Los Angeles, CA, March 7, 2019 ─ The Los Angeles-based SOMMELIER COMPANY and New York-based Colangelo & Partners announce today a strategic partnership created to provide the global community of wine promotion associations and institutions with the best combination of services available in the industry: professional sommelier-guided live tasting events integrated with industry-leading PR and communication services.
Over the past several years, regional and national wine promotion alliances and consortia from Europe, South America, Australia and the United States have increasingly focused their resources on the US, now the largest consumer of wines in the world. Americans have also been drinking more imported and higher quality wines, making the US market even more attractive for global wine marketers.
Most progressive wine promotional campaigns now combine an experiential component to convey the character of the wine region being promoted with PR and digital marketing in order to reach target consumers, wine professionals, and influencers with fully integrated activities. No agency can, on its own, legitimately satisfy the need for competence in both the sampling and communications disciplines.
Gino Colangelo, President at Colangelo & Partners explains: “As the cultural trends in the United States have shifted to experience, wine promotion campaigns find great results in offering live event and sommelier-driven tasting activities.” He adds, “Those experiences are strengthened when an effective PR campaign creates wider, sustained visibility of the wine styles, region and brands being promoted.”
“Wine trade bodies now seek more effective means to reach and engage with consumers and influential wine professionals alike, adding interactive events to the traditional communications activities,” states Dr. Jörn Kleinhans, CEO at the SOMMELIER COMPANY. “Classical and modern PR methods are key to creating and maintaining market awareness, and the added experiential aspect must be a part of every campaign. Both elements need to be executed by specialists,” adds Lauren Wirth, Director of Trade Programs at the SOMMELIER COMPANY.
About THE SOMMELIER COMPANY
THE SOMMELIER COMPANY offers capability and infrastructure to implement complex wine & spirits tasting mandates everywhere in the United States, Canada and Australia, leveraging local sommeliers and wine promotion specialists. The firm also maintains close relationships with over 400 wine retail stores in the United States alone, and comes recommended from several trade bodies currently under mandate. THE SOMMELIER COMPANY is the leading wine & spirits specialist firm in the world, with unmatched live event capability and strong industry partnership centered around the world’s leading sommeliers
About Colangelo & Partners
Colangelo & Partners specializes in premium food, wine and spirits brands, and has long established relationships with the key press that drive these business categories and help determine the industry leaders. Agency principals have years of experience in retail and distribution as well as communications, a rare combination that gives Colangelo & Partners invaluable insights into consumer purchasing behavior. The agency focuses on ‘closing the loop’ between creative communications programs, distribution, promotion, publicity and the consumer in order to maximize the efficiency of its communications programs and deliver measurable results. Founded in 2006, Colangelo & Partners was honored as one of the year’s top integrated communications firms at the 2013 Agency Elite Awards and for one of the best digital marketing campaigns at the 2014 Digital PR Awards.
More information at www.SommelierCompany.com/trade and www.ColangeloPR.com.
