gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

looks like i'm back drinking the stormhoek kool-aid again

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.

london geek dinner/pubcrawl with scoble and winer, 7.00pm Dec 7th

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.

stormhoek given south africa's no. 1 brand campaign award

Just got this e-mail:

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.

[Full story from bizcommunity.com.]

"the one with the back label on the front"

[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.

[UPDATE: Stormhoek Twitter UK Promo:] I've been allowed to send sample bottles to anybody who wants one. The deal is, you have to be UK-based, of legal drinking age, and on Twitter. Send me an email if you're interested, Thanks. Rock on.

geek dinners

["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.

valentine's day is a'coming

[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...

quick reminder

If you're still after a half-case [6 bottles] of Stormhoek Blue Monster wine, go here. Thanks.

the blue monster game

[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.]

re. rising above the clutter

[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here.]

Like the Good Book says, "All is Vanity". From The Frontal Cortex:

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!

"social objects": blue monster wine update

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.

the "smarter wine" idea

[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."

stormhoek blue monster reserve

[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.]

valentines and geek dinners etc.

[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.

2000 geek dinners via facebook

["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.

stormhoek pics

[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.]

london international wine fair

[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...

stormhoek blue label

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?

tagline feedback requested

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."

the week wine club

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.

thresher update

The Thresher Virus 2.0 begins to kick into gear... [SFX: Evil Laugh.]

[DOWNLOAD THRESHER'S 40%-OFF COUPON HERE.]

thresher virus 2.0

[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.]

thesher 2.0

For those of you who may not remember, last December Stormhoek released an online voucher for 40% off any wine or champagne in any Thresher store. And it went viral. Besides making the national news, it generated £15million [Fifteen million pounds] of business for Thresher in only a few days. Besides that, it trebled Stormhoek sales for the time it was running [and not just in Thresher, but everywhere in the UK].

So yes, it was a good outcome. Which is why I want to do it again. Another good outcome is always welcome around here etc.

Sure, you could argue that Thresher virus was also a fluke. We had zero control over the outcome, all we did was post it online and see what would happen. But that's why they're called "viruses": Because they're unpredictable. If they were predictable, we'd call them something else.

Anyway, I pitched Jason on it already. He's pretty skeptical that we can make it happen again- "Lightning never strikes twice" etc. But I'm thinking it might just work because:

1. There are a lot of people who already know about the last voucher. So there's a level of baked-in "fame" already there.

2. There are already a lot of people out there who used the first voucher. They know what they got out of it, so they might be willing to use it again for similar reasons.

3. The people who missed it first time around might be willing to have a go this time.

In short, I think there are enough people out there wiling to have another go at redeeming the coupon one more time, even if this time the story isn't as newsworthy to break into the mainstream media machine like it did last time.

Thoughts?

get the right culture going, and the tech looks after itself

So I've been working for the Stormhoek winery just shy of two years. Here are my tasting notes:

1. Two years ago I asked the rhetorical question, "Why shouldn't a small wine company see people like Google, Microsoft or Apple as their competition? Why should the conversation be only limited to other small wineries? It makes no sense." At the time, it seemed a really 'out there' thing to be asking. Not any more.

2. Stormhoek sold forty thousand cases in 2005.

3. This month we'll ship forty thousand cases. At least.

4. Do the math.

5. It was the Stormhoek blog that put us on the map. But it took 2 years of hard graft for it to turn into sales on a massive scale.

6. Two years ago, I estimated that a well-executed Web 2.0 marketing plan would take about two years to execute. In retrospect, that was a pretty good call.

7. Yes, I understand that not everybody has two years to play with. Some people are only as good as their last financial quarter. But that is why I work for a small, private company. If Stormhoek was owned by Wall Street, I'd be dead meat.

8. Comparing a good 2003 Bordeaux with a good 2003 Burgundy is not much different than knowing who won the 1992 Superbowl, versus who won the 1985 Superbowl. The intellectual barriers to entry are actually quite low. The people who pretend otherwise are weak and pathetic.

9. My mother, in her day, was a very successful businesswoman in the IT sector. Her best line ever was "Have you hugged your customer today?" I wish there were hundreds of clones of me, all out there on the road, giving customers metaphorical daily hugs.

10. One thing that the Tesco road trip nailed for me: Most wine is bought by ordinary folk. Most of them are women. Most choose the wine because they like the label. Most couldn't give a hoot about 'terroir' or country of origin. Most won't spend more than $10. And that, my friends, is the market I am in. Sure, the male-dominated, over-fifty-dollar "snob" market might be a good wee business to be in for some folk, but be warned: it's a surprisingly tiny niche.

11. One thing you learn fast in this business: Supply is not the issue. Whether you're talking two dollars or two hundred dollars a bottle, the world is FLOODED with great choices, from every wine-producing country in the world. Unless you have an outstanding product at the price point you're selling at, you're in serious trouble.

12. Because the average customer has so many great choices [too many, some would argue] the trick to this game is to rise above the clutter. The way to do that is to build meaningful brands that connect to people in real-world ways. Anything else is business suicide. Sadly, too many winemakers only learn this the hard way, AFTER they've sunk $20 million and ten years of their lives into the enterprise.

13. Stormhoek has 15 people working for it in its global HQ in London. We're tiny. A lot of the wine businesses doing the same number of cases as ours will have fifty to a hundred people on the payroll. So if I ever look a bit frazzled and burnt-out to you, now you know why.

14. We can make this as lucrative and as intellectually stimulating as we want to. The ball is in our court.

15. It took two years, but Stormhoek is finally starting to feel like working for a Silicon Valley startup. Everyone is really pumped up. Contrast this with the average staid, boring schtick of your average "gentlemanly" wine business.

16. What's driving innovation and sales on our end is not a technological issue, it's a cultural issue. Get the right culture going, and the tech looks after itself.

17. When I started working in the advertising business as a young buck in London, back in the late 1980s, Bartle Bogle Hegarty were considered the best game in town, even if they were not the biggest agency. Every young advertising student aspired to have a gig there one day, everyone daydreamed of one day having John Hegarty return their calls. The were considered the Praetorian Guard. Within two years from now, I want every smart, driven young person in the wine trade to be thinking the same way about us. That to me would be a far more worthy definition of "success", than how many cases we sell.

cath and colin

Two of my favorite people, Catherine and Colin, in the Stormhoek London office today.

more thoughts on customer engagement

[The current favorite for our next Stormhoek cartoon label. Every person in the trade that I've shown it to has loved it. Very cool.]

After an extremely busy 2006, and an even busier 2007 [so far], I briefly harbored what now seems like an insane idea- that once I got back from my Stormhoek Road Trip, I would take some time off. You know, maybe go down to the South of France and visit Sigurd for a while, and just generally chill out by the pool or whatever.

No such luck. Looks like the next month is going to be a busy one. There's SO MUCH left to do.

My new Stormhoek mantra is "Customer Engagement". I'm in the wine business, and it seems to me that if I want to be able to afford rent next month, I need to figure out clever ways to ship wine cases. Stormhoek is an outstanding product, and we seem to have have good relationships with all the big supermarkets, which drive well over 60% of the UK wine trade. Where I see the opportunity to grow the business is in the intensity with which we engage with the average supermarket shopper. There's many ways to skin this- everything from more road trips, sponsoring more blog dinner to yes, the label on the bottle. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the ordinary Brit pushing a shopping trolley, and giving her what she wants. Everything else is secondary.

For all the fun and buzz of the road trip, what I personally got most from it was an amazing and deep first-hand experience of supermarkets. I sincerely believe that this will prove invaluable to me down the road.

colin editing

Colin editing a film in the hotel lounge. It's been like this all month- a tremendous adventure, all done on the hoof, and yes, utterly exhausting.

There just the three of us on the road, doing what ordinarily would require five times that number. But the extremity of the circumstances is what gives the whole exercise its edge.

And edge is where the action is, these days...

vote for your favorite stormhoek label!!!!

We've added a wee voting machine on the Stormhoek blog.

We're coming out with some new cartoon labels, so we'd like your feedback. Feel free to go vote for your favorite design. The cartoon with the most votes will end up as a new Stormhoek label, when we make our next production run. Very cool. Thanks!

stormhoek road trip, day three

Greetings from sunny York etc.

commissioning gapingvoid cartoons

[A lithograph idea I currently have for Technorati.]

Over the last year, I've received DOZENS of commission requests to design people's logos, business cards, illustrate their books etc etc. All of which I've pretty much turned down.

The main reasons for dragging my feet: I was busy. I wasn't sure how much to charge. Should I charge a lot? A little? I could see it overwhelming me completely, at the expense of my other work. I never had any intention of becoming a professional illustrator. The business model does little for me.

Oh well, that is in the past. I am happy to announce I have talked to the folk at Stormhoek and we've come up with a solution.

If you fancy commissioning a gapingvoid drawing for your own use, I have developed a new business model that [A] works for me, [B] works for Stormhoek and [C] doesn't cost you an arm and a leg.

Please e-mail me if you wish to know more. Thanks.

the stormhoek branding exercise

Over at Stormhoek, we've been messing around internally with what we call "Branding Exercises". Basically, we're trying to nail down in writing what the Stormhoek brand represents and stands for. It's still very much a work in progress, but here are some initial, strictly non-definitive thoughts of mine. Anybody else have any ideas? Thanks.

1. We're a small South African vineyard. We make the best South African wine for the money, end of story.

2. We believe in punching above our weight. In this regard, we've been pretty fortunate. We're known for trying out relatively "out there" marketing ideas. We do that for a reason. When you are a small company in a relatively isolated part of the word, thousands of miles away from your main customer base, you frankly have no other choice.

3. We believe that even a small company like ours can change the world, even in a small way. Why shouldn't a small wine company in South Africa see large international companies like Google and Microsoft as their competition? Why should the battle only be confined to other small South African vineyards? It makes no sense.

4. "It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it." There's more to life than wine. Sure, we love wine, we love making it, but it's a big world out there. We try to make allies not just with other wine geeks, but with other interesting people trying to do amazing things. This is why we're so drawn to the internet. That's where passionate people invariably head for.

5. On one level, we take ourselves very seriously. On another level, we try to keep a sense of humor about it all. We try to "keep it real", which is another way of saying, we try to keep it interesting, as much for ourselves as anyone else.

6. We believe the wine business can use a good kick in the pants. We certainly try to do our part. Burying oneself in the usual blanket of wine clichés to us is not a viable marketing strategy. With hundreds of thousands of vineyards out there, and only so many distribution channels available, you face two stark choices: Either rise above the clutter, or face a lifetime of misery and woe.

7. We live in extremely interesting times. The internet has changed everything. Our story is proof of that. Get with the program or reconcile yourself to entrepreneurial oblivion.

8. It's just wine, People. Sure, we make excellent product. But let's not get too carried away. At the end of the day, even the best Bordeaux is just fermented grape juice. What's more interesting to us is the conversations people have over a bottle of wine. There's a human element to all this we find utterly mysterious and fascinating.

9. You only live once, and not for very long. Try to make a difference while you're here. It isn't just about the money, and it sure as heck isn't about making "a good product at a good price". It's about doing something that matters. It's about doing something that resonates with both yourself and the people you care about.

10. We humans are incredible beings. Doing something that continually reminds us of this simple, basic truth is where the real fun is.

introducing: stormhoek valentine's rosé

[The Stormhoek "Big Love" Valentine's Rosé... with this gapingvoid cartoon as the main design. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

The good news is, the Stormhoek Valentine's road trip seems to be coming together nicely. Looks like it'll be an interesting time all round. Looks like there will be a lot of Rosé being drunk in February.

The bad news is, because of the tight schedule, I've had to cancel my appearance at LIFT in Geneva. I was hoping to be able to take a day off the road trip to sneak away to the conference, but with 35 stores to visit in 2 weeks, it simply wasn't possible.

Dammit. I was looking forward to seeing Scoble et al again. But it's the biggest two weeks in Stormhoek's history, so you gotta do what you gotta do.

Yeah, I'm excited about the tour. But I'm more excited about the new cartoon label. That'll shift far more cases of wine than any crazy-ass blogging cartoonist, stalking people in supermarkets with a microphone and video camera. Heh.

road trip dates confirmed

[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]

My dates for my Stormhoek Valentine's Roadtrip have been confirmed:

February 2nd: Inverness, Corstorphine [Edinburgh].

3rd: Newcastle, Durham, Tadcaster.

4th: Blackpool, Bidston Moss [Merseyside], Horwich, Warrington.

5th: Stockport [Manchester], Altrichham [Manchester], Redditch [Worcestershire], Cardiff [Wales].

6th: Yeovil [Somerset], Bournemouth.

7th: Purley, Gatwick, Chichester.

8th: Sandhurst, Bursledon, Cirencester.

9th: Reading, Newbury, Abingdon.

10th: Barr Hill, Royston, Watford.

11th: Aylesbury, Ipswitch.

12th: Cheshunt [Herts.], Colchester.

13th: Pitsea [Essex], Twickenham.

14th: Brooklands [Surrey], New Malden [Surrey].

[UPDATE: Tour Map is here.]

You can download a more detailed itinerary here: [Word Document].

Cut and paste the postcode in the Word doc into Google Maps or Mapquest to get super-precise directions. If any bloggers want to meet me in Tesco's while I'm there, or maybe a drink in the evening, just phone me on my mobile on the day +44 (0) 770 309 9462.

We knocked down the final number of stores I'll be visiting by about a third, sadly. In the end we decided we wanted to spend more than ten minutes in each store, so there was really nothing else to do.

If this goes well, there's already talk of doing something similar in both Germany and the USA. The virus spreads.

monday report

[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]

All my actions these days are centered around the Valentine's Road Trip. 2 weeks driving up and down the country, visiting Tesco supermarkets, signing Stormhoek lithographs. 50 individual stores in all. Ouch.

I don't have the final schedule yet, but it's roughly February 1st-14th. Pretty much the entire UK is being covered. Plymouth, Inverness, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, London... even looking at the list on paper leaves me feeling exhausted.

If it goes well, the potential payoff for Stormhoek is huge. Very nerve-wracking. But in a good way.

love reaches into far deeper places than trust ever could

As I've been mentioning for a while now, Stormhoek is launching a new series of cartoon wine labels, designed by myself.

We're launching our first label at the end of this month, with a Valentine-related theme [the image above is not it, I'll let y'all see it closer to the date etc]. It'll be going into Tesco's, the UK's largest supermarket chain.

All very exciting. Two points:

1. Roadtrip

There will be a noteworthy promotion. Not being the type of folk to sit on our bottoms all day and wait for the results to magically happen elsewhere, we're going on the road. Namely, I'm going on the road.

Think of it as a bit like a book tour. Except instead of visiting bookstores, I shall be visiting Tesco stores. And instead of signing books, I shall be signing this new commemorative edition of Stormhoek lithographs that I'm currently working on, to any shopper who wants one.

I am hoping to recruit Colin Kennedy of Get Your People fame to accompany me, as traveling companion, assistant, and the guy who holds the camera & mike during podcasts. We're meeting next week or so to discuss.

We kick off the tour circa February 1st, and hope to visit 50 Tesco's stores by Valentine's Day. It'll be busy, that's for sure.

2. Love

We're not just launching the new cartoon series around Valentine's Day just for the usual holiday-promo reasons. Like I said earlier, in this brave new world of ours, LOVE is, or should be, at the center of marketing. My buddy, Tara Hunt once famously said that "Trust is the new currency". A nice thought, but I disagree. Love is where it's at. Love reaches into far deeper places than Trust ever could.

Of course, I don't just mean romantic, sexual love. I mean human connection. "Agape". If you don't have that, like Saint Paul once said, you have nothing.

And why do people drink wine together? The same reason people write and read blogs. Connection. Human connection. That means "Love" on some level, whether you care to admit it or not.

Music may be food of love, but wine is the drink. Welcome to the heart of Stormhoek marketing.

We live in interesting times.

blue monster lithograph auction

Microsoft's Steve Clayton has put 3 of the "Blue Monster" signed lithographs up for charity auction on e-Bay. All proceeds will go to Microsoft's preferred charity, The NSPCC.

[The auction's e-Bay link is here.] The record for a gapingvoid print on e-Bay is around $170 for one of the Techcrunch party prints from last August. It'll be interesting to see what happens to this one etc.

Any MS employees or whoever reading this, please feel free to spread the word, Thanks.

stormhoek makes the national news [again]

Video Clip: Stormhoek makes the Channel 4 Lunchtime news.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from Channel 4 News, one of the big UK national TV news programs. They wanted me to come on the show and talk about the Thresher's Virus, which was just ending in the run-up to Christmas.

Well, as I was out of town at the time, I couldn't make it. But Jason over at Stormhoek went in my place. Within an hour a car picked him up at his office in London and drove him over to the TV studio.

It was interesting to watch. The interviewer wanted Jason to talk about whether this kind of viral was either a cynical marketing ploy or corporate screw-up. Jason wanted to talk about "The Power Of Web 2.0" instead. So watch out for the little tug-of-war happening.

What's interesting for me is the idea that you can start a blog in relative obscurity, and within 18 months you can be making the national news because of it.

Thanks to Mike Butcher for putting Channel 4 in touch with us.