ice.
5. Happiest over ice.
6. “Best over ice, Darling.“
7. Seriously best over ice.
8. Perfect over ice [Thanks, Brent]
9. Made specifically for ice. [I know it’s boring, but it gets the point across etc.]
10. Made specifically to be poured over ice.
Anybody have any ideas? All opinions or suggestions gratefully received. Thanks.
[Note To Self:] I like Number 10, myself. But since I wrote it, I would say that etc.
[UPDATE:] I really like Vinny’s suggestion: “I would make it less tagline-y and more directional (ie, boring). It’s a pink wine so it’s already got enough “fun” inherently in it: BEST SERVED OVER ICE.”
One of Stormhoek’s customers, Harper Wells, is now running The Week Wine Club, the wine club of the popular British news magazine, The Week. It launches today.
If you join you will automatically be entered into a competition to win a wine connoisseur package of fine wine, glassware, storage etc, worth £6000. Offer open to any UK resident aged 18 or over.
A lot of major “upscale” publications have wine clubs in this country, including the national daily papers. I believe The Sunday Times wine club has about 250,000 members alone.
Anyway, good luck to them. Hope they sell some Stormhoek.
[DOWNLOAD COUPON HERE.]
So here it is: The Stormhoek-Thresher Coupon 2.0.
40% Off any wine in any Thresher store for the next week [N.B. Thresher’s is the the largest specialist wine retailer in the UK]. We did Version 1.0 last Christmas, and generated £15 million of sales for Thresher, one of our big clients. Not to mention, it made the national news. So now that Easter has come along…
Unlike last time time, however we put a little Stormhoek branding on the top. That’s the shameless advertising hack in me etc.
Anyway, feel free to download coupon and blog it and/or e-mail it to as many people as you like. Thanks.
[UPDATE: The link was broken for about a half-hour. Fixed now. Thanks.]
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