Creating a positive message for wine w/ Gino Colangelo, Come Over October

Hey listeners, just want to let you know that we've released the latest compilation of show notes in book form covering episodes from 2022 to 2023. It's full of insights on sustainability, marketing, and even has a few celebrity sightings. Pick it up on Amazon and support the show. Welcome to X-Shadow. X-Shadow. The podcast that navigates the business of wine with unique perspectives and insights with your host Robert Vernick and Peter Young. Welcome to the subset of X-Shadow. Today we're going to be talking about creating a positive narrative about wine with Juno Kalangelo, the co-founder president of Kalangelo and partners. A PR agency. Welcome to the show Juno. Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it Robert and Peter. For our listeners, can you please give Peter and me a brief overview of your background? Sure. I've on my own PR agency focused entirely on wine and spirits for 18 years. We're about 80% wine, 15% spirits, 5% industry, and by industry I mean working with retailers, importers, software developers, but everything related to the business of wine and spirits. Good. So the entire alcohol industry, including wine, has been in a bit of a slowdown. There's been all sorts of movements for sort of the neo-prohibitious movement that has been saying that no amount of alcohol is safe. And within that backdrop there's been some decline and consumption of alcohol. Is this backdrop what inspired you to launch the come over October campaign? Yeah, so I guess we're in November of 2024. So it's been since the summer of 2023. I started worrying a little bit about the health of the wine industry because I was reading so much negativity related to wine consumption and health. I know that the wine industry faces all sorts of challenges. You know, marijuana is a challenge, ozempics a challenge, RTDs and cocktails and spirits are a challenge. Climate is a challenge, but the negativity related to consumption of wine and health felt existential to me for this reason. So I'm 64 years old and for my entire adult life I've been hearing that two glasses of wine a day for a man, one glass for a woman, are healthy levels of consumption. And I kind of examine myself and say, "Oh, I drink two glasses and I usually stop there. Why do I stop there?" Because for my entire life I've been hearing that that's a healthy level of consumption. If a 24 year old today hears that there's no safe level of consumption or the safe level is two drinks a week, similar to what Canada had proposed, though not adopted, what does that do to the lifetime consumption of wine by that? It could be potentially devastating for the wine industry. I also looked at the articles and realized how poor the reporting was, how incomplete and sometimes is grossly inaccurate. And I felt offended by equating wine always to alcohol. To me, wine is part of lifestyle, it's food, it belongs on the table. I really never drink a glass of wine unless I'm eating. So beside the business implications, I was personally offended as a person who's passionate about wine and more particularly about the people in the business of wine that people will make wine. And you mentioned that you stop after two drinks from what you've been hearing in your life and amongst your friends have you seen a decline in wine and alcohol consumption? Yes, anecdotally, I spent a weekend with some cousins who are historically abbied wine drinkers and all of a sudden they're deciding to cut back or to abstain for certain period of time. You know, when I try to pinpoint the rationale for that, it's like, well, you know, I just want to see what it's like or feel better or blah, blah, blah. But I'm convinced that a lot of it is because the ambiance noise around wine and health. Yeah, I know at least in my own life, I've seen the most dedicated wine drinkers and collectors cut back dramatically. Myself included even Robert, I think, too. And amongst all our peers, we've definitely seen it be quite significant, I think, in terms of reduction in wine consumption. I'm more conscious than I used to be only because I'm so engrossed now in this mission to create a positive narrative around wine. So I'm very conscious of what I consume, but I can't say that it's so different than what I consumed before. I'm just more aware because I've always been a moderate drinker. And it's always been related to food and to socialization. So you founded, come over October, for those who haven't heard of it for a runner where could you give us a little bit of background what it is and who you founded it with. Sure. So like I said, it's been about a year and a half that I started to feel uneasy about wine. So I started, I had a brainstorm within my own team, like, what can we do? Can we create a campaign to advocate for wine? How would we do that? Who would support that? And then I started having conversations with clients, which means wine producers, trade organizations, importers, retailers, journalists, everybody throughout the value chain of wine. And universally, what I heard was something needs to be done, please do it. You know, there's a lot of reluctance by big companies to advocate for their own product because of the litigious nature of American society. There's a lot of feeling, well, what can we do? It's like, you know, fatalism. So I've had a couple of different iterations of development of ideas and then even commissions and research to confirm what the issue was and the research was very clear. It showed that 60-some-odd percent of 21 to 39 year olds would consider changing their consumption if the alcoholic guidelines were reduced to two drinks a week. And 60-some-odd percent of that same cohort said that they either participate in dry January and door sober October. Now, if you take sober October and dry January together, that's 17% of the calendar year. That's pretty dramatic, right? In terms of reducing consumption. So in the course of these conversations, I spoke to Karen McNeil, the author of the wine bible, and in my mind, the best writer about wine working in the US today. Karen's brilliant and passionate and knowledgeable. And we were commiserating and she had done a post on her website, "Why I Hate Dry January?" And she was, it was tongue in cheek, but she was shocked by the negativity that she got about her post. So we spoke and two days later she called me up and said, "I have an idea." And her idea was, "Come over October." And come over October would be a campaign to advocate for wine's unique and wonderful capacity to bring people together. I thought about the idea. I kind of catchy. I like it. And we called the brainstormers of industry people, one of whom was Kimberly Charles, who has her own PR agency in San Francisco. Kimberly's been in the wine business longer than me. And she's quite accomplished. And we had our brainstorm and then Kimberly Karen and I said, "Let's do this campaign. Come over October." Well, in order to do the campaign, we started a company. It's called, "Come Together, a Community for Wine." It's a mission-driven company to advocate for wine. And that happened all through the spring. And so by May we had incorporated our company. And then by June we started soliciting support. July we had our first virtual press conference and everything snowballed from there. For the Founder's vision of the campaign, how did it evolve as you plan to launch it? Like how did this, you started with this inception idea? How did it evolve as you got closer to the launch? So we started with some fundamentals. One was it had to reach consumers or else, why bother? Right? Two was, while we wouldn't incorporate spirits into our campaign, we also wouldn't make relativist arguments about, well, if you're going to drink marijuana instead of whiskey, we weren't going to do that. One, because I have a spirits business in addition to wine in my agency. Two, because a lot of the companies we'd solicit for support would also be in the spirits business. And three, because fundamentally, we think there's a place in the world for spirits too. Anyway, so it had to be consumer-facing. Would be about wine, but would not be negative toward other alcoholic beverage. And it had to involve companies and in organizations and people throughout the wine world. It had to be completely agnostic. It couldn't be about California or the US. It couldn't be just international. It couldn't be just producers. It had to involve everybody. And those are the three tenants of what we created. And we've been true to those since we started. So how do you think about success of this campaign and what it would look like? So success is having people speak positively when I say people, consumers, but also people in the trade, feeling a positive narrative about wine. And I know that sounds pretty ephemeral, but we've all been reading these negative articles about wine. And if we start to see articles that are written about, wine's ability to bring people together, wine's social ability, wine's historical place in society, wine's cultural role, wine's function as fundamental to rural communities throughout the world. And you notice one thing we're not talking about is health. We decided early on, maybe that's our fourth tenant, that we would not debate health. We're communicators, like Kimmelian I being in the PR business, Karen being a journalist. We're not scientists or doctors. We know that there's a role for pushback against the negativity, from people like Dr. Laura Cantana and others, Dr. Michael Abstein, the great wine writer, people who can discuss technically and scientifically about how wine or alcohol specifically affects the body, but that's not us. So we would not touch health. And the other practical reason is if we talked about health, we would never get any support from big wine topic. So we took these concept and we brought it to market and before we knew it, it was a snowball. Companies were jumping on board, nobody said no to us, virtually nobody. And companies were, once they read about us through our outreach to the press, we started getting in bank queries. And the only limitation we had was our own hours in the day, because remember, we are all volunteering and we all, like, Kimberly and I run agencies and can run wine speed her own business. And we're all kind of doing this in our spare time. And you then, those companies who reached out or you talked to solicited donations from or not donations, funds from, I guess, you incorporate it as a business? Yes. So we asked two things of everybody we spoke to. And again, this means retailers like Total Wine, trade organizations like the Champagne, Bureau or Napa Valley Vitness, producers like Jackson Family or J. Lore, two things. And if you could write us a check, a modest check, any of the way from a thousand to ten thousand dollars, that would be great. That would help us do more. Every dollar we get, it was right back into the campaign, website development, social media, press work, etc. Two, more fundamentally, use the assets we're creating and run your own come over October promotions and campaigns. So we asked for some financial support, but more importantly, in my mind was activation. So basically, if you think of like, this was open source software, as I like to call it, we created a platform, come over October, we created visual assets, like a logo and social media posts, we created messaging, and we gave it away. And we said to everybody, please use it. And you don't even need to tell us, we'd like you to respect the logo and the theme, but use it as you see fit in your own creative ways. The Texas Wine Growers Association did a hashtag, come over October y'all. That's great. That speaks to their constituencies and it's fun. But essentially was that. Here's a campaign, we're giving it away to the wine industry. Karen was, she's the talent of the group and Karen's available for Instagram live, Karen did voice over for radio ad for Constellation. So she's the talent, but basically the campaign was created to be given away to the wine world to be used as creatively and strategically and broadly as anybody would like. So you had all this partners, if you want to call them that, or people using it within the wine industry to spread the word into their base. How did you think about getting the word out to the consumers in a broad sense? Because you mentioned, your goal is to talk to consumers outside of the wineries or other people in the industry retailers, etc. Spreading the word to their people, did you do something else to also spread the word to consumers? Well, that's where we rely on our partners at retail. So like total wine has 270 so much stores. They did in-store signage, they read video, they did direct marketing, they ran social media, and they have consumer audience, right? By definition, a retail has a consumer audience. Some brands bought in-store radio advertising with 800 crore stores. This to me was our the biggest example of our success. So Constellation spent money with crore to run ads under Camover October banner. So Karen McNeil voiced over the ad, "Hi, this is Karen McNeil, author of the wine bible, and this month, let's celebrate wine with Camover October. Order the wine aisle and look for a bottle of Naomi or Kincrofford or the prisoner." Now we have data that was given to us by Constellation that showed that they moved the needle. They reversed negative trends and so increases in sales on those three SKUs based on the advertising in-store. So we have hard data that showed a reversal of a negative trend of sales through the leveraging of the Camover October platform with a partnership between Constellation and CROGRA. They didn't write us a chat, but Constellation spent their money with CROGRA. To me, that is the best example of what we were after. So reaching consumer, retail, CROGRA, ads in-store, total wine, press, we had a lot of press, a lot of industry, but some consumer, and social media, a lot of social media. Now if we had more time and more bandwidth, maybe we could have gotten some celebrities to engage with us, that will be for 2025, but that's where we see where we can impact more consumers, through social media, through consumer press, and through retail, and restaurant. You know, we didn't do as much with restaurant as we'd like, only again, because of the limits of our own bandwidth. So, as you said, we're in mid-Devember here and October is over. I was a great example. Are there other examples that you have of metrics from that campaign that can show a move that shows a return to positivity that is reversing a trend? That's our only sales metric, but I can tell you that we had about 120 companies and organizations participate. That's a metric. We had over a thousand retail stores, CROGRA, total wine, buy-right, bottle king, and others, Gary's wine and marketplace, really great wine stores, all of whom are touching thousands and thousands and thousands of consumers. We got about $100,000 in equivalent value of donated media from wine enthusiasts, vine pair, wine spectator, and others. That's another metric. But in terms of moving the needle from a sales perspective or from a narrative perspective, you know, that's what we're just at the beginning. I'm curious just real quick on terms of the narrative, because sales are very quantifiable. In terms of narrative, how do you go about measuring that as an effective metric? Because some of this is kind of like in the ethos of, hey, we all see this negative context around wine or alcohol consumption in general. How does PRHZ is like totally in your wheel and I was like, how do you measure that kind of sentiment? Well, first of all, we count impressions and numbers of hits. And you know, what's the negative versus the positive? Can we push positive stories up and negative stories down? Because in the media environment today, we all know whether it's politics or whether it's business, it's having a loud voice that matters more than fact. Because if we were debating on fact and truth and science, we wouldn't have to do this. Because so much of the reporting around this issue is wrong or incomplete, let's say. And it's driven by these temperance organizations and people with good intentions, but without a loud knowledge. So we knew that we couldn't, you know, debating on fact is the losing proposition and if our election tells us anything, it tells us that, right? So we have to amplify the positive and kind of put the negative down in the Googles. I love the strategy of not doing a misinformation campaign, but actually doing a, like bring everybody together and kind of celebrate to the product. In that vein, are there certain areas or certain channels or certain segments that you think had more success in October than others that you want to double down on in the following years? Well, again, I come back to the retail. I think the retail is critical. I spent 10 years in the retail business myself. I know how visceral it is to stand in a store and engage a consumer and watch what they choose to buy. Are they buying IV soap or dov soap or iris spring? You know, and why? You know, and you ask yourself that question. As a retailer, you're happy with whatever they buy, right? But as a brand marketer, you're like, well, why are they buying A versus B? So retail experience is invaluable. And I think that's informed a lot of what I've been able to accomplish in the PR business. But so yes, I think more retail involvement, more restaurant involvement, more celebrity involvement. There are a lot of celebrities in wine. It's really kind of all of the above and more. You know, I know that's a vague answer, but it's just a fact. Like I said, we met our first announcement in July and then we're in October within three months. And the scale that we blew this up to, the fact that we've been talking today tells us that we're onto something, that the messaging of come over October connected. You know, wine's ability to bring people together, wants unique role in society. And our next campaign, which we will have a next campaign in the spring, because we think it's too long to wait until next October, will be focused on a food message. So wine is food. Wine goes with food because Americans think of wine as alcohol, whereas Europeans think of wine as food. So I have a bit of an ideological question here, because I know you mentioned that you guys don't want to touch the health element, but all the negativity has primarily been driven around health. And people, as you said, like Dr. Laura Katena, who has a website now called "Indefensive Wine" does a very good job of bringing the facts together. What are the facts? And the facts kind of say that moderate consumption has maybe small health benefits related cardiovascular, but very little risk in terms of negativity versus, obviously, large consumption has risk. Is that do you think enough to move the needle against the large? the people who are saying that, and getting the headlines by saying that there's large health risks. - Again, inevitably, we bleed into that health debate as much as we will try to avoid it. Not that we want to avoid it, but that we want to focus on it. But there is a loneliness epidemic in the United States. There's some statistics like 30% of males don't have a close friend. I mean, there's some incredible statistics about isolation and loneliness. That's where wine has a unique ability to be a wellness factor, a positive wellness factor, let's say, in bringing people together. Whether it's COVID or digital devices, for whatever reason, there's a lot of isolation in our country. And if the search in general United States has stated unequivocally that loneliness and isolation are a health issue in this country. So our message of bringing people together, we think really resonate. - Yeah, and I think that tied to health, although I don't think there is research that directly ties it yet, maybe hopefully there will be someday. But the point is that having friendships effectively, having good long relationships with friendships is the thing that is proven to be most correlated to long life, right? And that often, I think, is a result of stress reduction as well, right? You're less stressed if you're not lonely and things like that. All those things sort of like play together. And the question is, or the debate, I guess especially as a PR professional, is that if we don't have that research at scientific research, will it be enough to counteract? 'Cause the big boom in the wine industry, especially in the US in the last 30, 40 years, was driven by a positive health message, try that came out of the French paradox. And so I wonder if do we need that or is emphasizing the positives going to be enough to reverse the trend? - Well, I mean, 60 minutes ran, the piece about the French paradox and the whole world change, right? That was one television news program on one network. The world of media has changed. And again, I don't want to get political either, but if we look at the media landscape in the United States today, obviously, a lot of people are distanced from any sense of fact or reality. You could debate vaccine or not vaccine, but vaccines have proven to save millions and millions of lives for the past 100 plus years. And now we're gonna, we may have a secretary of health in this country who doesn't believe in vaccine. So how do you base your, for my business, I don't want to rely on the rationality and the sensibility of people to analyze data and come to logical factual conclusions about what's real and what's not? We are in a battle for hearts and minds, if you will. - Maybe we can talk a little bit because it's like a counter-opened to some of the negativity that we're saying. I'm curious on if you could give us a high level kind of overview of the impact of sub-rocktober and dry January on the wine industry. Is it something that has been felt substantially by the trade? - Yeah, I mean, I don't know the numbers won't be the top of my head, but I know that sales data in January is down. And while consumption is absolutely down and that's statistically proven, pot's poking or marijuana consumption is way up. And we're only starting to see the studies about the impacts of marijuana on health. Well, why is that? Because it hasn't been legal in the United States. So why would anybody study something that technically, is illegal and shouldn't be using anyway? So I'm a firm believer that we'll start to see articles about the negative impact of marijuana on your health. And that's the cyclical part about maybe then alcohol comes back into fashion or wine comes back into fashion. And it's not an either or, but Peter, to your point earlier, stress reduction, socialization have verifiable impacts on health. Stress is one of the greatest impacts. A lot of stress equals heart disease and a lot of other very-- - Cancer and inflammation, right? 'Cause stress causes a lot of inflammation. - Absolutely. So I'm curious more specifically 'cause come over October was essentially competing with sober October at the exact same time. Did you intentionally plan them at the same time as a counterpoint or was it just because the name sounded better? - You know, October is harvest month. It's leading into holidays with Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah. It's a month where you have the World Series and you have football and you have-- There's just a lot of reasons why October's a great month to get together with Glass-O-R. I can't speak to what was in Karen's mind when she came up and when she coined that phrase, but we focus on advocating for this togetherness and October being a great month. Do we mind people of wine's virtues and ability to get people together? - And when you're doing the next version, you said you were planning on doing it not in January, but in sometime in the spring. - It'll be in the spring. We want to book it in October. So it'll launch around April and run through on April May so that we have some consistent activity advocating for wine for the year. - And in terms of establishing the resources you need to execute on this campaign, what kind of time commitment or how much work is involved or how much money is involved to kind of execute a campaign like this? And how does that impact your plans going forward for the next one? - Well, again, we run really lean. Theoretically, if companies spent a lot of money and didn't give it to us, that is the measure of success. We need a little bit of money to keep the lights on, but not a lot. So we appreciate any support we get, but more than the money, we want the activation of the campaign platforms. Just like Constellation, Jackson Family, ran a whole program of tasting room. They offered tasting experiences for free. They implemented a lot of events. They did a lot of direct marketing to their mailing list. That is more, and then they did, yes, they did support us with cash, which helps us continue to grow the campaign and to increase the social media activity, increase the press activity. You know, we don't need a ton of money, we need a little bit. What we need is activation and participation. - So you mentioned the spring. What are you thinking about in terms of the ongoing impact and continuing to further the efforts of this organization? - So the next campaign will be more food focused. They will continue that together in this message, but it will bring in the food elements so we can bring in chefs and restaurants. And again, make that connection that wine is food rather than people think of wine as alcohol. And then we'll roll after that, roll back into October. It sounds a little scary when I say that out loud, only because it's still a volunteer effort. But if we can raise enough money, we'd like to hire a director to take this and keep it running at a high level. - On that food part, I remember during the pandemic, there was a documentary that went around quite a bit that at least I watched several times. I think called the truth about alcohol. And it mentioned that when you eat before you drink and so you look at it more like food, your liver starts to release an enzyme that helps break down alcohol. So the impact of alcohol is like much less if you pair it with food. - Yep, you absolutely metabolize alcohol better when you eat. - All right, well that's a lot of interesting. I mean, we'll probably have to have you back to talk about how it went in the spring. - Yeah, I would love to come back or maybe have Karen on and have her perspective or can really, if I could do a little plug, [email protected] is an email or my personal email, [email protected]. But you know, this is just the beginning of this movement actually. I mean, it's a very or dacious goal to say we're gonna change an arrow about wine, but we gotta start somewhere. - And we'll put that in the show notes as well for people to access easily. - Awesome. - Awesome. Yeah, we can also link any, if there's like a press kit for wineries to use in the future, we can link that stuff as well. - Yeah, just to the website, there's all the assets are there. And like I said, everything's downloadable, everything's free to the wine world, everything is available for the taking. - So, do you know, to wrap up an episode, we'd like to do it on a personal note and we are curious, what is the most coveted bottle of wine in your cellar and when do you plan on drinking it? - That's a tough one. I mean, I'm very close with the Fresco Baldy family. I'm close to the Fresco Baldy business in the US and I've got some bottles of Maceto and some magnums of Oinolya that are waiting for a really special occasion. - Great, sounds amazing. I love Maceto. - And who doesn't? - Yeah, exactly, hard to like it. Well, we wanna thank you for sharing your thoughts on come over October and we look forward to hearing more positivity around the wine industry in the future, not only from you guys, but also from all the people you work with. - Thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity. This has been great, thank you. - Thanks for joining us. If you loved this episode of X Chateau, we'd love for you to subscribe, rate and give a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Until next time, cheers. [BLANK_AUDIO]