Amy Brooke
2 July 2007
column
Johannesburg — LAST year, when South African wine sales took a dip overseas, a small Wellington winery called Stormhoek managed to double its exports. This year the winery predicts a repeat performance, forecasting international sales of more than 350000 cases compared with the 10000 it sells on the local market.
But what's even more surprising about this operation -- still relatively unknown here at home -- is the hype it has generated around its brand, particularly in European countries and in the US.
Stormhoek is now the most talked-about wine in the online world. Its website gets more than a million hits a day.
To achieve this, Stormhoek must surely have spent millions on marketing? "Not at all," says Stormhoek co-owner Graham Knox. "Our marketing budget is about R50000 a year. That is nothing compared to the big guys, who are spending close to R20m."
I met Knox at a local Cape Town wine show. He is small in size, but bursting with big ideas. His energy and passion for the Stormhoek brand are contagious, and as he bounced around topping up people's glasses and making them laugh at his T-shirt (which read "High-class hoeker") it was hard not to catch "Stormhoek fever".
"I'm having so much fun," he said. "We're achieving huge success at the moment and having fun."
So what's the secret? By harnessing the power of the internet, Knox has embarked on what's called a viral, or social, marketing campaign.
Knox -- a former advertising whiz -- knew he wouldn't sell wine in an already saturated market by putting pictures of the product on billboards or in magazines. "Wine is social, people like to talk about wine, so we needed to figure out how to get people talking," he says.
"Since ancient times word of mouth has been the most powerful means of communication."
The first move was enlisting the help of a man who certainly knows how to get people talking. Hugh McLeod is a cartoonist, but he is more than that. He runs the most popular weblog in the UK.
He's also been called "the most influential blogger in Britain" by the Financial Times. Blogging is the latest craze to sweep the internet, allowing anyone to be published online and own a scaled-down version of their own website -- whether commercial or personal.
McLeod's blog (gapingvoid.com), which showcases his cartoons and provides social commentary, has a cult following. Millions of people have joined the online community he has built around it.
In between designing quirky cartoon-style labels for Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz, McLeod began blogging about Stormhoek, realising how easy it could be to create a buzz in cyberspace, which would then translate into profit. He offered a free bottle of wine with a personalised label to the first 100 people in the UK, France and Ireland who would include Stormhoek in their blogs.
At the same time the winery started sponsoring "geek dinners", providing free wine in the hope that people would go home and write about it. They did. The idea spread like a virus and soon Stormhoek was the drink of choice among the smartest, most tech-savvy crowd in the UK.
So successful was the initiative that it was applied to the US market shortly afterwards, and results there have also been sensational.
This innovative and surprisingly simple approach to selling wine has made marketing gurus around the world sit up and take notice.
The business has won the UK's prestigious Drinks Business Magazine award for Best Consumer Campaign, beating traditional big spenders like Chivas Regal. And US ad rag Advertising Age included it in its Top 50 global marketing campaigns last year, along with well known brands such as Toyota, Nike, Microsoft and Apple.
So, is this the future of marketing, I asked Knox. "Absolutely," he said. "It's interactive, it's inexpensive and it has a more potential reach than anything else."
UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) lecturer Dave Duarte agrees: "This new conversational online marketplace is significantly affecting the business world. To illustrate this, Time magazine recently announced that the person of the year was 'You -- the ordinary user of the internet'."
There were 155-million blogs at the time of writing, with millions more entering cyberspace each week. Duarte believes it's in the best interests of all SMMEs and bigger companies to get in touch with this trend and understand the way "digital citizens" work.
In light of this he has designed a course to run this month at the GSB called Nomadic Marketing, which he says is aimed at nontechnical business leaders, entrepreneurs, marketers and brand managers. It will explain how to make the most of digital marketing opportunities.
The course will run for three days and is the first on this topic to run at any South African business school. The topics include technologies such as MXit, blogs and online social networks. Not surprisingly, Graham Knox is one of the guest lecturers.
As I wrapped up my chat with Knox, he handed me one of his "High-class hoeker" T-shirts. As I was on my way to a party at the Waterfront, I decided to wear it for kicks. When I arrived I was accosted by a group of Czech tourists, wanting to know where they could buy shirts like this one. After I had explained, they wanted to know where they could buy Stormhoek wine.
Minutes later a friend who owns a nightclub came over and said she'd love to have her bar staff wearing those shirts -- and serving the wine.
There is no doubt that the Stormhoek virus is spreading.
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