Big Wineries Believe in Social Media
Posted on July 16, 2012The adoption of social media in the wine industry provides a counter-intuitive insight. It is often said that social media helps "level the playing field," that it helps small businesses compete with larger companies.
And yet it seems to me that in the wine industry it is the bigger, more successful wineries that have more fully embraced social media as a way to engage consumers. By contrast, so many small wineries are struggling to figure it out and take advantage of the opportunity that social media offers.
Two charts in a webinar presented by Silicon Valley Bank and titled State of the Wine Industry 2012 – 2013 bear this out.
As the first chart indicates, the larger the winery, the more positive its perception of social media.
The second chart, unrelated to the first, notes that financial strength is correlated to size. Larger wineries (especially those producing more than 100,000 cases per year) are doing better financially than smaller wineries. That's probably not a surprise to anyone in the wine industry.
What's interesting to me is that these large, successful wineries, which tend to be quite savvy in marketing (they have to be to be successful), are also very positive about and active on social media. Obviously social media didn't make them successful, but the fact that they believe in it should be a lesson for smaller wineries looking to grow.
