Five years ago, a small group of colleagues joined me to create an unusual event for the wine marketing community.  We called it THE EXCHANGE because we wanted it to be an interaction of ideas, insights and inspiration.

Ten events later, more than one thousand wine marketing professional have listened to forty different speakers from a wide range of companies both within and outside of the wine industry. Without sharing confidential information, I’d like to suggest a few lessons I have learned along this journey.

• As a marketing professional, consider creating an event that you want to attend. If you are like the people you want to reach, think about the event you want to attend.
• Events that are commercial and salesy aren’t educational. So be transparent with your team that the event focuses on finding interesting speakers who have new and fresh viewpoints. Don’t sell stuff. Build relationships.
• Find a good balance of left brain/right brain thinking.
• Allow room for the ideas to breathe – like a good wine; a little oxygen helps develop insights.
• People come to events for networking as well as learning. Schedule plenty of time for both things to occur.
• Pick a theme that gets at a key challenge for your audience. For this last event, we asked the question, seriously who is your customer. One of the speakers, who is the fine wine buyer for Spec’s in Texas said that this issue is always the first thing he asks wineries when they pitch him a new wine. So we struck a nerve.
• Reach out to cool, smart people who have strong views. Since I have had the principle role of finding speakers, I always reached out to individuals who had a varied perspective on the marketing. I like to attract speakers with strong points of view – even if I disagreed with them because they helped to bring a new thread into the quilt of ideas.
• Be a human being. Since I get to set up and frame each conference by introducing the theme, it allows me to tell a personal story. Sometimes it was about my daughters, my wife or my grandfather. By telling a story only I know, I’m bringing authentic content to help anchor the framing of the topic. No one else can tell my story. This approach gets a warm response from our attendees.

Thinking about creating a custom event for your industry? Be different. Be fresh. Be provocative.

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Need help to create a unique event for your industry? I can help. Let’s exchange ideas. Contact me here. 

Photo: Credit Nomacorc Wine Marketing Exchange Flyer