Purely cos someone mentioned it in a posting I read earlier in the day, I made a trip out to the local large Waitrose, to pick up a bottle of Stormhoek wine. They’ve used a blog to promote themselves and their product, and recently claimed that ‘blogging doubled sales in less than twelve months’. My wife and I are generally red-wine-only people, but all I could find was a Pinot Grigio. In fact, it was pretty good (for a white).
Wine doesn’t generally inspire much brand loyalty, certainly not with me as a supermarket shopper. In fact, part of the fun I get from wine is the sheer variety of the stuff. I consciously try not to buy wines I’ve had before, unless they were exceptional. Blogging is certainly one way to inspire a better attachment to the Stormhoek name, and if those figures are true, it must be working.
I’ll certainly buy a bottle of Stormhoek red, if I ever see one. If they ‘get’ the blogging thing, we’re clearly of a similar mindset.