Moments Later: All things MARKeting

This past week, I got to host Nomacorc’s 5^th Wine Marketing Exchange event. We developed this series, held twice per year in California to bring interesting marketing speakers, insights and ideas to the wine marketing community. Our theme this time was “Storytelling: How to stay top of mind and close to heart".

Photos courtesy of Paul Mabray

I gave the opening introduction to frame the day. Since being close to heart was part of the theme, I told the story of my younger daughter Fanny and her path from cooking with me in our kitchen when she was a little girl to winning the Rachael Ray’s Great American Cookbook Competition last May. I shared an emotional story filled with rich and vivid memories. My purpose was to show an example of how a beloved brand can be created.

But getting to spend time with Mark Schaefer and his wonderful wife Rebecca was the real treat. Mark is a marketing professional whose work has inspired, challenged and excited me. He writes one of the leading blogs on marketing called Grow, teaches marketing at Rutgers and is a marketing consultant in demand. He is also the author of several fine books on marketing and along with Tom Webster, has a witty and spontaneous twice-monthly podcast called the Marketing Companion.

Mark W. Schaefer and Jeffrey Slater at Nomacorc's Wine Marketing Conference

We spent several hours talking at dinner and I think we recognized in each other a real common worldview of marketing.

Most important of all is that we both are proud of and love the marketing profession.

We think this is an absolutely wonderful time to do what we both do every day. I believe Mark’s comment was that we appear to be from the same marketing pod. Cerebral and intellectual yet passionate about making the worse pun possible and finding humanity in every moment. We both celebrate ideas, insights and a fresh new way of seeing a marketing challenge. And we believe deeply in the idea of being more human in our work. Mark's website identifies three pillars: Marketing, Social Media and Humanity.

Mark spoke to our audience of senior marketing professionals for about 45 minutes and took questions from the audience. He shared his views on content shock which we are all experiencing in the tsunami of information flowing toward us through social media and other channels of communication. As he discussed the next levels of advanced technology coming at us, the little clicker to advance the slides kept moving too fast and skipped ahead. It was a wonderfully ironic and human moment that Mark laughed at as he kept telling stories and sharing ideas on our theme.

Mark shared the story of the wine client he worked with in Provence who use video to tell his story. As the 601st winery licensed to make rose in Provence, Steven Cronk had a real challenge with his Mirabeau brand. Using social media as to differentiate his brand, a video went viral about opening a wine with his shoe. This video has over 8 millions views. To read the full story visit Mark's blog post about Mirabeau or go to the Youtube video.

Mark closed with a reference to one of his favorite teachers and thought-leaders Dr. Robert Cialdini, who when asked how you scale the work Mark proposes in larger corporations, the advice was BE MORE HUMAN. I couldn't agree more.

Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.

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