REthink Wine Blog

These thick lenses on my glasses are not from the late night studying in college or from reading the entire Jane Austen collection in my poorly lit bedroom. They are the result of growing up in the “Age of Advertisement” - watching way too much TV when I was a kid. And of course, commercials were my favorite. Soon after graduating college, I joined one of the biggest advertising firms in New York, and my life became nothing but “Sell! Sell! Sell!”

Unfortunately along with the glamour came the discovery of “the truth” - not everything they say in the ads are true! (I am sure you are more than aware of that already. THAT is advertising.)

So what does the Web have to do with Darwinism?

Out of curiosity, I purposely made a list of the last 20+ things I bought - from a new suitcase to Japanese curry mix - and why I picked that particular brand/product over all the others on the same shelf. What I realized is that more than half of the things I bought were recommended to me in the past from people I know who have given their thumbs up.

So what does my little non-scientific research mean?

As many of you have heard over and over again, the Web has given “people” a voice - people who actually bought and used the products; People who were not paid by the producers to, on occasion, exaggerate or fabricate; People like you and me.

Recommendation will be single force that drives sales in an age where “the truth” about a product will sell it. Not how big your marketing campaign budget is. “We” will no longer listen to “the man” who makes the stuff. “We” will listen to the hundreds and thousands of people who actually bought the stuff, and “we” want to hear what they have to say about it.

So in the end, “survival of the fittest” will become the new model of e-commerce because very soon, only the best products will sell.

Here’s a final thought - spend the money on product development and listen to what the people have to say about your products. Put your ego aside and improve your products - give people what they want. Stop wasting money on hiring some guy to make your products sound good. Make them good.

This entry was posted by Eric Hsu on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Wine Industry Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.