Debunking the clichés of digital marketing: In Conversation with Georgia Panagopoulou
Georgia Panagopoulos, known as @wine.gini on Instagram, is one of the wine world’s top influencers, with more than 112,000 followers. She has parlayed her following into a career as a digital marketer for wine. She spoke to ARENI about social media and how to make it work for wine – and why it’s important for fine wine, too.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. For access to the entire interview, listen to the podcast.
ARENI:
You are called many things: influencer, digital creator, but also a wine ambassador. You also trained as an engineer. How do you define yourself?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
To tell you the truth, I don’t really believe in labels. I think that people are so many things simultaneously. I was trained as a chemical engineer, which gave me a very technical and very organized mindset that has helped me so far to achieve the things in life that I wanted. After that, the wine background and my studies helped me to learn more about wine. My digital studies gave me the tools to evolve my work on social media and start my own agency. I believe that I’m an engineer. I still have this background and this mindset. I try to solve problems in a creative way.
I’m an engineer. I still have this background and this mindset. I try to solve problems in a creative way.
Georgia Panagopoulou
ARENI:
You’ve done a degree in management that took you to travel and to visit more than 30 countries and meet a lot of wine professionals. When you first came into the wine industry, what was your take?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
When I started this Master’s program, I had no clue regarding wine. I had experience in wine tourism; I was working for a winery in Greece before that. And then I decided that I wanted to make something more out of this experience, because I realized how much I liked the world of wine without knowing it, what I wanted to do. When I applied for this Master’s degree and they accepted me, the studies included traveling in more than 30 countries around the wine world. And that was the experience that changed my life completely. I was like a kid in the candy store. Everything for me was new.
In the course of travelling, I was noticing that all the wineries we were visiting had their own special story. The wineries didn’t have the time or the knowledge to communicate these stories online. I was always searching for their Facebook for their Instagram and I couldn’t find the thing.
When I work with wineries, either as an ambassador or behind the scenes, it’s very important to know the goals. Most of the wineries don’t know exactly what they want to achieve. In a way, you need to take them by hand.
ARENI:
Can you classify them? Do they usually fall into those three or four different categories of needs? What do they want to achieve at the end of the day?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
It really depends on the winery. Some wineries that are, let’s say, medium to bigger, they already have a story. They want to communicate but they don’t have the right tools or the right person to do that for them. Even a medium sized winery finds it difficult to have a person just for the digital marketing. I come as an external partner to help with that.
I also collaborate with photographers, videographers, and we close this gap. We can have a person or even a member of the family who is taking the photos and we collaborate together to organize their digital marketing online.
ARENI:
Do you sometimes have to say, this is not going to work on social media, or the story is not going to be engaging or understandable by your global audience?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
You can always find a way to make things user-friendly, especially when it comes to food and wine. People are very willing to learn things that are local. The most important thing is to make content that really relates to the winery.
ARENI:
I still believe that there’s a difference between the Old World and the New World, less and less in terms of wine styles, but still in the type of mindset. Do you see this in social media?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
Totally. I have been in Asia, in Australia, in the US, and these are countries that really depend on their digital marketing or their social media communities. They spend a big amount of money on influencers and digital campaigns. And what you see when you go in these spaces and you work with these kind of wineries, is you see this customer centric approach, which is more fun, more engaging, and more educational. They try to be relevant. They try to be active on most of the platforms.
ARENI:
With the huge size of your community, you must have quite a lot of choices in the brands that you can work with. What makes a brand interesting for you?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
For me, the most important thing is that this brand is actually present online. Sometimes I get approached by wineries that might not even have a page online. I would like to work with a client that is a consistent online, that also produces useful content for their followers.
I like wineries that are creative. Of course, I love working with wineries that have already established a brand. They have their own voice. It’s always more effective when you work with wineries that also produce valuable content for their user, because by this way you have a more, win-win kind of a situation. I love, of course, a producer that makes good wines.
For me, the most important thing is that this brand is actually present online. Sometimes I get approached by wineries that might not even have a page online.
Georgia Panagopoulou
ARENI:
Let’s get to the next part of the interview, which is about debunking digital marketing clichés. I’ve put together some of the sentences that we hear regularly, and I want to have your opinion on whether they are true or false.
#1 cliché: Fine wine brands are almost non-existent. The concept of brand is more for cheaper wine than it is for fine wine. Would you agree with that in your experience?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
Not really. If you want to really also evolve the style that you make for social media, just check a few pages from Champagne producers.
ARENI:
Champagne has had been brands forever. Do you think that we’ve got brands in the fine wine world? Apart from Champagne. As you were saying, it’s hard to get on social media if you don’t have that brand approach.
Georgia Panagopoulou:
Yes, definitely. For example, take Antinori. They’re doing an amazing job online. I don’t think that social media are only for the “commercial wines”.
ARENI:
#2 cliché: Social media doesn’t sell wine. True or false?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
It really depends on the brand. There are brands, especially in the US and Australia that are very social media centric. They have their wine clubs. Social media is about being consistent online. Wine lovers are willing to try the wines when they see them in a wine bar, because they remember the brand.
Social media is about being consistent online.
Georgia Panagopoulou
ARENI:
#3 Cliché: Social Media is a long term investment. It takes time to see any kind of return. True or false? How long does it take to see some results?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
I would say if you have a really good plan, and if you have a good budget for your advertising – and for your photography, which is also very important – you can start seeing the results in about six months.
ARENI:
#4 cliché: You have to be a girl to be successful on social media. Is that true from your experience?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
I find this very sexist. In my opinion, no, you don’t have to be a girl to be successful on social media. To be successful, you need to be consistent, to have your own voice. You need to produce valuable content for your community and engage with them.
ARENI:
#Cliché 5: Even on Social media, the wine world talks at people, not with people. When you benchmark what other industries are doing in terms of social media, do you find that the wine industry doesn’t listen enough?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
In my opinion, this is the most important thing on social media. One of my biggest inspirations, is Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary V is huge on social media. So, Gary V started from the wine industry. He made a huge success out of the family business. Now he’s a mentor for many businesses. He has his own digital marketing agency working with huge brands. And what he always says about social media is listen. Listen, don’t just talk.
ARENI:
#6 Cliché: Influencer is not a “real” career. There are so many people that want to be an influencer today. Can you recommend that as a career in terms of making decent money?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
It’s like any job. I mean, you can be a wine journalist and be a freelancer. It’s a different medium for communicating wine. When you’re a freelancer, you are your own boss. You make your own hours. You need to invest your time, your money, on good equipment. Of course you can pay your rent. But it’s work and it takes a lot of time.
There are people who are actually real influencers, with crazy numbers on social media, because they make something very different from the others. And I think we are lucky because the wine industry hasn’t been saturated that much compared to the rest of the industries.
Georgia Panagopoulou
You can always search for trends online because it makes you more relevant.
ARENI:
If we look maybe five to 10 years ahead, who will be the winners and losers on social media?
Georgia Panagopoulou:
I think that most of the wineries will go online in a different way or another. And if they don’t, I mean, how can you approach the new consumers?
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