One thing that I do know is that they are prevalent in the St. Louis area. While many are based in outlying locations, they logically advertise to and service the urban and suburban markets. This means that your average St. Louis consumer encounters many marketing messages about wineries on any given day.

Two friends of mine opened a winery in Ballwin, Missouri that “provides quality wine with your personal touch.” Wine Necessities is a winery for do-it-yourself-ers. They have an area where you can make your own Pinot Blanc or Italian Sangiovese or whatever your palette desires. You can even customize the labeling that goes on the bottle for personal or business use. It becomes your wine – inside and out. They host parties and have social and community events around wine, etc.

This business presents interesting marketing challenge. How do you cut through the clutter of all the other wineries, appeal to wine lovers/wine makers and present an innovative idea (a wine-making, fun, social experience) to potential patrons?

How would you communicate what you do in a short and concise way to capture your innovation? To help people understand you are not just some other winery?

One place that I would look for help is from Chip Heath and Dan Heath of Made to Stick fame. In a recent Fast Company article, they outlined a great way to do just that. They call it the anchor and twist.

According to Chip and Dan, the best way to help others understand your new, innovative idea, is to start them with something that they already know, the anchor. Then, you hit them with what makes it different, the twist.

The challenge is that you sacrifice some amount of accuracy for the sake of helping people understand your company, product, etc.

One example that they give has to do with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

The “cardio” part — pumping on the chest — forces blood to circulate. The “pulmonary” part – mouth-to-mouth breathing — gets oxygen to the lungs. CPR has been ingrained in mass culture for the past 35 years, but what if a new innovation came along that supplanted it? That’s precisely what happened in March 2007 when a team of Japanese researchers published a surprising paper in the prestigious Lancet medical journal. It tracked 4,068 adults who’d gone into cardiac arrest with bystanders present but not in a hospital. The shocker: Victims who received only the chest-pumping part of CPR had slightly better health outcomes than those who received full CPR, including mouth-to-mouth. For most victims, then, mouth-to-mouth was pointless.

The American Health Association had to take an old idea (CPR) and get the word out quickly about the new one (no more mouth-to-mouth). How could they communicate this new innovation to so many who were used to good ol’ CPR?

Eventually, “Hands-Only CPR” was the term that they decided to use to express the new idea. CPR serves as the anchor, and “hands-only” is the twist. This is not completely accurate…really there is no longer the “P” since there is no mouth-to-mouth. But, for the sake of helping an audience understand, they let some inaccuracy go.

Here are some attempts at doing that for Wine Necessities from my feeble mind:

• Wine Necessities is the Build-a-Bear of wineries.
• Wine Necessities – the DIY winery.
• Get your hands dirty winery.
• The you-too-can-crush-grapes winery.

TRY THIS ONE:

Do you have better ideas for my friends at Wine Necessities? Can you come up with one for your company or organization that you would be willing to share?

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