Local wineries use Web to sell

New technologies are opening new avenues to national marketing for smaller wineries.

Hope Family Wines and Justin Winery, working with Juice Marketing and Advertising in Paso Robles, recently have received critical attention for their Internet videos.

“We compete with funny little Web videos,” said Joel Peterson, director of communications for Hope Family Wines on Highway 46 West. “It’s a way in for a smaller company and small region like Paso Robles to be a bigger player.”

One of the winery’s videos that received attention this year is “Wine Is…” Selected from a pool of 50,000 advertising entries, it won Juice Marketing a gold prize at the Coastal California ADDY Awards.

Last fall, the same video won a contest held by Wine Spectator. Peterson got the idea for the magazine’s contest, which called for nonpromotional videos.

Hundreds of interviews later, the product is a documentary-style riff from local winemakers answering the question: What is wine to you? (Scroll down to view the video).

Dina Mande, owner of Juice, called the project a “labor of love” for her agency, with a “very tiny budget” — $1,500 just covered expenses, according to Peterson.

“It’s made its way through circles of wine buyers, sommeliers and the wine trade in general,” Peterson said. “It still has legs.”

Among the six ADDYs that Juice earned this year, one bronze award was for a five-minute parody of the television show “The Office” to promote a Hope Family wine, Westside Red Troublemaker. (Scroll down to view the video).

Another bronze was for a Justin Vineyards & Winery webisode series. QR codes are printed on a bottle’s label. When scanned with a smartphone, the square code calls up a short video about the wine.

The Justin series can also be viewed at www.hellojuice.com.

Hope Family is preparing to release its new brand, Candor, with such QR codes connected to a series of 90-second “funny, irreverent” video clips.

In 2009, the winery made an iPhone application, Wine DJ, which calls up an iTunes playlist to match a particular wine and mood.

Initially intended to reach millennials — those born after 1980 — and newly legal drinkers, the efforts are hitting an older demographic, too, Peterson said.

“It’s people 40, 45 and up who have these smartphones,” he said. “My parents watch YouTube. At the end of the day, I think it crosses over.”

New digs for Juice

Juice Marketing has moved into new offices at 560 10th St., Ste. 101.

“I was thinking we couldn’t hire any more help,” said Mande, whose team of four previously worked in her 500-square-foot home studio. “It’s going to be an exciting new chapter for us in our new digs.”

Next door to the Paso Robles Wine Alliance, Juice occupies about 800 square feet, with two small offices and a conference room also used for video screening and editing.

Do you have news for Wine Notes? Email rrailey@thetribunenews.com or call 441-4556.