The Blob: Will the wine industry co-opt social media for its own purposes?
Now that some time has passed since the Murphy-Goode contest, we may have a little more perspective on what it meant — and it had to mean something. I read 1WineDude’s take on this, and he’s pretty much right-on in his analysis. But there’s another implication that hasn’t been mentioned. I tried to describe it in this comment I made on 1WineDude’s blog:
Here’s what I wonder: Now that Hardy is the official voice of MG, will his writing (tweeting, blogging etc.) be seen as independent and credible? Or has he now taken off the hat of independence in exchange for that of paid marketer? What we may be witnessing — as Joe implied — is not so much the rise of social media as an independent voice, but the wine industry co-opting it for its own P.R. and marketing purposes.
Joe himself wrote “Murphy-Goode Fallout = Wine Media Jobs” and he astutely noted that getting hired as a lifestyle manager for a winery is not the same as independent wine writing. It couldn’t be; it’s a job promoting the winery. As such, a social media expert who gets one of these jobs isn’t really a social media writer anymore: he or she is a public relations manager using social media, the way P.R. managers used to use press kits and free dinners. The tools are different, but the job is the same.
You can’t fault wineries for doing what Murphy-Goode did, which is something other wineries already are doing. It’s the old “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” routine. Or, to put it another way, if you’re a big industry and a little industry comes along that poses, however distantly, a threat, what do you do? You take it over. When television came alone, NBC Radio bought into it. Whenever somebody in Silicon Valley invents some cool, useful new gizmo, Microsoft scoops it up. That’s how business works; it follows the same laws as Darwinian evolution: eat or be eaten. The wine industry watched social media for a couple of years, mostly just wondering what the heck it was, and all the while social media was screaming, “Pay attention to us!” The wine industry didn’t really want to pay attention, but finally was forced to. And it has now culminated in A Really Goode Job.
In the 1958 movie “The Blob,” that pulsating mass of protoplasm from outer space absorbed everything in its path. There was nothing that could stand up to it (until the end, of course, when the hero, Steve McQueen, killed it). There was probably a semiotic meaning behind “The Blob” the way there was behind so many Hollywood sci-fi movies of the Fifties (Communism as alien menace). But on another level “The Blob” was a metaphor for anything big taking over anything small by the simple mechanism of absorption. Will the wine industry now absorb — co-opt — wine social media? Are people engaging in wine social media hoping to land high-paying jobs as lifestyle managers? Is there any fundamental difference between older, print-based wine writers and younger, social media writers? And who will the “hero” of this movie be? I think the answers are yes, yes, no and who the heck knows. The truest lesson of Murphy-Goode may be less about the future of wine writing or anything like that, and more about how wine social media is getting cozy with the traditional P.R. and marketing machine. One or the other is The Blob; we’ll have to see who absorbs whom.
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I think it would be nice when wine writers stop referring to all marketers and PR people as “the machine” or now The Blob. A great deal of us are just passionate about wine and are trying to help the winemakers tell their stories.
It will be interesting light of the new FDC clarifications (and I use that term loosely) about truth in advertising also including bloggers where this will all shake out.
PR firms are paid to send bloggers free samples of wine so that they will write about them.
Social media hires are paid to write about anything and everything that will bring attention to the winery (or other business) and engage us, draw the consumer into a conversation that makes them want to buy the wine (or other type of product).
I guess the question before us now is Who Will Help the Wineries Sell More Wine? and will we see bloggers buying wine to write about to keep their voice more genuine.
I love good mysteries….
I don’t see bloggers buying wine, any more than I see traditional wine writers buying wine. Can’t afford to. Seems like FTC is going to have to deal with that reality.