WineWorld Influencer Marketing Case Study

Challenge

The Swedish wine importer WineWorld works closely with Barone Ricasoli and the Italian baron Francesco Ricasoli (that is the man behind Barone Ricasoli, one of the best selling wines in Sweden). Barone Ricasoli is one of the oldest wineries in Italy and for centuries, the brand has built a strong heritage of both quality and innovation. Over the years, the brand has gained many fans in Sweden, which has become the Baron’s most important market.

With an ageing customer base and a rapidly changing media landscape, Barone Ricasoli needed to reach new generations of consumers. To address this, Pronto, WineWorld and Barone Ricasoli decided to create a truly engaging digital brand presence that would lead to brand awareness and drive in store sales.

Digital influencers are becoming increasingly powerful in the digital landscape and we wanted to leverage this in the campaign for Barone Ricasoli. The cooperation with the four bloggers, specialized in various segments, generated mentions and impressions in a cost-efficient way, which would have been difficult to achieve otherwise.
—Sophia Maule, WineWorld

Solution

The Mechanics of the ‘Social Story’ creation

A job opening was posted calling for applicants to compete for the opportunity to spend time in Brolio Castle with the Baron and create their own wine. Influencers and social media activities

led traffic to the campaign site where people could apply by submitting their wine concept idea and use a personal hashtag to share photos or tweets. The six finalists were determined

by an influencer jury of four key influencers. The finalists encouraged their friends to vote for their wine concept and share the story and then the Baron and a jury of influencers selected the winner. Together with the judges, the new wine inspirer visited Tuscany and worked with wine experts and designers to create the new wine. A couple of months later, a limited edition of the new wine was available at Systembolaget, the government owned chain of liquor stores. The ‘social story’ was continuously activated through social media content, influencer engagement, digital PR and a YouTube video series showcasing the making of the wine from grape to bottle.

Making influencers part of the success

The campaign involved influencers at each stage of the ‘social story’ and combined scaled influencer outreach with highly targeted top influencers tactics:

• Selecting the four top key Swedish wine influencers to be the jury and to travel to Tuscany with the winner, meet the Baron and contribute to building the new wine.
• Activating wine online influencers and their communities to drive traffic to the job posting, engage with the competition and share the passion for the story and product.
• Encouraging applicants to share the campaign to collect votes from their own network, and through this process they become influential themselves, some now ranking higher than the judges.

How Traackr was used throughout the campaign

• Understand ongoing discussions in Sweden relating to Tuscany, wine, food, Italy, and culture.
• Identify key online influencers within the Swedish wine community to build relationships with and invite to participate in the Jury and campaign promotion.
• Track influencer brand mentions and usage of campaign hashtags and engage in conversations throughout the campaign.
• Monitor results, analyze in real-time and measure the increase

Traackr enabled us to work continuously before, during and after the campaign on engaging in conversations, measuring the results of our influencer marketing real-time and tracking Barone Ricasoli main competitors.
—Erica Eliasson, Pronto

Results

By letting just one person create his own wine, Barone Ricasoli successfully generated brand awareness among a younger audience and engaged with millions of new customers.

The online influence campaign led by the posting of a unique job opening resulted in 700 applications. Online influencers accounted for a large part of the conversation being the biggest traffic source with 3M+ impressions and resulting to 61K visits to the campaign website.

As anticipated with a younger target group (over 25 years old), 60% of visitors consumed the social content generated from mobile and tablet with videos being viewed over 20K times, a 460% increase in Facebook page likes and 307K+ impressions from the unique hashtag on Instagram.

The ‘social story’ proved to be highly engaging and was widely shared with interactions with over 40K+ people, reaching a total of 2.5M people and generating 7.5M impressions, the value of which exceeded the investment cost by almost 400% in terms of estimated PR value.

Keys to Success

Listen, listen again and continuously listen

Brands need to allow their team to spend time listening to online conversations led by influencers so they can understand ongoing discussions, create activities and messages that resonate with the online community; track and analyze what is being said and measure the long term impact of the awareness generated on the market.

Identify the right digital influencers

For Barone Ricasoli and WineWorld, Pronto identified the initial set of key influencers and invited the top four ones to participate on the jury, which helped give credibility to the campaign and guaranteed earned media from the onset. Engaging with the right influencers is key for the success of any campaign, as only genuine commitment and passion can drive a real emotional connection to a brand.

Create a story worth sharing

With this winemaker job opening, Pronto and WineWorld created a campaign that provided ongoing opportunities for true engagement:

• Inviting the top four key influencers in Sweden to be part of the jury
• Inviting anyone in Sweden to apply(over 25 years old)
• Generating visibility for the six finalists
• Offering a money can’t buy experience with the Barone Ricasoli Brand.

This campaign put the younger audience at the center of the ‘social story’ and enticed all participants to engage with and share the story from recruitment to the wine launch.