Crafting Emotional Connections in Wine Marketing with Andrew Means of Transom

Hello and welcome back to the Wine Marketing Podcast. I'm your host Heather Daynitz and today we are talking with Andrew Means, who is the CEO of Transom, which is a boutique creative agency based in both Seattle and Barcelona and possibly soon to be moving to France, which is very exciting. I met Andrew when he was co-hosting the brand Better or Die Triang seminar at this year's DTC Wine Symposium in Monterey alongside Tamra and Katie of Likely Story Strategies. Welcome to the show Andrew. Thank you Heather, it's really great to be here. So stoked to have you. Before we dive into today's conversation, which is varied and wonderful, can you give us a brief overview of what led you to do what you do? Well, I've always kind of been aesthetically minded, I guess. I was designing posters for my punk band in high school. I built my first website in like 1998 for my college radio station, but while I was at school, I studied philosophy. And at the time I thought I was like, oh yeah, I'll be a philosophy professor or something like that. And they actually took all of the philosophy majors into a room before, I think it was probably before our senior year, and they said, no, a lot of you are thinking about going to grad school. And the only advice that we can give you is that if you can at all avoid it, don't go. And I was like, okay, interesting. And I ended up graduating having no idea what I was going to do. I was very excited about design at the time. I was still designing like album covers and album and posters and stuff like that for the band that I was in. And I got a call from a friend who was the music editor for a local weekly newspaper. And he was like, our art director is taking another position. Do you want to interview for that? And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. I had the phone and I thought to myself, what does an art director do? And I ended up getting hired somehow. And that ended up being this kind of bootcamp for typography and layout and all of this design that I didn't get in college. And so after that, I moved to Seattle and freelance for a couple of years and eventually started transom in 2013. And at the time, we were going to be a web design company. The idea was like, we're just doing design and development. But over time, we kept kind of feeling like there was like more that we could or should be doing for our clients that like a website on its own couldn't accomplish. And we kind of realized that true differentiation and true kind of like transformative change that our clients wanted really lied on the other side of some kind of deep and intentional thinking about like what our clients truly believed and what needs they were serving. And especially the emotional landscape between them and their customers, which is exactly what branding is. And so we started offering branding services. And yeah, today we've got clients across the United States and team members in Seattle and Dallas and here in Barcelona, where I'm at now. I feel like that's such a common, not a common story, but where you are doing something just completely different. And then you get pulled by chance, by happenstance into a profession that is not what you were originally planning, but still aligned with your passions and loves and desires from when you were younger. So I love to hear that. It's kind of the story of like how craft and cluster came to be as well as you know, it's like I started in photography but then kind of moved to wine and then now I do I do both, which is really, really cool. I love that you got to do both those things. Yeah, yeah, I think I think that kind of I think one thing that I'm so thankful for my parents kind of like instilling in me, I guess, was this kind of like, and maybe this is also kind of an American culture thing now living in a different country. I'm constantly seeing those contrasts, but instilling this, this kind of sense of just following that compass, I guess, and you know, it takes a lot of I look back and I see like real naivete till be graduating with a philosophy degree with no, no plans for a job. And like I think about just the luck of getting that phone call and it's also paired with like, yeah, like that passion that existed that I was that you know, I was following those kinds of things. I'm sure that when you were doing wine stuff, you were probably also just following that passion for photography and and that kind of sets up those dominoes. And so then when when the right one falls, then you're in a good position to capture it. Yeah, exactly. I think it's also recognizing those opportunities when they come up to those. Sometimes we don't we don't see them or maybe they come to us at the wrong time because I remember my very when I was working for a teeny tiny winery in Falometh, Oregon called Spindrift and they asked me to start a social media account for them, but I and I did and then I left that job and for two, three, four years didn't do anything with the I like completely forgot that that was a thing in my life that I had I had run social media for a winery and then and then I started running social media for a vineyard management company, you know, in 2017. So four years later and and then and that to me, that's when I started recognizing this sort of need for photography and social media guidance in the wine industry. And so it was like I wasn't ready for that information in 2013, but I was ready to take it and run with it in 2017 or 2018, 2019. So that's yeah, it's wild. That's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Totally. Awesome. So you set a couple of things during your workshop at the DTC symposium with them, Katie and Tamara that I really want to dig into a little bit more. You said that our brains are not designed to remember details. They're designed to remember feelings and facts don't illuminate us feelings do. But I think that we in the wine industry, we often get so bogged down and like lost in the weeds when we're talking about our products. We get, you know, really hyper focused on like tech sheets and data and percentages and statistics and like the super like nitty gritty science stuff that we sort of lose the plot a little bit when we're communicating our feelings and why we got into this and all that with our customers. So how do you help brands shift towards storytelling that feels feels like something rather than just kind of giving the facts and the figures. Yeah. Yeah. I see the same thing very much in the wine industry today. And I think that that's like a product of the time and kind of overall demographics of what was happening when the wine industry was really kind of the American wine industry was like really kind of growing in the 90s and in the early 2000s where you're kind of seeing that kind of peak growth and like the peak of like the boomer generation. Who before that, you know, didn't have like in the 80s people and in the 70s like people drank beer around the table and there was not a ton of really good quality wine and so discovering that and having those amazing experiences and being like, oh my gosh, like this is so different from the wine that my grandmother drank or whatever and and then getting really excited about this opening this new and kind of charting this uncharted territory and stuff like that. And so I totally get why many wineries are still very genuinely excited and kind of nerdy about those things because they because it was novel and new in a fairly recently. And I think for a lot of their customers like that also was was an exciting thing for them. And they're also very intent was one of the things I love about working with wineries is that I've never worked in an industry where the people in it are more earnestly are more earnestly striving to create a really really good product. Yeah, it's I think that that's something that is in my experience at least unique to this industry and I love that about it. But you're right like our brains are not designed to remember facts like in brain development like as our species developed like mammals have all of these emotional things and memory is formed in all of these mammals that have no no higher cognitive functions in terms of logic and reason and stuff like that. And as our brains kind of developed as a species, we started to develop these you know lists and facts and all of these other additional capabilities. But the areas of our brain that areas of our brain that are in control of memory of learning and emotion all of those things are very are very tightly knit. And so you know, I think anybody who I think about as a kid when I first saw like a Porsche 911 right it was like the first time I'd ever seen this car in this shape this unique shape and I was like, oh my gosh, that's so amazing. And then I went and was like it has this much horsepower and it has disc brakes and these wheels, you know, and like and I came up with all the other reasons, but all of those reasons were in service of this feeling that I had and and that emotion there. And I think most yeah, and I think most wineries when when if they're if you ask them, you know, why is your wine good, you know, they'll have all of the reasons that they've been, you know, here's all the things that we've been doing to late we we put disc brakes on it and we added a turbo and we did all these other kinds of things because that's what they're really focused on. But but But what their customers are probably experiencing is that first, you know, the ones who truly love them, they're seeing that shape and they're having that experience. And then, and then they, because they have that, then they can talk with them about like, "Oh my gosh, yeah, I love that, you know, you've got this slope on this vineyard in that South exposure or whatever." So what do is we try, when we're working on a branding project, we always try to connect to dig deep enough to find those core beliefs as that the motivations for why they, why the the wine maker, why the vineyard manager, why the organization, what do they truly believe that has shaped the decisions that they've made? Because all of those decisions have come out of a set of core beliefs. And what we want to do is we want to find those core beliefs that that we believe are going to resonate with the people that they're trying to reach and the emotional landscape of the people, of those people, right? They have their own kind of thoughts and anxieties and fears and hopes and dreams and all of that kind of stuff. And when we find that resonance between what the business truly believes, what the winery truly believes, and then what the audience truly needs and wants and all of those kinds of things, that's where you find this real resonance that like magnifies itself. They magnify each other and that's when you start to find your true fans, right? The people who like show up to everything and they're like in the wine club for years and they tell all their friends about it. And though that's real gold, right? Is those people? So I don't know if that answers your question, but I feel like I'm talking for a while, so I'm going to pause. No, no, I love it. I'm the queen of talking for forever, so I get you. I think, you know, there's this trend that's going on right now on Instagram and on TikTok where you post this sort of a grouping of images and videos and things that show some beautiful scene in your life and overlaid as a text on it that says, "I almost forgot that this was the whole point." And I think that what you're getting at where that sort of feeling of seeing the Porsche 911 for the first time was to really all of the things that came after that was in service of this thing. And we need to remember that all of the facts and figures and things that were, we get really nerdy about in the wine industry are all in service of that feeling that, you know, that that was the whole point to capture that feeling and bottle that feeling. So I really like that you said that because it that really resonated with me. I'm wondering if, you know, so you kind of mentioned like talking about these core beliefs and core values and all that. How do you help wineries and all of your clients? Because you don't just work with wineries. How do you help them kind of identify those core beliefs? There's a number of different exercises that you can do to help identify those beliefs. My favorite one right now is actually one that I stole from a screenwriter. He's a this guy on YouTube called local script man. He's this real kind of snotty attitude guy who has, I think, become so because people have sent him so many really, really bad scripts. And so he doesn't have any time for like kind of shotty writing. He doesn't exercise and I talked about this in the in the presentation. He doesn't exercise where he asks about like an action that a character takes. So you say, okay, so John like skips work to or like skips a date with a girl that he likes in order to do a favor for his boss and say, why did you do that? Well, because he wants the promotion. He wants to get more money. Okay, so why is that important to him? Okay, well, because he believes that like money is the key to success and respect. It's like, so why is respect important to him? It's like, well, when he was a kid, he saw how nobody respected his father because they didn't have any money. And this guy says like, when you pass into backstory, when you pass into these formative kind of experiences, that's where you find the core belief. So that experience of watching this, you know, major D disrespect his father and say, no, we can't see you at this table. That was this emotional experience again, right? Our learning comes from emotions. Like, that's what actually is formative for us. But from there, then he is like, okay, I get it. Money equals respect and I need to have respect. I need to have money in order from people to respect me. And I think when we work with our clients, we'll do a similar thing. So we'll be like, okay, so why did you choose to, you know, use, you know, New French Oak versus, you know, Oak that's been, they're like, oh, well, like New French Oak is like, you can't get there without, without it, right? There's a specific flavor profile that it's going to impart and we need it. It's like, okay, so why is that important? They're like, well, we want to make the absolute best wine. And it's like, okay, so why do you want to make the absolute best wine? And you kind of work your way down until you find like, you know, it's a, you uncover belief, like, well, when I was a kid, you know, my, you know, my grandfather would like, give us candy, but he would always make sure that like, we really, really saved it because like, life is just too good to have, to have like the experiences of life are too good to just kind of like throw it away or just to like experience it and like move on. Like, you should really strive for these like really, it's worth it to do really, really good work and to, and to save it. And from there, then you've got that's like, okay, wow, that's a, that's a real formative core belief because it's influenced everything. Like, it's influenced the packaging. It's like, well, we get, we get the extra thick paper because we really want to do this right. And then you've got a core belief and, and that's, that's one way to kind of dive down in there. Sometimes you can just talk it out and, and other things like that, but that's my favorite way right now. I think it's a, it's a really fun, fun way to do that kind of mining in a, in an interesting way. Yeah, I love that. I like the idea of, yeah, just continuing to ask why until you really drill down to the essence of what you're getting at, you know, and that, that's a, that's great. Do you have any clients that you've been working with that you feel like have done a really, really good job of focusing on, on the feelings versus the facts? I think the client that I'm most proud of for this, and I say proud, both because I'm obviously proud of the work that we've done for them, but also because of the way that they have embodied this is this client in Washington called Cayona. It's very interesting because they have on the face a story that is very, very similar to a lot of, of wineries. There are a multi generational family winery. It's the third generation pair of brothers who are running the winery right now. And that right there is like, tail is old as time, right? You can't throw a rock without hitting a family winery in all the wine regions. But they have one thing about them that is, that is, is very unique in that they were the first people to plant grapes in the Red Mountain AVA, which in Washington state is this small, very hot AVA that has become very, very popular for Cabernet's having you on. And it makes these really, really incredible, super big Cabernet. And so they were the first people to do it. And like the, his guy who runs it right now or the two brothers that run it right now, their grandfather back in 1976 were planted the first grapes there. And so they could say we're the first people to plant grapes on Red Mountain. Like we're the first. And that's a really, you know, that's a temptation that a lot of wineries have is just to say, like, well, let's find something. Let's make our distinction because we're the first or the biggest or the best or we've won the most awards or we have the highest scores or something like that. And, and that can provide distinction, right? If you're the, if you literally are the biggest or the best or whatever that, it can, it can do it. But for them, they, they have really leaned into this, they have this story, but the way that they've presented the story is in a very personal way. And in a way that I think draws on the feelings that they have, which I think are very resonant to everybody on their website, on the homepage. We wrote all of the copy with JJ, this, the grandson of the founder. We wrote the copy in the first person. So it's, he says, I and, and it's, it's very much from him. But the copy is like the initial copy that you read is like when my grandfather decided to plant grapes on Red Mountain, people thought he was nuts. Now people call Red Mountain one of the premier grape growing regions in the new world. We just call it home. And they've really emphasized like the ways that they have structured their business to, they have, they have other, we've got a picture of his daughter and his wife and his daughter and says, we do what we do so that one day she can make it her own. There's just suffused throughout the site is this genuine heartfelt theme of not just we were the first, but we are invested in this place and we're invested in the kind of business that we create. I think that's just been a really, really fun, fun project to work on. They're one of our oldest clients. They've been with us for I think eight years now. I wonder, so since you, you bring up this brand that's kind of a little bit more established in their identity, how would you approach that whole process for a new brand versus a brand that had a little bit more in their identity established already. Our general approach, whether we're doing like a rebrand or a refresh versus a completely new brand, doesn't change that much, because it still is all about finding those central core beliefs. When we're working along those lines, it can certainly be a risk. I mean, usually the big fear is obviously that our current customers are going to bail because we're making all of these changes. That's a legitimate fear. Certainly, if you're like, "Okay, well, our bottle used to be this very stately thing, and now it's all kinds of fluorescent colors and all this kind of stuff." That's certainly a risk, is that kind of thing. If the original brand was at all representative of those core beliefs, then the new brand should also be representing those core beliefs. It may move one up or move one over or something like that. There may be different expressions of it. In our experience, what ends up happening is that very often the existing customers get more involved because usually when the whole point of a rebrand is to make the brand more distinct and memorable and resonant. That process very often clarifies communication. We're going through and looking at all of these touch points and saying, "Okay, so what's the opportunity in this touch point?" Say, when somebody first walks into the tasting room or when they get their confirmation email or something like that, what are all of these opportunities in these touch points to reinforce this core story that we're telling, this core emotional theme? It's a very often the existing customers get very excited and whatever friction there was in terms of adjusting to the new logo or the new packaging or whatever, that is very quickly overcome. If somebody is only drinking your wine because your label is exactly the same way that it's been for 10 years, then maybe they're not actually really, truly resonating with what you really care about and maybe we should go out and find the people who are going to get super, super stoked about the deep reasons for why you do what you do. Yeah. Oh yeah, great answer. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, it's a kind of trouble. It's such a, it's such a, it's such a, no, no, yeah. It's such a common fear, right? And it makes it. Yeah. Never, I can't begrudge anybody for being nervous about that. But there's, I think, understanding that there is, your people are out there and that if the people who have been your people are not coming through the door in the way that they used to, there's a lot of people out there and all it takes is to create these experiences that reinforce like, what is authentically you? Yeah, I feel like it's sort of a build it and they will come kind of stereo where, yeah, because I think that's a really common concern that people have especially right now. This is a conversation that we're having so much is, you know, a lot of our, especially with the more established, I mean, yeah, especially with the more established brands. A lot of the older generation of wine buyers and wine drinkers are are aging out. Some of them are literally dying, which is a really morbid and sad thing to say, but we're aging out and, you know, I find that a lot of clients are having a really hard time figuring out how to talk to these younger generations, these newer wine drinkers. And I wonder if, if what you're saying is drilling back down to those core beliefs, that's going to, that's going to end up bringing more people in. But I wonder if there, if you have any tips or advice or words of wisdom for folks who are kind of in that, that stage where they're, you know, their, their clientele is aging out and they want to reach the younger generation without sort of losing the things that make made them so appealing in the first place. Yeah, I think it definitely helps to have fluency with what a younger generation cares about and what a younger generation, what the younger generation is interested in and like the way that they consume media and all of that kind of stuff. I've seen many studies that have talked about just how little young people care about like scores and how little they care about like, you know, reviews and like, you know, magazine reviews and stuff like that. And so it's really helpful to have that kind of fluency in there can be this kind of educational period where it's like, okay, let's get hip to what's going on today. But yeah, again, I think finding we have a client right now who is in this exact position. They are like, how do we, how do we do it? And they're an organic biodynamic winery that is sitting here thinking, how do we reach the youth of today like the younger drinkers? And it's like, you're, you guys have been for the past 20 years. You're an illiterate. Yeah, exactly. You are exactly what they care about, right? There can be dangers, right? Of like doing an entire generational cohort. But I mean, lads are that the younger generation genuinely is going to be way more excited to hear about all of the things that you are doing to practice genuine sustainability. Or, or yeah, and I think there's a, yeah, I think there's a conflict or there's a tension which I think is is something that that is probably that I think is important for the wine industry to grasp. And I find very often a lot of wineries not kind of like recognizing this. And I think this is a shift that happened from where the wine industry was like the inception of the modern wine industry in the United States, which was again about providing this, the need that they were solving was one where it was like, I want something that is going to go well with dinner and, and it's maybe going to help me unwind after a long day at work. And I don't really want to drink beer because it's not very, it's not food. Well, anyway, like we're providing this like new option, right? And so I think that a lot of wineries approach what they are doing as solving that need, right? You need wine. We're going to provide you wine and our wine is going to be better or cheaper or whatever. And we're going to be solving this need that you have for wine for the generation today. They have so many more options than our parents did. Like our parents had like Schlitz and Miller and Bud. And then suddenly it's like, wow, you've got wine and like this is wine from like just down the road or from the state over. Wow, this is like grown here and it's so high quality. This is amazing, right? You get all this enthusiasm because what they had, the problem that they were solving was this very specific problem. Now the younger generations, they've got craft beer, they've got spirits, they've got marijuana, they a lot of them are not drinking at all. And I think that the wine industry really has to ask itself like what problem are we solving? What emotion are we providing? Like what emotional problem are we solving? And because it's a very different one, the younger drinkers of today have a very different set of problems than our parents than their parents. And I think there's what I see very often is that there's a ton of brands that are not really about, like you think about a Rolex, right? Like when you need a watch, like nobody needs a Rolex, like a watch tells time, that's the utility, right? And a wine that pairs well with your dinner and gives you a little buzz so you can like forget about your angry boss or your kids or whatever. Like that's the utility of wine and that's why it will never go away because that's the utility that people need, right? But when we create a, but brands that get really successful in a very crowded market, like you can go out and you can buy a Casio or you can look at your phone or whatever. So in order to be a success in a market that is flooded with solutions to meet those needs, to meet those feelings, you have to create a feeling that you are going to deliver. And that feeling sometimes is only tangentially connected to the utility of the thing that you are offering. I think a lot of wineries actually do this already by the events that they provide and the atmosphere of their tasting room. There's a lot of wineries I think where if you swapped out their wine for somebody else, their customers sales wouldn't change, their customers wouldn't matter because the thing that their customers really love is having a place to go and like having these communal experiences and all of that kind of stuff. Like obviously some of them would notice, but I think it's important for wineries now I always try to encourage our wineries to think about what is the specific feeling that we're delivering because a brand is really, it's a feeling delivery vehicle to a degree. And it's that feeling. It's why you pay however many thousands of dollars for Rolex when you already have, you know, your cell phone right there. It's because you're delivering on this feeling, you're helping them tell a story about themselves. Maybe your biodynamic winery helps people to enjoy something that feels authentic and real in a world that's increasingly taken over by AI or maybe your winery is, yeah, maybe like your super, super, super nerdy winery where you give absolutely every like detail of all the other kind of stuff and you lean super heavy into that is like helping, you know, some super nerdy people like feel like they've got, I'm stumbling here. [laughter] I think it's just really important when we're thinking about the problems that we're solving and recognizing that we are solving a completely different set of problems for people than we have been as an industry. - Yeah, you really hit the nail on the head. The thing that I think about a lot is that there is so much product for people. There's so much good wine out there. I mean, you said it earlier, you could throw your shoe and you'll hit a small family winery. That can't be the thing that makes great wine. That can't be the thing that is distinguishing anymore. That used to be a thing that was distinguishing because of all the large-scale wine brands that we're putting out, cheap, easy to get wine. But now we have so, so, so many brands that are small, they're making amazing, incredible wine that is so, so good. So it's what's the thing that is gonna help you stand out. - Oh, okay, well, let's drill down to those core beliefs and bring out those feelings. - Yeah. - You know, whatever the feeling is that you wanna tap into because yeah, I was just having this conversation with my dad this weekend, you know, because he's a classic dad where he's like, "Well, the economy and blah blah, you know, "and he likes to talk about the economy a lot." Which is I feel like it was just like a standard dad move. - That's a real dad move, yeah. - That's a real dad move there. - You know, and he's always, he talks about it with me in the context of wine because he likes wine and he's like, "But wine is a luxury product." He's like, "If you didn't work in wine, "we would not have access to great wine "because that's not a priority for us to buy great wine. "We would just buy what we wanna buy "to get the feeling that we wanna get," you know, which is the lightly buzz, the, you know, it tastes relatively good, but they wouldn't have any distinction, but the reason that I, the reason that they drink such great wine is because I'm the one that's bringing it over because I have access to great wine. So yeah, and he's like, you know, it's a luxury product, so how are you, how are you positioning it in a way that makes it this luxury product and necessity in people's lives versus something that they can do away with while the economy is bad. So yeah, I really like that, you make that distinction. That's a really interesting point that he makes about like, how do you make that something that people continue to want to pay for? Yeah, there's, I think there's a lot of inspiration and wisdom to be gained by looking outside of just wine. And I'm reminded of Red Bull and Liquid Death. Are these like two brands, like Red Bull, I think at this point everybody knows about Red Bull, but I remember somebody asking, an interview where somebody asked the founder and they were like, "So you have a product that doesn't taste all that great." And it's in a smaller can and it costs more. And he was like, well, how else would people know that it was the best? You know, it's kind of like, you can go along that way of like saying, there's a lot of different ways where you can, that you can kind of ascribe value to things in ways that have nothing to do with the actual what's in the bottle or in the can in this case. And I think like Liquid Death is a fascinating recent brand because they took still water in a can and I think by way of associating it with the need of a certain group of young men basically to feel like they are rebellious, to like associate it with those feelings of rebellion and also to associate it with this kind of dawning realization I think of the gender generations of like health really, really matters. And it's like, how do I make a healthy choice but still feel kind of badass? - Yeah. - And I think-- - I'm gonna murder my thirst. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think that like, understanding that like, that these brands are the reason why people are willing to pay, I don't know how much a can of Red Bull is now, but it's more than a can of Coke. A can of Liquid Death is like way more expensive than going to a drinking fountain. And it's the exact same product. - Yeah. - You do that by finding what that feeling, you're delivering that feeling, you know, you drink a Red Bull and you're like, I have, I feel limitless. Red Bull gives you wings. And like, you drink Liquid Death and like, you're like hanging out with your friends at the skate park. I think that the wine industry could do very well by understanding like, it's, you know, the product is really important, but the feelings, honestly, the feelings are the thing that are going to make people continue to buy it because you're providing them with feelings that they can't get elsewhere. And we recognize that like we are competing, that you're not just competing against all of other wineries, but like we were talking about earlier, you're competing against craft beer, you're competing against marijuana, you're competing against, if what we're talking about is the utility, is the product of like pleasurable experience that maybe helps you get, you know, a little bit loose and, you know, compliments other aspects, you know, like maybe a joint, like doesn't necessarily go well with dinner, but it sure goes well with the movie. And, or music or whatever, figuring out like, what are the feelings that our brand is going to deliver? And recognizing that those feelings don't necessarily have to be a one-to-one relationship between all of the mechanical ways that you create your product. You can have a beautiful wine that is about rebellion or a beautiful wine that is about feeling limitless. And that is literally going to make the wine taste better for the people who are enjoying it. And that's going to be the value, that's going to be why they buy that luxury product because they don't want to give up on those feelings. Each time they open that bottle, if you've done your job right, and if we've done our job right, as branding experts, then that bottle will taste that much better, come along with all of those other feelings. - Yeah, yeah. I love all this. I was just thinking about, I was listening to a podcast, these two wedding photographers talking, they were talking about putting together photo albums and prints and things like that. And they were talking about, okay, well, how can you get past the ickiness of selling? And one of the guys, he told this story about how he got married and then he and his wife were super broke 'cause they were really young and all this. They were offered by their friends, a time share. So they go to this resort and they were just going to the resort and they were just gonna go lay on the beach and whatever. And they got called into this room to basically upsell them on other activities. And the first thing the person asked was, why are you here? And what are you hoping to get out of this? And they're like, well, it's our honeymoon and all this stuff. And she was like, well, great. Well, you can make that honeymoon even better. You can extend those feelings of the honeymoon and all this stuff. He talks about how she very convincingly upsold him and how he internalized that. And so now when he is selling his products, his prints and things like that, he's helping his wedding couples extend the feeling of the day, this beautiful, amazing day that they just had. And this sort of symbolism of their love for each other, and he talks about that. And I wonder how we as wineries can help when what you were saying is when people are coming into our tasting room and they're tasting our wines and everything. And it tastes so good in the moment. And then they take their bottles away from them. How can we help them extend that feeling of that positive feeling that that wine tastes so good in our tasting room? How do we make it taste just as good and even better at home? Yeah. Yeah, I love it. And that's exactly where memory comes from. And not where memory comes from, but where memory comes into it, the way that we form memories is like telling a story that can be retold. We talk a lot with our clients about myths and about the importance of crafting a myth. And a myth doesn't necessarily mean that it's something that's not true, although a lot of myths are not true. But a myth is something that delivers a feeling. It's a story that delivers a feeling and has had the edges and the facts rounded off down to just what is necessary to deliver that feeling. And so if you're telling a story in the tasting room, if you're like, so this wine has this great slope, our vineyard has this great slope, it has this stuff in exposure, there's a great diagonal shift. Then that's fine. It's probably going to sound a lot like the other tasting rooms that people are going to go to. And the motions that people are going to have are not going to be associated with the story, but they're going to be associated with like, it's so beautiful and like this third tasting room we've been at and everybody's laughing and stuff like that. And all of those things are going to stay in the tasting room. And the bottles then are not going to have anything to come with them home. So having a story that is told that sets the hook and that people can remember so that they understand like, oh, and especially if that story is connected to other touch points during that experience or on the website or something like that, then you've got that's like creating a brand that's going to be that's that will set its hooks and can be shared and stuff. Oh gosh, you know, this is the place where they were super excited about X and everything was like X-themed or not literally the letter X, but you know, a variable of some kind. So yeah, I think that's really important when people are approaching that kind of an experience and wondering how do we make that a lasting one. Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, there's a, I think inserting a lot of personal stories and kind of, POVs into your conversation about these technical details can help a lot. I remember when I was working in the tasting room at Foxin, there was, we got, you know, at the time I was also helping out in the vineyard where I would go collect samples during harvest. And there was one vineyard in particular that we nicknamed it internally, we nicknamed it calf burner because it was so steep that you had to walk up the hill and your calves would burn at the end of it. And it was just, you know, all the stuff. And so I would tell that story in the tasting room. And as an illustration of like why, why was that block so steep in all these things? And it was really funny as I remember a few months later listening to a couple of customers who had never met each other before talking about this particular wine that came from that vineyard and them telling that story to the people that they were talking to. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've done my job where I've taken this thing and I've made it easily packaged for them to also tell. So it's like, I think that's, I think, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, that's kind of what you're getting out with with this is we want to make sure that we're able to give our customers the language to tell those stories again and again and again. It's like, it's like, you know, it is like a myth. It's like folklore that, you know, these stories that you pass down verbally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, like, I think that's like, it's such a fantastic example. And I think one thing that I think is very, very cool about that is that like, that didn't have anything to do with the exact flavor of the wine. But it's this little thing that like, and gently, obviously, it's about the steepness of the vineyard, right? But like, how many wine drinkers actually understand like the correlation of like, how you could tell one wine from another, right? But it's such a, it's such a wonderful like in calf burner is such a great like little name, like little tag there. But that's all sometimes that you need in order to have, to attach a memory to is, is that little bit of delight, as those little cool nice little feelings and stuff. And like you said, it's like, it's a simple story. Like, it's so steep. We call it calf burner. Like, that's the whole, that's the nut of it right there. And because it burns your calves. And I think that's, I think it's fantastic. I think like the, the, the like, the, the, the stier version of, of, of that is when, when you can say, it's so steep, we call it calf burner, and somehow connect that story to some sort of deep brand truth. And maybe it's like, because we are always in the vineyards and we live in the vineyards and, and like, that's the thing, right? And that's the brand truth that you're talking about is like, how deeply committed we are to one of the things I've always loved about Kionna is that like, if they won the lottery tomorrow, they would still wear their, our heart jackets with like, rips in the elbows and they'd still drive around the S 10, the Chevy S 10 pickup and stuff. They emphasize that they are farmers that that's their whole vibe, not trying to be anything else. Like, they're not standing in the vineyards, cheering with, you know, tennis shirts and stuff like that. Yeah. So yeah, I think that that's like, all you need is that little seed of emotion for, for memory to take hold. And, and then that becomes contagious. Mm-hmm. God, I love it. I love this. I feel like this conversation sort of, didn't go in the way that I had originally thought it would. And I love that for us. I think that we, we really covered so much. Yeah, I just love it so much. I feel like these, I'm looking at these questions. I'm like, how can I ask these questions in a way that's going to be relevant. But, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I do have a few more questions for you. And I would love to take a little slight left turn. But if we can sort of bring it back, we can sort of relate it to what we've been talking about, even better. What are, what are some new and kind of like the latest design trends that you are finding exciting right now? I, I'm lately there are from a, like, from as a designer. Yeah. There are a bunch of really interesting things that are happening with, there's a bunch of new programs that are coming out that make it very easy to do motion graphics and 3D that, whereas those used to be incredibly complex programs. And now those programs are becoming more and more easy. They're like, they'll run in your web browser and stuff like that. So as a designer, those things are exciting me and my team, our lead designer, Misha, just like designed for this personal electronic device that we just built a website for. He just designed like in an afternoon, he designed this like Apple worthy, like rotating thing of this, of this charging device. And I was just like, that's amazing. Like, you do that in such a short amount of times. That's one thing that I'm very excited about from a, from a design production standpoint. But in terms of, in terms of like design trends, obviously whatever like Apple just came out with the whole like, like frosted glass kind of thing. And for us like we usually, I find, I find inspiration most often not from like Pinterest or from dribble or any of these other kinds of design aggregators. Like for me, I'll find inspiration from like street photographers or from like the New York digital collection, public library digital collection. This is an amazing place to like lose an afternoon, just like clicking through and like putting like an a random word and all from like hundreds of years or maybe a hundred years or a hundred years plus that you'll find artifacts from like type in sailboat and you'll find like, oh, this is the menu that was given out on the USS Constitution in 1952 when they hosted, you know, you know, some dignitaria or something like that. Look, all these like amazing things that you can kind of mind for inspiration. I think I think that in a recent project, we actually went to the physical library and like went through all of these woodblock typography catalogs. So I think that like a lot of the products that we make are at Transome were always trying to make products that have like a real longevity to them, right? A website is a capital investment. You want that cost to be amortized over not just like the Transcycle, which is like maybe a year, two years or something like that, but like five, ten years. And most of our sites last, you know, 10 years, five to 10 years before like a major overall. And certainly with a brand, you want that brand to be very, very long lasting as well. And so, you know, it's really easy to see a brand that was done in the 90s because it probably has a swoosh because at the time, you know, the swoosh was really easy to make. Like for the first time, like Photoshop, you're like, I can draw ellipses. I can make a swoosh. And so we really tried to find our inspiration in other areas. There's an amazing Instagram account called, I'm blanking on the name, give me just a second, public domain review that pulls in random, interesting, wild pieces of like early graphic design or amazing old art things or like sketches of plants and stuff like that from hundreds of years over the past. Yeah, you know, hundreds of years. And personally, I find those to be the most exciting because it's stuff that you don't see otherwise. That's so cool. I love finding inspiration outside of my medium. Something I'm really finding fun right now is going through and looking at vintage art and seeing how I can recreate that as as a photograph because there's there's so much like art deco and posters and things showing people holding like a beverage in their hand. And I'm like, if it has a, if somebody's, you know, if a piece of artwork has a beverage somewhere in it, I'm like, how can I recreate that, but in real life, you know, like a photograph. How can I do that? And that's so that's something that I'm finding a lot of fun in and a lot of creative inspiration from. That's really cool. vintage artwork, vintage photos and vintage, yeah, just things like that because it's just so fascinating. You know, especially if you look back on on on a time when cameras weren't so widely available. So the 1800s and, you know, the early cameras weren't as available for consumers. And so so being able to find some old artwork that consumers made themselves because they had to or because they wanted to and they didn't have access to a camera. I'm like, how can I, how can I play with this concept and the composition of this and everything to recreate that with the technology that I have now. Yeah, that's really cool. That's awesome. Are you like are you pulling from like old, I'm thinking of those huge posters that might be like for compari or something like that or like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's actually what's so funny is I actually had a I had a whole I have like a whole Pinterest board where a bunch of it is like old Guinness and old like Budweiser posters and Coca-Cola are and things like that because they're so it's just interesting like they though composition and the artwork from it and the posters are it's just it's a I like the bold colors and sort of the simple compositions of them. Mm-hmm. That it just feels they feel easy to recreate but they also feel easy to recreate in a way that's unique and different and all that so yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's super cool. I love I've had lately I've been on this like real big kick of Spanish Solera wine because a lot of them are very very very old like the brands are super super old and these and it's like archaeology looking at these labels because you'll see like okay that engraving there is like right dead in this in the middle and you know that that was probably like one of the very, it's kind of like not perfectly done or something like that and then you'll see like awards from like all these, you know, like they'll put the awards on and then they'll put on like additional things and sometimes for whatever reason, suddenly they'll be like a red stamp that is also present somewhere else and it's like doing archaeology of like thinking like well that was probably added in like you know the turn of the century and that was probably added and at this time and this big sans serif repeat of the name that's already present in the thing but it's like big white and black letters on the top of the bottom like that was probably added like maybe the 70s or something like that. I just love doing that kind of like archaeology and trying to like tease out all of those different elements that and like you said about that they don't necessarily have it's not done with high skill. Like it's kind of done out of necessity. I think there's something really fascinating about that, you know, any first year design teacher would be like this label is a complete disaster and but I think it's filled with so much kind of history and yeah I think it's really it's fascinating. I love that kind of stuff. Oh it's so cool. I love it. So fun. Do you have any new projects right now that you're working on that you find particularly exciting and interesting. We are finishing up right now developing a brand for one of California's oldest wineries. It's been dormant for a while and it's going to be relaunched in 2026. This brand was formed in this brand was formed in the late 1800s and so that whole project has been just super super fun working with our client and diving very deep into the design from that era pulling like inks and pigments that were came out during that era and typography and and different and then figuring out how also do we make this relevant for today. So it doesn't just feel like we're just kind of creating a thing that you know that only lives in that era and how do we make that how do we give that expression on that same brand expression both on the bottle and on the website and media. Yeah that's been a really really fun project. I'm really excited. I'm very impatient for it to come out but yeah it'll be coming out in in early 2026 I think. Oh that's so exciting. I'm yeah you'll have to send that those details over and I'll have to take a look at it and see what they're up to. That's so cool. Awesome. Yeah and what an exciting proposition to kind of resurrect this old brand and bring it into the 21st century. With so much history going through archives of old advertisements from the 50s and. Yeah really really cool. Yeah. That's so fun. I mean that's exactly what we're just talking about is how cool some of the advertising was from the turn century and from the 50s and I. Yeah that's so cool. I love to see that. That's exactly. Yeah. So I think maybe this is a good place for us to kind of start winding down. What is one thing listeners can take action on today to implement what they learned in this conversation. The you've probably heard the the the proverb like the best time to plan to tree is 20 years ago but the second best time to plan to tree is today. And I really feel like we're we do this. We have a project at Transome where we we go through all of the winery websites for a region. So we've done Sonoma and we've done Oregon and we've written reports on kind of what we found about like you know this platform has you know more users than this other platform and here's the average you know score like a performance scores and SEO and all that kind of stuff. But so as you can imagine I've looked at thousands thousands of winery websites we're going to release here pretty soon we're going to release Washington state. And and so that's that's been a really fun project but over that time and seeing all of those websites I've seen the thing that I see the most is is brands that don't invest in branding they invest enough to get a logo and to have a package but they haven't done kind of the deep thinking that that ensures that the customer's experience with the brand is distinct memorable and emotionally resident. And so I think there's my and the thing I think is great about branding is that it doesn't have to cost a lot of money right like we charge a lot of money for branding because it's an incredibly valuable thing right like it takes the longest to build but it is the most valuable thing that you can have that you can own as a company because it not only does it like make people want to buy your stuff without you needing to tell them to buy it. But it also influences like who writes about you and influences who wants to come work for you it influences like all of these other elements it touches every aspect of your business is your is the brand. And I think many many wineries don't you know they think that like okay well I've got the logo I've got the brand that doesn't seem to be broken right now so I don't want to touch it. And the advice that I would give is like it's never a bad time to examine you know what are your core beliefs and how well are we communicating those to the people that we want to reach. To this we are now we're putting together we're in the early stages of of creating a workshop that is one and a half hour workshop that starts that process in a way that you can continue it with us or you can use it as a springboard to continue it yourself obviously we love the idea of people continuing to work with us. Yeah but but we recognize it like not everybody has that money right now to do that especially in this in the current market. We're so passionate about making sure that wineries can start that process that we're actually offering we announced this on our mailing list on our last newsletter but we're starting a process where we're offering it to the first three brands that sign up and they can just email me at Andrew at Transome.design and we've actually already done one and so I would say the first two but that one went so well that we want to make sure that we're offering it to the next three after those first after those three have done it then we'll start charging for it but our goal with this is always to make it be a really entry level thing that people can that wineries can embark on and just to start to see the real value of doing the kind of deep thinking that that all happens before any colors or chosen or any fonts or any other kinds of things because those are the it's that thinking that positions wineries to be in that kind of like unfair advantage territory right it's finding that area that is underserved in the market and finding out how do you and your unique kind of beliefs and talents what you have to offer how do you find that spot and so that's kind of what we're what we're doing at the moment. Yeah, that's awesome. I will put all of that information in the show notes so if you are interested in reaching out to Andrew and going through this workshop or learning more about it you'll have all that information in the show notes. Andrew, this was such a great conversation. Thank you so much for taking time. I know that year it's evening over in Barcelona and I'm just starting my day. I appreciate you hanging on with me to the end of the work day to talk about all of this. This was such a fun conversation. This has really been a blast out there. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you again everyone. You can find all the information about Andrew and transform in the show notes and I would really appreciate it if you like to subscribe wherever you're listening or if you're watching on YouTube give us a review all of the things it really helps the show get out into the world. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Bye. Bye.