Quick Update: I’m seeing a lot of Google visitors who are searching for “fish eye wine cask” visiting here which proves my point about their need to get this product’s content on their site. In any case, you were probably looking to buy the wine or read some reviews so I have added a set of quick links right above here to take you to your intended destination. Please do feel free to read this review if you’re interested in online marketing or how you ended up here instead of on the fisheye site. Thanks!
Overview:
Fisheye Winery of Ripon, California launched a new integrated marketing campaign for a 3-Liter Wine Cask (essentially boxed wine) during the E! Academy Awards red carpet show. According to the press release from their agency B.A.R.C. Communications, the key goal of the campaign is to “reinforce the growing popularity of both Fisheye Wines and Premium Cask packaging”.
“To convey the quality of Fisheye’s award-winning wines, San Francisco integrated marketing agency B.A.R.C. Communications links the “new” casks to traditional ones used for centuries to store fine wines. One spot opens on a masterly painting in the William Hogarth tradition, depicting 18th century revelers tapping into a cask of wine. Through the magic of stop-motion animation, the old-world characters come alive and move into a modern-day pop art gathering.”
The creative overall works well for me as it’s unusual to see a winery use animation and CGI in their ads. It reinforces the “relaxed” brand image the winery conveys on their website and should appeal well to the younger wine drinking demos. Wine has been exploding in popularity in the past several years among the 22-27 crowd and the idea of having a premium wine accessible in a “fit-in-your-refridgerator” pack is appealing.
Interactive Execution:
Many companies still don’t see how important it is to have a digital channel strategy in launching integrated campaigns. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with Fisheye’s launch. I first visited the Fisheye Wines website a week ago when I saw the commercial. Here is a list of the problems with the site:
- No mention of premium wine cask when campaign launched on site. Site now features commercial in an embedded video unit on the main page
- Site still contains ZERO information on the wine cask outside of the “tv-to-internet” dump of the commercial.
- Site utlizes an appropriate beach-theme but it takes way too long to get around the different sections. Scrolling from one end of the beach to another takes about 15 seconds at maximum speed. There are no alternative navigation options.
- Site offers recipes and seasonal newsletters …. but in PDF format! Nothing pulls you out of the rich interactive experience like an Acrobat window loading a static page.
Finding Information:
After watching the commercial, I was thinking to myself, “hmmm.. a premium boxed wine, that sounds interesting.” and I pulled up Google and typed in “Fisheye Wine Cask”. The results? Absolutely no paid-search presence. This might be understandable if you have the top organic results but Fisheye was the last result on the first page (and to top it off, it linked to a PDF). Nine other websites are more relevant than Fisheye was at a search term that included their name and their new product. Searches for several other terms including: “fisheye cask”, “fisheye wines”, “fisheye wine” also produced no paid-search results from Fisheye.
Fish out of Water
Fisheye say’s of their audience:
The Millennial generation (aged 22-27) offer the wine industry the kind of growth potential not seen in more than thirty years. This “pool” of consumers are not about the fuss and stuffiness formally associated with the wine generation preceding them. These millennials are looking for interesting, fun wines full of intense flavor that don’t cost a priates ransom – and that’s what FishEye wines deliver!
Fisheye wines may certainly deliver but only if a “millennial” can find them. Don’t they know that their target audience spends more time online than with the TV (not to mention we use DVRs to skip over commercials)? For a campaign supposedly targeting the the 22-27 crowd, Fisheye has missed the mark in the digital portion of their integrated strategy.
Wineries may not be expected to be cutting edge when it comes to digital marketing, but given the prevelance of the medium and how important this channel is to their target audience, Fisheye should have ensured that they had a more robust digital presence outside of adding the commercial to their website.
Campaign Scores:
Creative Execution: 7/10
Interactive Execution: 2/10
Overall Score: 3/10
Key Suggestions for the Fisheye Premium Cask Launch:
- Add more detailed section to website to introduce your new product. You’ve got great content in your commercial about “old world” wine preservation techiques. This needs to be extended onto your website and elaborated upon.
- Upgrade your website’s navigation system. The 22-27 crowd doesn’t have the patience to wait 15 seconds to get from one section to another. Double the scroll speed and add a navigation menu.
- Get rid of all the PDFs on your site unless you’re expecting someone to print it out. Take Nielsen’s PDF notes to heart.
- Start a search engine marketing campaign immediately on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Buy keywords and phrases for all of your products so that people can start finding you. Buy branded keywords as well if you don’t already occupy the top spot in the organic results.
- Think Viral - You are in an industry that is ripe for revolution. People still think of Franzia and box-wine as “cheap” substitutions for bottled wine. Your new product can change that. You need to be evangelists for your box and the best way to do that is to spread the gospel like wildfire. I’m sure you’ve got scientific data to back up the claims of improved freshness — put it on a blog and get the message out there. Wine enthusiasts are vocal and passionate and you’ll stir debate (the cork crowd vs the synthetic crowd vs the spout crowd) and that’s exactly what you need. You need to generate buzz and discussion because that’s how you will connect with your target audience.
I hope readers have found my first official full length campaign review an interesting read. I hope that people from Fisheye and/or their agency will be kind enough to find this review and respond in the comments or provide some insights into their campaign strategy.
