Video: 2014's Wine Vision conference highlights

By Gemma McKenna

Published: 29 December, 2014

November's Wine Vision conference brought together the great and the good of the wine world - and focused on everything from how the brain ventriloquises taste to the need to "drag more consumers into the category".

This video clip picks out highlights from the three-day event, held in London, which held a mirror up to the wine industry in an effort to illustrate what it can do better.

Major topics which kept coming up were how to better engage with millennial consumers, or as Enotria chief executive Troy Christensen put it, how to "drag more consumers into the category". There was plenty of talk about what the industry is so far doing wrong - with Second Glass founder Tyler Balliet - who runs the Wine Riot events in the US, questioning "how do you take a room full of alcohol and make it boring?".

Many brands are also failing to capitalise on the digital opportunity. Mike Greene, business mentor, chairman of Drinksupermarket.com and HT Drinks, as well as a former TV Secret Millionaire, told delegates: "I googled the top 10 wine brands and looked at their digital footprint. It kind of wasn't there."

Social media guru Jon Morter, said many brands take the wrong approach on social media. Facebook themselves now use one of him parody pages to show real-life brands what not to do.

Burgundy School of Business's Dr Damien Wilson said: "We have made wine so complex that consumers are utterly petrified about buying it."

Being able to connect on a more personal level was vital, many presenters pointed out, and "evoking emotions" really helps.

The changes in the distribution model must also be considered, with direct sales becoming ever more popular, delegates heard. The trade must also reconcile the "inexorable shift" in wine sales online with the product's overall route to market, warned wine e-commerce expert Matthew Protti of BlackSquare.

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