Lots of Content in a Short Amount of Time
Last month I was at a social media content shoot (photography & videography) for one of my California winery clients, and I had a revelation. When it comes to content, wineries are different. The shoot consisted primarily of a Winemaker conversation. We wrapped before noon, and as I was pulling away, I did some mental calculations to figure how much content we had produced. I figured we had content for 20-24 social media posts. The actual number would turn out to be 32.
After three hours of shooting, we had enough content for 4 months, (at a posting frequency of 2x per week), with 26 video clips and 6 usable brand images (despite a heavy morning fog). There would be another 2-3 hours of work in simple edits to add a color grade, audio clean up, and pulling the final clips.
What Makes it Work?
I was very pleased, as was my client. But I’m an analytical guy, and so I had to wonder: what made this shoot so productive relative to others?
The answer I want to believe is that we’ve become lean and mean from experience. We’re used to high expectations and limited budgets, so there’s been a sort of Darwinian evolution in our ability to get a high output in a short amount of time. The cherry on that sundae is that we’ve been working with wineries long enough to know stuff about winemaking. We understand what a Winemaker means when they refer to fruit/acid balance or extended ripening periods. We can pose appropriate questions, so we don’t move in circles. That is the “pat myself on the back” answer.
But even if all the above if true (and I want to believe it is), there are underlying factors. One is the fact that creating content for wineries is easier than other businesses. Why? Because wineries are rich in subject matter. Almost everything that happens at a winery is interesting. Cool stuff happens all year, from bud break to ripening, harvest, crushing, fermentation, aging, bottling and, of course, tasting. There is so much visually and narratively compelling stuff going on at your average winery that it can feel like a cheat code for content production.
Why Do Wineries Struggle With Content?
But if wineries have a wealth of subject matter, why do so many of them still struggle to produce content? Many of them simply have chronic staffing and budget issues, but it goes beyond that. Making content is a bit like making wine. It’s not hard to do, per se. But it’s hard to do it well. Both disciplines demonstrate that success comes not always from what you put in, but often from what you leave out. In the content world, we call that editing. The craft of editing is keeping the helpful (aka brand-building) stuff and getting rid of the stuff that doesn’t help you. The art is knowing the difference. That’s where many wineries go wrong. There is literally too much stuff to choose from, and often no coherent system for choosing. It feels overwhelming and thus may seem like a resource problem. But it can also be viewed as an editing problem.
The Winemaker Superpower
I have come to believe that the best Winemakers are editors at heart. Making great wine often depends as much on what is left out as it does on what is included. And like any good editor, Winemakers are fearless about removing extraneous things, sometimes brutally so. That’s their superpower. And when it comes to producing content, you can put that superpower to work. Winemakers can quickly anchor you to what matters the most for your brand and they will often unconsciously define your entire content strategy for you. What they care about, as well as what they don’t care about, is a distillation of your brand essence.
Our approach to working with Winemakers is to periodically get them talking on camera. The first principle is to keep the conversation concise and relevant, zeroing in on what matters, navigating away from what doesn’t. The Winemaker must feel that the discussion is substantial and the time is well spent. We move through a directed but casual Q&A session, with an objective to produce stories about the winemaking process as well as thoughts about every new release. If you are careful to maintain the momentum and a comfortable conversational flow, the content will often come pouring out, dare I say, like fine wine (sorry, had to do it).
The bonus is that the stories you hear will direct you to other sources for content (e.g. a Winemaker refers to something a Vineyard Manager achieved), and those cues can lead you to even more on-brand content.
Use Your Unfair Advantage
Wineries need content to acquire customers just as they need grapes to make wine. In the world of content, wineries have a built-in market advantage. Unlike say, a warehousing & storage company, a winery will organically generate a bunch of cool subject matter that can be made into powerful content. High quality content is densely packed with narratively compelling storylines that are authentic to the brand, so it will resonate most with the customers that are most likely to enjoy your offering, and generate long-term customer relationships (aka high-margin sales). As a winery, your advantage is that the foundational part is already done. You have great subject matter.
To turn great subject matter into effective content, get your Winemaker involved, let them point you in the right direction, and take a lesson from the art of winemaking. Remove what you don’t need, and what’s left will be powerful in its simplicity.