Ep. 2454 Barbara Fitzgerald interviews Barbara Gorder of DTC Wine Symposium | Masterclass US Wine Market

With over thirty years of experience, Barbara's led global campaigns for major brands at agencies like Leo Burnett and DDB and has worked with top wine clients, including Chateau Montelena, Constellation, and Psalm Select. She's an award winning creative leader having earned Ken's lions, Effies, and Addie Awards, and is a long time thought leader in the wine industry through her work with the DTC wines andposium. Today, our three key takeaways are first kind of cracking the code on US wine marketing. So what every producer, whether they're domestic or international needs to understand about the US market's unique consumer behaviors in this moment, Second, building the case for marketing investment. You hear it all the time when a company is not doing well, the first thing that gets slashed is a marketing budget. So you're here to really advocate for the proven strategies in the area of kind of tightening spend to to keep those marketing budgets alive. And then third, just given all of your expertise and wisdom, your must do tips for wineries right now. So some actionable real world insights. Sure. It says a heady list. We'll get through it. I know. I'm we'll get through it Barbara. Welcome to Masterclass US wine market with Meen Barbara Fitzgerald. In this show, we'll break down the complexities of selling wine in the US. By discussing the relevant issues of today with experts from around the globe. Each episode serves up three key insights to help elevate your wineries presence in the US market. So grab a pen and paper, and let's pave the way for your success in the US. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Masterclass US wine market. Today, I am thrilled to actually be sitting next to Barbara Gordon, who is the president of undisclosed location, a Sonoma County based branding and strategy consultancy specializing in wine and consumer packaged goods. With over thirty years of experience, Barbara's led global campaigns for major brands at agencies like Leo Burnett and DDB, and has worked with top wine clients, including Chateau Montelena, Constellation, and Psalm Select. She's an award winning creative leader having earned Ken's lines, Epie's, and Adi Awards, and is a longtime thought leader in the wine industry through her work with the DTC wines and Jose. So thank you, Barbara, for coming today and chatting with us. Oh, well, thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Absolutely. Before we dive in today's discussion, tell us a little bit about your background and and how you came to work in the wine business. I'm from California originally. Daughter of a naval aviator. So I went between La Jolla and Alameda, California. I went out to Northwestern for school and stayed there for a long time, but it was time to come home about fifteen years ago. And I came back and I started going to the DTC ones and posting volunteering for them because I thought it was a great way to volunteer to meet people to integrate into the community. The symposium was very small then it was held in San Rosa. It was mostly a bunch of white guys, a handful of women. And when I say handful, I'm not kidding. And a very different audience than we have today, but it's been a great place for me to meet wonderful, talented people in the wine business. Yeah. Absolutely. I've been a long time attendee, so I can attest to all of the incredible work that you've done to grow it into something. It's really, I think one of the most important trade shows of the year for anyone, not just local California wineries. We have people now from over fifteen states and usually several foreign countries. So we've had Italians, French, Australians, people from South America, and it's been fantastic to watch it grow and to see a really wide variety of different people attend the conference. So that's meant to the strength. We're definitely a content first show. So what we try and do is come up with what's hot, what's trending, what's important that we need to talk about. And I think just as important as the content and the discussions that take place actually offline. In the fire pits in, you know, all of the dinners you know, the different places. And now we're in Monterrey so we can do some golfing us. I did love the move to to Monterrey. It really makes it feel a little bit more immersive, maybe, because you're like, if you just feel a little bit like you're in another world. Well, yeah. And you you have to sort of You can have conversations everywhere. You can go on a bike ride. You can go to the beach. You can do a lot of different things. So a lot of people brought partners and spouses and some kids. So it's right by Martin Luther King Day. So a lot of people came and enjoyed the weekend with their families It is a little nicer to take your loved ones to Monire versus Congress No offense. No offense to Godfrey. It was good to us for many years, and that was this Wingin deal. But we think that Monerey, and I think it's trying to we wanna be about everybody. We want to have our Mid Coast people, our Santa Barbara people, our temecula people, and it makes it a little bit easier. We, you know, have always had a great audience from Nap and Sonoma, but we've been growing our slow and pass worldwide audience as well. Yeah. Well, one of the things that not one of the things, one of the reasons though why I'm really excited that you're here today is because you have all this fantastic background in the kind of corporate side of marketing and advertising And I think those insights become so relevant for wineries which are often built on the backs of mom and pop operations, small family businesses. So I'm really excited to dive into with you today. Our three key takeaways are first kind of cracking the code on US wine marketing. So what every producer, whether they're domestic or international needs to understand about the US markets unique consumer behaviors in this moment, what the competitive landscape looks like and, obviously, the regulatory landscapes that we're in at the moment. Second, building the case for marketing investment. You hear it all the time when a company is not doing well, the first thing that gets slashed is a marketing budget. So you can hear you're here to really advocate for the proven strategies in the area of kind of tightening spend to to keep those marketing budgets alive. And then third, just given all of your expertise and wisdom, your must do tips for wineries right now. So some actionable real world insight. Yeah. Sure. It's a a heady list, but we'll we'll we'll get through it. I know. And we'll we'll get through it, Barbara. Barbara, Barbara. So this time, I So let's talk a little bit about marketing wine in the US. And because we are the Italian wine podcast, we're also thinking about kind of bringing a brand into a different cultural mindset. So from your perspective, what do you think is kind of some of the big misconceptions that people might have right now about marketing to US consumers. Well, first of all, every trip I've taken Italy, I mean, all the producers, they're fantastic. People wine the food. It all goes together. It grows together. And so I've had a number of amazing amazing experiences there in Montalcino, and a barolo, one of my favorites, stuff in the Piedmont, and then great wines. You just need I'm sorry. A quick what's the just a just a a few of my favorites. But one of the things and you're gonna hear more about this at the conference this year, I think that wine in general, and this is for both US and global markets, people depend way too much on demographics. And I think that people need to be thinking much more broadly. And I think a lot of it comes out of a very simple thing. Everybody's got if you're gonna be shipping wine, you've got somebody's birthday, and you've got their zip code. Okay. So you hear a lot of people, Silicon Valley Bank report, and many others, and people just are defined by, you hear it over and over again