Wacky weekend shows how the mouth can market

The five-year old festival is an object lesson in creativity, community co-operation, slick organisation, thoughtful advertising, and unprompted but massively successful word-of-mouth marketing.

In its first year, the weekend organisers spent R40 000 and attracted about 2500 visitors. No one was sure how much those visitors spent, but it was significant enough to encourage a second festival in 2005. More accurate recording in 2007 revealed that the numbers climbed to 14 000, with a spend of over R16 million.

Hubbub of excitement

Now organisers say they hope the event doesn't grow this year by more than 10%. They worry that stretched capacity may start a chain reaction of disappointment. Secretly, however, they expect, or fear, far more growth. Accomodation has been booked out for several weeks and enquiries keep coming in. There is a hubbub of excitement, and up and down the valley signs are sprouting like weeds and vendors are checking their tills.

So how has all of this record-breaking stuff been done, what is the product, and what is the attraction?

Wine production in South Africa is a tough business. Some say it is seriously over-produced and that is why it is tough. The wine is good, quite fantastic really, but there are just not enough wine drinkers in the country. And while exports are significant, the growth of competing industries in other countries (notably Australia and Chile), has prevented greater development of that sector.

The Robertson Valley wine farmers sought for ways and means to bolster their position in the industry. The winter months were traditionally pretty bleak commercially, and it was decided that they should make an effort to alter this dynamic. Ann Ferreira and Bonita Malherbe were tasked to put up a promotional plan. A visit to the International Wine Tourism Conference in Margaret River, Australia, and subsequent studying of the Yarra Valley's Grape Grazing festival, produced an outline template. With a budget of R40 000, they appointed a PR company to do some basic communication and proposed a ‘Wicked Wine Weekend'. The word ‘wicked' enjoyed wide currency at the time, denoting nothing worse than ‘exceptional', but the PR firm cautioned against its use in a conservative environment, and so it became ‘Wacky'.

Heart of the issue

A number of wine farms and cellars signed up for the deal and Ferreira and Malherbe co-ordinated plans to offer the public a week-end of fun and games in the Robertson Valley. At the heart of the issue, of course, was wine sales, but to attract visitors there was much much more - stuff such as live music, barrel fishing, boat trips, tractor rides and so on.

The R40 grand budget didn't stretch to a serious ad campaign and no one had any firm idea how the event might succeed. But it did. At least 2500 people came. They seemed to enjoy themselves, they played the games, visited the cellars, and bought the wine.
A repeat performance was quickly pencilled in for June the following year.

It is true that bigger budgets have followed, and official sponsors have signed up to underwrite the costs. But advertising has not been lavish. By far, the greater marketing success appears to have come from word of mouth. Last year one of the sponsoring organisations, Cape Town Routes Unlimited, commissioned a socio-impact assessment by the Centre for Tourism Research in Africa. It was this study which estimated the event yielded R16 million. But it also revealed that “the main influencing media to attend the event was word of mouth (68.9%). Just under half of the attendees (43%) could not identify an event sponsor...”

If they heard the radio spots, they did not seem particularly to have remembered them.

Simple recipe

As for the product, wine undoubtedly figures, but what seems to rate the highest is the simple recipe of ‘family fun'. Young people come with their children - and their parents. It is an amazing mix with more than 200 items on the list of things to do. Of course, a lot of those are duplicates because one can taste wine at any number of the participating 50 cellars. But then are marathons to be run, live music to be listened to, donkeys to be ridden and rivers to be floated, wine glass in hand.

It is a massive piece of community co-ordination, yet no iron fist rules what is on offer. Particpating wine cellars can pretty well do whatever they think will appeal. A management squad of 10, including Malherbe and Ferreira, only offers advice and encouragement based on the collective experience. But it works astonishingly successfully. Last year's impact study revealed only tiny gripes; there were mildly adverse comments about parking and toilet availability.

Next week will tell whether this ground-breaking winter weekend has again broken records, but even if it only brings in another R16 million, it will have made a huge difference to the economy of the Robertson Valley.

The organisers are generally happy with the mix, although they have still have one so-far unattained objective. Overwhelmingly the basic demographic of those who attend the WWW are ‘white'. Last year there was a smattering only of ‘people of colour'. This year the ad budget has been spent partly to redress that imbalance. It will be interesting to see how far that target advertising has worked.