Women in Wine Deserve (nay) Command Your Support – Now!
By Alan Goldfarb
May 5, 2022
Some might consider this a stretch; and might say, what does this have to do with wine and/or media relations? It well might be a stretch and it only has to do with wine and PR, tangentially. But I’ve got to say something. I and hopefully you, will also say something. We’ve got to support women. Otherwise, who the hell else is going to do that, in this climate except, of course, women themselves.
In this context, I support Katie Kelly Bell, Forbes; Virginie Boone, Wine Enthusiast; Lisa Denning, Grape Collective; Jess Lander, San Francisco Chronicle; Elin McCoy, Bloomberg; Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle; Deborah Parker Wong, SOMM Journal; Sasha Paulsen, Napa Register. As well as Sara Schneider, Robb Report; Lettie Teague, Wall Street Journal; Lisa Adams Walter, Wine Women Radio; Kim Westerman, Forbes; MaryAnn Worobiec, Wine Spectator; and Jessica Yadegaran, Bay Area News Group.
In the Annals of Winery PR-ing or How I Got a Client’s Story Told
April 28, 2022
Pass.
It’s another type of expletive of a four-letter word with at least four different meanings. But we publicist-types know it as the meaning we dread the most; as in: “No thank you, we pass” or worse yet in our collective worst nightmarish imaginations: Take that pitch and get that stuff out of here. We’re not interested. We don’t want anything to do with it. And/or: Did you really think we’d bite on that boring, uninteresting story?
Our job as PR flacks is chiefly about sending pitches on behalf of our clients, to media members. The point is to attract attention to that pitch. So that said media person sees the benefit to their readers, listeners, or audience, enough so to cajole them to write a story, taste the clients’ wines, or agree to an interview with the client on a podcast or radio show. Getting a media “hit” ain’t easy. If it were, you wouldn’t need me or my colleagues, who toil every day to come up with a pitch that won’t strike out, but to spin a story that’ll be hit out of the park.
WHY NEWSPAPER FOLK MAKE THE BEST FLACKS
Take It From the Deans of Winery PR
By Alan Goldfarb
April 19, 2022
We were sitting on deck chairs, next to the pool in the backyard of Harvey Posert’s house, if I recollect, on Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena. This I believe was in 2009 when I began a slow transition from wine journalist to winery PR flack*. Harvey was explaining – and revealing to me what I took as sacred PR inside baseball secrets – which wine writer was on the “take” (meaning they accept freely, wine, dinners, lodging, etc.) and which media types never take anything; but I’d better watch out, because she’s as an old-school newspaperwoman as there is; and she writes what she believes to be the truth about your wine.