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Press Release: Artisan Media and Bolen Photography Launch Innovative Product Photography Service “Bottle Shots”
Artisan Media, digital marketing service provider for the wine, beer and specialty food industries, and veteran photographer Rick Bolen are pleased to announce their collaboration on the launch of “Bottle Shots”.Sonoma, CA September 28, 2009 – ‘Bottle Shots’ is a service provided by Artisan Media and Bolen Photography for the wine, beer and specialty food industries offering professional, studio quality product photography at an affordable price. The ‘Bottle Shots’ program eliminates the need for shipping costs with a convenient pick up and delivery service and turn around time is greatly reduced with the new, centrally located, Sonoma studio.
Artisan Media founder Dan Chapin says, “The goal and inspiration for the ‘Bottle Shots’ program is to provide our clients with a convenient photography service to support the development of timely, relevant marketing collateral. We also understand how important it is to have high quality product photography delivered on a short deadline. We provide a one-stop-shop for all types of photography services in addition to providing the technology platform which allows us to deliver high resolution images across the globe.”
The Bottle Shots service includes single bottle shots, stylized beauty shots, as well as photography for wine club shipments and holiday gift packages. A portfolio of work is available upon request. Please visit the Artisan Media website (www.artisanmediaservices.com) for more information on this unique program.
About: Artisan Media, Dan Chapin
Founded in 2007 by Dan Chapin, Artisan Media is a full service digital marketing & technology services company supporting the wine, beer, and specialty food industries. Dan brings over a decade of experience with a broad background across technology and sales & marketing in the wine business. Prior to founding Artisan Media, he was part of the original team that launched Inertia Beverage Group and worked with over 250 wineries to provide leading edge ecommerce solutions and online marketplace access. Between 2000 and 2005 he held various positions within Sales & Marketing on the supplier side of the business working for several global wine companies, including Robert Mondavi Winery and Allied Domecq Wines, USA.
About: Rick Bolen
Rick Bolen has over thirty years experience as a commercial photographer, shooting all aspects of the wine trade with an emphasis on bottle shots for clients such as Far Niente/Nickel & Nickel, Rochioli, Cuvaison and Hanna. His images have appeared in advertisements and editorials in such publications as the Wine Spectator, Wines & Vines, Esquire, Town and Country and most recently a double page spread in the International Herald Tribune Sunday section. Rick was recently the chief photographer with New Vine Logistics providing product photography for Amazonwine.com.
Trends worth blogging about
I wanted to pass along some interesting info presented by Jim Gordon, the editor of Wines & Vines, at the Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma County last week. As a someone who occasionally engages the wine blogging community and has followed there ramblings over the past year, I agree with Jim that it's time for the cream must rise to the top. I look forward to reading more insightful blog posts in the next year. Tpics along the lines of technology, and digital media are certainly missing form the list below, but I think we have all had just about enough discussion regarding social media. Too much talk about the social media tools available and not enough about how to activate them to grow your business, IMHO.Trends Worth Blogging About
By Jim Gordon, Editor, Wines & Vines
To stand out as a wine blogger
• Know your subject
• Get the facts from the source
• Get the facts right, even the trivial ones
• Stake a claim and mine it
• Stay ahead of the pack
• Look beyond the blogosphere for topics
Knowledge opens doors
• Readers don't care about how wine is made?
• Your industry sources do
• The more you know, the more they'll share
• Opens new doors for your writing, in biz pubs, science pubs, etc.
Seven wine industry trends
1. Wine across America
2. Hot grape varieties
3. Water wars loom
4. Where there's smoke
5. Barrel sources
6. Alternative oak products
7. Packaging / closures
Direct Shipping..the show must go on!
Artisan Media has recently partnered with Pack N Ship Direct to provide our digital media services to Sonoma and Napa wineries. We are actively working with Pack N Ship Direct to help their winery clients optimize their digital marketing strategies and move more wine via trade and consumer direct channels.Recently I became particularly interested in how PNSD helps their winery clients to ship in the summer heat as most wineries shy away from shipping between July and September. The reality is that their wines are safer in Pack N Ship Direct's trucks than they are in most distributor trucks and warehouses. Below is more information on the program and FAQs.
Please contact Shelley McClure for additional information.
Shelley McClure | Office Manager | Direct: 707-838-2203 ext. 31 | shelley@vynapse.com| www.vynapse.com
FAQs: Temperature Control Shipping
What is the EXTRA cost????? NOTHING!!! The cost for shipping with this service is the same cost as you ship UPS ground.
We think everyone is going to love this service. There is no extra cost to you. You can ship orders ground instead of air and the wine will ship cross country at 55 degrees!
An additional plus that we have found is that since the packages go through less handling from the couriers and do not go through all the different hubs, there has been less damage to the packages.
Here is how it works:
Our trucking service VinShip is currently running a shipment out of our warehouse approximately every other Friday. We have both a Northern and Southern route, temperature control @ 55 degrees. Warehouse hubs are in Illinois & New York for the Northern route and the hubs are Texas & Florida for the Southern route. We have made arrangements with these warehouses for UPS for pick up from these four locations to deliver the remainder of the trip what the call “the last mile”.
The trucks leave the Windsor Warehouse on Friday and travel through the weekend to their first destination. After the pallets are unloaded at the first hub, they then continue to the second hub directly.
Attached is the Temperature Control Shipping Map. This shows the states that orders are shipping to and what warehouse location they will be trucked to. We have determined from each drop off location that once UPS picks up, most delivery points from there are 1-2 days. There are a few rare exceptions that may be 3 days for delivery.
If this is something you are interested in and would like an order package to ship all you need to do is add to the special instructions “Please ship Temperature Control” and the package will be included in the next truck shipment. If you have a specific scheduled ship date, please specify that as well in the special instructions “Please ship on the Temperature Control truck leaving on August 7th.”
As volumes increase, this service will be opening up to a weekly (and possibly shipping Wednesday’s or Thursday’s) service and potentially more hub locations. At this time we are using only the UPS service, but again as volumes increase, we will be able to open this up to FedEx as well. We hope you will take advantage of this service.
Here is another exciting service: Shipping with Ice Packs
We have ice packs available to ship in your packages.
These are special formula base ice packs. Ice packs can keep the wine cool up to 2-3 days. (This time is extended if the packages are traveling in the temperature control trucks through part of the shipment). They can be used in pulp packaging, but do have better success in Styrofoam packaging.
The price for the ice packs would be between $2.00 - $3.00 per package (not per order since some orders have multiple packages) depending on package size.
The quantity of ice packs used in each package would vary depending on the number of bottles per package. 24cc Ice Packs stay cool for 2-3 days
We hope you find these features as exciting as we do, and will find them a valuable asset in customer retention and increasing your sales through out the heat of Summer or even the freezing cold Winter.
Please contact us if you have any further questions!
How can Video SEO help to drive sales?
Search Engines are now the most effective way to drive proactively engaged searchers to your website. Since the user is already in the research cycle, the chances of garnering conversion are much higher than other forms of traditional advertising and media. With that said, SEO services are growing at the speed of light as more and more businesses embrace the value of having a solid SEO plan. Since Video Marketing is Artisan Media’s primary focus, it makes sense that we share with you the latest opportunities that video brings to your SEO.
In 2007, Google deployed an indexing system (Google Universal Search Feature) that takes into account video content and assigns a ranking value based on specific tags and keyword phrases. Currently, about 25% of all search results on Google yield video in the result string (Nate Elliott, Forrester Research Group). Videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages, Elliott found. A study, done by Elliott looked at 40 of the most popular keywords, and found:
"On the keywords for which Google offers video results, we found an average of 16,000 videos vying to appear on results pages containing an average of 1.5 video results—giving each video about an 11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results. By comparison, there were an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results—giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results."
Gary Thompson, President, Go Traffic Interactive says, “With these kind of odds in our favor, video is already becoming synonymous with relevant search results. In order to truly benefit from video and SEO, a long-term strategy should be deployed that includes creating the appropriate tags for the video and then ensuring the search engines know about it.” Gary goes on to say that video is “definitely the new wave of SEO, and most consumer direct businesses, such as wineries, have the opportunity to be leaders in their industry.”
Simply stated, as video becomes easier to produce and incorporated into marketing budgets, the next logical step is to integrate any video produced into your SEO efforts. It will not only drive qualified traffic to your website, it will enhance the user experience, and ultimately assist in the sales cycle.
Dan Chapin
Co-founder, President
Artisan Media
ARTISAN MEDIA @ Wine 2.0
We had the chance to sponsor and attend Wine 2.0 this past week and I was not disappointed. The event is always alot of fun and provides a venue for wine and tech geeks (in my case, one in the same) to mingle and chat about wine and technology. The event was covered by several news organizations, and we event got a mention in the Wines and Vines article below...San Francisco, Calif. -- Wine media executive Robert Asher says he's trying to drag the wine industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He was in good company Thursday, when the urban custom crush facility Crushpad hosted Wine 2.0, a gathering to promote the fusion of technology and wine...representatives from companies such as video marketing group Artisan Media had the chance to connect with winery owners at the event...
Click here to read more about this event.
Special thanks to Cornelius Geary from Wine 2.0 and RadCru.com who invited us to participate. We look forward to sponsoring again next year!
Q&A: How do I embed a video into my website?
Over the past year we have produced many videos for our winery clients. Our most popular videos produced have been Wine Bytes which we featured in this month's Artisan Media Newsletter. One of the most common questions we get from our video marketing clients is "Now that I have this cool video, how do I embed it into my website?" Most wineries have some sort of video (whether it is professionally produced or the product of one of their staff members who is handy with a video camera and editing software) that helps to showcase the winery and worthy of posting on their website. Many wineries make the mistake of attempting to post their videos into their content management system which CAN affect the performance of their entire website. Our recommendation is to use a 3rd party video hosting/streaming solution which separates the content from your website and the video itself, thus providing the ideal viewing environment for those who wish to stream your videos on a high speed internet connection.There are several cost-effective options available for shooting and streaming video, all of which use some form of flash technology. YouTube is the most common hosting and streaming solution. Along with the viral marketing potential of the You Tube viewing community, this service is FREE. Like most other things, you get what you pay for...and in my opinion, the viewing quality is not up to par with the quality of other services out there, not to mention that you are locked into displaying the YouTube "bug" in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen which distracts from your own brand. Again, the price is right for most people who don't particularly care for either quality or brand integrity (ouch).
Another option is Vimeo, which like You Tube is FREE for non-commercial use...AND boasts incredible HD quality video streaming (of course, the video has to be shot in HD format in order to stream at this high quality level). From my experience, Vimeo has the best quality of any of the FREE solutions, however, I find the streaming to "hiccup" from time to time, thus taking away for the viewing experience. While not having the same level of website traffic that YouTube boasts, Vimeo nevertheless provides sufficient viral marketing potential for expanding your "brand footprint". Another option for those who are looking for a commercial quality option is Viddler, which lacks the HD quality of Vimeo and the Viral Marketing factor of YouTube and Vimeo...BUT, allows for a "White Label" video hosting/streaming option for those wineries that have a huge library of video and require better tools for managing media rich websites.
In order to simplify things and to combine the best of all options available, we decided to build our own proprietary digital media hosting platform which we have customized for simply uploading videos, compressing them into flash format, and broadcasting to our respective clients' websites, in addition to their own YouTube channels. We felt that we needed high quality HD with the ability to integrate into YouTube for the viral marketing aspect. All of our clients have the option of using our hosting solution which provides a seamless solution with their website's content management system. At the end of the day, sometimes it is better to have fewer options that meet all of your key criteria, than more options that distract from the ultimate goals for your business. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness through video/viral marketing, and provide a viewing experience without "hiccups", then you should have no problem with most of the options discussed. Of course, no video hosting solution will make up for terrible wine videos so invest your time and money wisely.
New Media Marketing
One of our goals at Artisan Media this year is to educate companies on the ROI associated with video marketing. As we know, there are many places to put your marketing dollars, and in a tight economy, those places that offer measurable results will win out over the "fluff" that usually contributes to brand awareness. In today's fast moving world, it is likely that traditional print advertising is going to continue to trend downward as it is often times impossible to measure the impact that it has on customer acquisition and retention.Online marketing, however, offers the ROI metrics that will become more important to those who need to track marketing effectiveness, as well as those who write the checks. As I discussed last month, video marketing will support your business in number of ways, including customer acquisition, loyalty, and most importantly...retention. However, video marketing doesn't only have applications in the online channel, but supports the other important channels of your business. Distributor sales reps, for example, are particularly receptive to this type of marketing. They are absolutely inundated with Brands and SKUs...those brands that are able to stand apart from the rest usually win out on the wine lists and in store placements.
For those wineries that ARE producing short videos to promote their brand and products, there are some key metrics that need to be reviewed. How many people were exposed to the video and your brand? How long did they watch? Where did they go from there? Did they sign up for the newsletter? Purchase product? Contact your sales department? We'll discuss in the March issue of the ARTISAN MEDIA Nesletter so check it out!
Did you receive a copy of this month's newsletter? Contact us to sign up for the monthly ARTISAN MEDIA Newsletter! This month's topic is NEW Media Marketing and the services we offer to support your marketing challenges this year.
Video Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Today I came across an interesting article relating to a relatively new concept: Video Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By including Video into your SEO strategy, you will increase the ranking in popular search engines like Google and Yahoo. This is supported by the fact that as of October 2008, video surpassed search on the major 5 search engines in terms of becoming the most popular online activity. According to research covered on ReelSEO, online video is now the most popular online activity worldwide. Check out their website here for more info: www.reelseo.comWithout getting too deep into the concepts behind SEO...that subject is covered in someone else's blog...the article higlights 2 main forms of Video SEO -> posted vs. hosted. "Posted SEO" relates to posting videos on major video streaming websites (i.e. YouTube) in an effort to drive brand awareness and interest in your products or services. Many of our clients have used YouTube as a viral marketing hub...in fact, this is a great place for promoting your winemaker to the wine enthusiasts that may not have heard of your wines. "Hosted SEO" is simply uploading a video to your website and making sure to have the optimal key words and meta tags in place in order to drive the most traffic to your website.
There are some great tips that can be found on optimizing video at www.reelseo.com that I will suggest our clients implement. Of course, managing Digital Media is going to be a challenge for companies in the near future as they dive headfirst into the emerging world of video marketing. If you have lots of traffic coming to your website and don't have time to manage your media assets, that is probably a good problem to have.
Using Video to Merchandise Products Online
Last week there was an interesting blog posted by Nexternal who strongly encouraged their clients to begin using video marketing to supporting their online businesses. Click here to check it out.It is apparent that the advent of video marketing to support consumer purchases online has begun to offset the advantage traditionally enjoyed by “brick and mortar” channels as compared to shopping online. In fact, I would argue that depending on the product, online shopping provides a superior experience when it comes to gathering information about the product, reading customer feedback and reviews, and seeing the entire product line before making a decision.
As mentioned in Nexternal's blog, shopping in a store allows consumers to "see" and "feel" a product, but it is often difficult or impossible to find background information on the person/company that produced it or learn where/how it was produced. These basic element can certainly help to support consumer purchase decisions.
Moreover, for artisan producers (wine, micro-brew, specialty foods, etc.) I would argue that it is even more important to use video as an educational tool for their products due to the nature of their craft. For many producers, they are competing against mass-produced items with much larger distribution and sales/marketing power behind their brands. Fortunately, they can leverage video to highlight those things that differentiate themselves from their competitors (i.e. handmade quality, unique production techniques, character of the owner/producer).
For those whose primary channel for marketing their product online, it seems that video marketing enables them to somewhat level the playing field in the eyes of the consumer. For those that have multiple sales channels, video marketing can support those channels that have a different type of customer...for instance, a retailer who makes very large purchases at a time but has hundreds and thousands of options to choose from OR a distributor who has competition for share of mind in any given month.
media services
Bottle shotsAre you a wine, beer, or specialty food producer? Let us help you showcase your brand by capturing the quality that people can expect from your lifestyle products.
Click here to visit our Bottle Shots FAQ page...
Click here to visit our NEW Bottle Shots Image Gallery...
Winemaker interviewsThis feature presentation should be core to every winery's video library as it showcases the individuals and techniques utilized to craft each product.
wine bYtestmThis Wine ByteTM example illustrates how video can help to support buying decisons for today's consumer by adding the additional dimensions of sight and sound.
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