Wine Storytelling and its Role in Brand Building
The 7 Best Opportunities to Build Your Brand with Winery Storytelling
Forbes calls storytelling one of the most powerful marketing techniques available for brands. For wineries, storytelling is a way to stand out in a crowded market and create lasting bonds with your customers.
There are seven opportune situations for wineries to use storytelling to build and reinforce their brand in the minds of their followers.
In this article, learn where those opportunities exist and how to deliver your winery story for each situation.
Unless nematodes are your target audience, your wine brand story should not be about your vineyard soils.
For winery storytelling to deliver its magic, it must be unique, authentic, and memorable. When it is received by your winery visitors and customers, they should be powerless but keep it with them as they go about their lives.
How does winery storytelling create loyal followings?
In a market with well over 400,000 different wines available, how can a winery attract an audience and create a loyal following?
Is it with an eye-catching label? A naughty name? What about a winery dog?
No, to truly create a bond with an audience, a winery must connect with its target audience on an emotional level. And the way to accomplish that is with storytelling.
Storytelling helps audiences understand the personality of a brand and the motivating factors driving decision-making for that brand. When a brand resonates with the values held by an audience member, a relationship can form.
Good storytelling offers an opportunity for your audience members to see themselves in the story. Feeling the triumphs and struggles of the main character, they can feel a kinship with the brand.
This sense of kinship with your brand, the feeling that the brand resonates with them, brings your new fans to a place of connection and loyalty to your winery.
A good story moves us on an even deeper level than we may know. Open this window to read how >.
The Art of Storytelling for Wineries:
What your story is not about
Your tasting room visitors are less interested in your dirt and more interested in knowing why their glasses are empty.
It’s natural for you to be in love with the vineyard soils in which your vines are nourished, the soils that you’ve nurtured with cover crops year after year; the soils which bring biological complexity to your wines.
But your tasting room visitors who just drove up from the city in their Rav4 are just not that into it.
They want your story, but they don't want a geology lesson.
As a kid, did you spend your days running along the vineyard rows? There's a story there.
Did your grandfather come up with a clever way to keep his vineyards producing during prohibition? That's a story.
Do you taste wine from tanks at 6:00 each morning during crush for sensory analysis? That, however, is an anecdote. It's entertaining banter, but it doesn't define who you are as a wine brand.
Neither do lessons on rootstocks or fermentation or conversion of acids into sugars within the grape.
When crafting and telling your winery's story, stay away from geology lessons, geography, viticulture, and chemistry. These are not your story.
The Art of Storytelling for Wineries:
Why storytelling is so powerful
When we hear a good story where we can see ourselves as relating to the characters ... we can't help but feel what that character is feeling.
We, (you know, "humans") are wired for social connections. We can't help this. In fact, scientist Matthew Lieberman makes the case in his most recent book, Social, that our need to connect is as fundamental as our need for food and water.
Lieberman explains that our brains have two fundamental neural circuits; one designed for social interactions, and one designed for non-social tasks.
Our biology is set to switch our brains to the neural circuit for social interactions by default whenever we complete a non-social task.
Interesting.
Stories connect us because we can see ourselves in those stories — we experience similar emotions as the characters, meaning we feel a connection with that character.
Our social neural circuit gets activated, and we can't help ourselves.
Storytelling is arguably the most influential form of communication at our disposal. Stories, more than facts, data, or other bits of information, are fundamental to persuasion.
Harnessing the Power of Storytelling for Wineries
I mentioned above that storytelling can be a persuasive tool. Indeed, it potentially possesses the superpower of turning visitors into loyal followers of your brand.
The talent in wielding this superpower is in weaving your wine brand story into your daily interactions with visitors, patrons, and members. This is the foundation of building your brand.
Your winery engages daily with the world — in various venues and situations. Each situation provides different opportunities and goals and may require a different approach.
When delivered to someone viewing your website for the first time, your story will likely differ in content from how it is relayed to a visitor in your tasting room.
Each of these vital brand-building opportunities deserves planning, thoughtful crafting, and even rehearsal in some cases.
Even the most casual encounters provide an opportunity to live your brand values. These values weave the thread of your wine brand story.
The Art of Storytelling for Wineries:
How to develop your winery story
You know your winery's story, but six elements should be considered when developing your storytelling presentation.
1: Identify your guiding light
You know what brought your winery to where it is today. You know what drove you to persevere during the times of difficulty and doubt. This is your guiding light and it serves as the central theme throughout your story.
2: Develop the central character
Who is it that carried the winery through to its current glory? Were they timid or bold and formidable? What vision did they hold? What setbacks did they face? Was there someone in this character's life they looked up to?
People love a central character who they can relate to, so you need to include details.
3: Create a narrative arc
Take your audience on a journey. Give your story a beginning, a middle, and an end. We all love drama and tension and bested foes, and we all like to feel uplifted at the end.
4: Use vivid imagery and emotion in your story
Whether your winery story is being told by the founder/winemaker or a tasting room host, it must feel like it is being relived in vivid color, with every detail intact.
When honing your story, look for opportunities to include more detail that makes every scene feel more real.
5: Interweave your core values
Your storytelling is a vehicle for communicating your brand values to your audience.
Do you value creativity and artistry? Weave that into the motivating factors of the central character. Was it a love for nature and protecting the land that was behind the creation of your winery? If so, use it as a focus for the theme
6: Adjust your story for the setting
Different audiences have different needs at different times. Tasting room visitors will expect to be entertained with a story or anecdote but remember they're there for the wine. Web visitors want engaging content with clarity. In comparison, tour attendees want the whole story.
Developing different versions of your winery's story allows you to communicate the same central theme, while still catering to audience needs.
Those who tell the stories rule society.
The seven best opportunities for using your wine brand story to build your brand
Different situations will attract inherently different audiences, with different goals, requiring different formats.
Here are seven key occasions when your target audiences, existing customers, club members, and complete strangers interact with your brand.
Each one is an opportunity to communicate your wine brand story — whether that is introducing your brand for the first time, reiterating what makes you unique, or demonstrating your brand values.
Here are the seven best-fit opportunities for using storytelling to strengthen your brand — opportunities that are most frequently squandered by small wineries.
1: Your website
Folks who develop content for winery websites may feel that of course, they are communicating the winery story. But surprisingly, this is very rarely the case.
Audience: online users who found your website through search, paid ads, or directly.
Format: Your website visitors may not give you the opportunity to spin a lengthy narrative. Your story must be honed down to a concise, punchy elevator pitch, and woven into your imagery.
You can give a fuller description of how you came to be where you are today, and the factors driving you forward on a deeper page within your site.
Keep in mind that your online visitors are not all looking for the same thing. Deliver your story then, as a teaser — an invitation to get to know your winery better.
Goals: The goal is to urge users to engage deeper into your website, and to want to learn more about who is behind this winery. Treat this as a first date.
2: Your tasting room
Audience: Visitors trying your wines for the first time
Format: Descriptive and inviting, but not too wordy (visitors are there for the experience, not the lecture). However, in the tasting room, hosts can gauge a visitor’s level of interest and can modify the presentation accordingly. Good tasting room hosts are skilled at this.
Goals: The goal is to make visitors want to be included in the family. If your story is something your visitors wish they could be a part of, they will engage deeper with your winery, possibly becoming long-time loyal members.
3: Winery tours
Audience: Visitors who want a behind-the-scenes view.
Format: Lots of details and background. Provide the complete picture in a storytelling format (narrative arc, developed characters, and details of struggle, and triumph). Invite your guests to engage and participate by asking questions, providing photo opportunities, and tasting from tanks or barrels.
Goals: The goal is to turn visitors into believers. Giving attendees the feeling that your winery is much more than a manufacturing plant; that it is a lifestyle borne out of an insatiable vision, is what gives your wine brand story life.
4: New subscriber welcome sequences
Audience: New email subscribers
Format: Quick to read, lively, personable, and welcoming. Include links to landing pages for subscribers to further engage with your brand.
Goals: To strengthen your brand values in the minds of new subscribers and increase loyalty to your winery.
5: Wine club onboarding programs
Audience: New Club members attending a winery tour as part of the onboarding process.
Format: Crafted to provide an inside view, treating the new club members as part of the family. Include personal anecdotes and details not shared elsewhere.
Goals: Make new members feel like insiders, and increase their loyalty to the brand.
6: Off-site tastings
Audience: People unfamiliar with your winery, yet showing their interest by attending a tasting event.
Format: Friendly, lively, and inviting. Appealing to the desire to be recognized and included.
Goals: To persuade attendees to want to experience more of your winery experience, and to be brought further into the fold.
7: Club shipments
Audience: Club members are already familiar with your story and your brand.
Format: Printed insert included with club shipment that describes the wines and thanks the members for being part of the family. Exhibit brand values in the message.
Goals: To reiterate that the members are recognized, known by the staff, and considered part of the family. To increase loyalty to the winery.
Want to Craft your wine story?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a Story Smith.
Get guidance for getting started, to steer you through challenging roadblocks, or engage Bradley Squires to develop your winery story for you.
Just pick a time for a free 30-minute consultation.
Bradley Squires
ENGAGEMENT CATALYST
Bradley Squires, the founder of Wine Chemistry Creative, helps wineries become memorable. He thinks of this as Creating Chemistry with your customers and future customers. Bradley has provided marketing services for some of the largest (and smallest) brands in the U.S.. Notable brands include Vintrace, UCSF, Ericcson, Grgich Hills, The Nature Conservancy, and Napa Valley Vintners. He holds degrees in Oenology, Viticulture, and Wine Marketing. He doesn’t have a dog.
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