Microsoft’s real competition: Stormhoek
Interesting to see that Stormhoek are competing against Microsoft.
Oh, you gotta read Hugh Macleod’s blog to get this one. But, there’s a lot of truth to this. Let’s say you have $400 burning a hole in your pocket. You have a lot of choices where to spend that money. It could go to an Xbox 360. But it could go to a case of wine too.
Hey, if you decide Stormhoek is a better investment than an Xbox 360, at least invite me over to drink some! ;-)
Quite interesting to hear the story of hour they shipped out 100 bottles of their wines to bloggers in Europe, in order to create a buzz around their product.
Does writing this - my part in the first UK blog wine promo - make me a Buzz Agent? Gaping Void via Hugh Macleod, sent out a batch of pre-release samples of South African producer Stormhoek's wines in an attempt to utilise blogs as a marketing 'word of mouth tool'. Personally I think it is a little early; Blogs in the UK are under-developed when compared to America. The British either dont know exactly what they are or deride them; but then word of mouth is word of mouth and website link is a website link.
Even Scobleizer gets in on the action
If you don’t know, my friend Hugh Macleod draws these cute little cartoons on the backs of business cards. He’s gotten a bit of attention from the bloggers (I used his drawings in my PowerPoints when I give presentations).
Anyway, he’s been raving and ranting about Stormhoek. Anyway, they sponsored the geek dinner on Saturday so I got to try a bit of their product (some might say a bit too much, but we’ll keep that among friends). Heheh.
I also got to meet the folks from Stormhoek and found them to be a friendly bunch but we ended up talking about wines we’ve had and wineries we remember. The number, for most folks, are very small. Funny enough the name Bonny Doon came up a great deal. This is a small winery near Santa Cruz, CA (not connected with Stormhoek in any way). But what Bonny Doon does well is give people lots of stories to remember and talk about. Have you ever had “Big House Red?” Why is it called “Big House?” Because the grapes were grown near San Quentin, the famous California prison. Their site says “wine should be as much fun as government regulations allow.” Humor. It goes a long way.