Santa Barbara Wine Improvement Fee

Let's give the French this: They understood early on that most wineries don't have enough "heft" to be recognized as brands in the marketplace, so they made the location itself the brand for wines of a certain type produced there: Champagne is produced in Champagne, Bordeaux in Bordeaux, etc.

Was it successful? You bet. So adopting that strategy should have been a no brainer for U.S. vintners. But, as Queen Elizabeth used to say, "You have to be seen to be believed," and while it's nice to believe that "if you build it, they will come," it ain't necessarily so. With apologies to the late neespaper executive Al Neuharth, "If you don't sell it, they won't drink it.:

So it was a bit of a surprise to us that when a "wine improvement district" was proposed for Santa Barbara County, Calif., last year, it met with stiff resistance. That may have been because some wineries affected by the current Wine Depression felt they couldn't afford it.

But the proposal passed, and it's beenm a full year and the results are in. Here's what's been accomplished so far:

• An ad agency hired by the Wine Improvement District has generate 410 million media improssions since October valued at an estimated $1.49 million in earned media value value – i;e., what Santa Barbara Vintners would have had to pay if it had bought the impressions that appeared in Wine Enthusiast, VinePair, Food & Beverage Magazine, the Santa Barbara Independent, MAXIM, Authority Magazine, and many others.
• Santa Barbara Vintners expanded it hosted media program by launching its first group familiarization tour, bringing influential journalists and content creators to Santa Barbara Wine Country for immersive, first-hand experiences. The June tour included writers and editors from Forbes, Sophisticated Living, Fodar's Travel, Decanter, SevenFifty Daily, Imbibe, National Geographic, and Smithsonian.
• "Let's Go!," a digital marketing campaign, was launched to get wine, food and travel audiences in Los Angeles, Oramge and San Diego counties to view Santa Barbara Wine Country as an easy day trip or weekend getaway. The campaign reached more than 16 million consumers, generated 138,000 website clicks, increased website traffic by 600% and brought about 66,000 new visitors to the website in the past two months.

For the year starting April 1, the campaign plans to expand beyond traditional awareness advertising to integrate paid media, compelling creative, a dedicated visitor experience and more.