The Changing Game of Wine Media Relations and PR

It's all about the technology, not about the job

As many of you know, I have for a very long time and continue to work as a wine PR and media relations consultant, helping wineries, retailers, associations, wine tech firms, wine media firms, and others craft and deliver messaging to media as well as consumers and customers. What’s really interesting about my time in this field is that the actual job of interacting with the media and delivering clients’ messaging hasn’t changed much at all. What has and continues to change drastically is the technology the media relations consultant uses. Today, that big change is Artificial Intelligence.

First, media relations and PR haven’t really changed for decades. The media has space to fill and they are looking for appropriate news, ideas, and stories to fill it. A good deal of what they end up publishing, no matter the format, is generated by private and public concerns that get in touch with writers, publishers, and editors to deliver some sort of message they hope will generate coverage of their work, brand, or efforts.

It’s storytelling, sales, and communications. That’s what I do. And this aspect of public and media relations hasn’t changed for many decades.

A press release is an example of this effort. A phone call or email to a writer is an example. Newsletters are examples. Social media posts and private messages are a means of communicating. All of it comes down to effective communication and trust.

I want to provide here a timeline of sorts of the tools that I’ve used in my career to carry out this communication on behalf of my clients to give a sense of what has changed over the years.

1990: SNAIL MAIL—This was the primary means of sending information to the media. It took days to get to the writer and you had no way of knowing if they even got it.

1990: FAX—This was high-tech. If the media had a fax machine, you could fax your letter or documents to them. It got there immediately. That was a big deal.

1995: EMAIL—This was a game changer. You could send an email immediately and instantly to a writer or editor—IF they used one. Media were quick to adopt. At first it was time-consuming to send large documents, but it was a lot faster than snail mail.

1997: WEBSITES—It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the website become common enough that wineries and wine companies began setting up there own. This two was a bonanza as it allowed public and media relations folks to put the commonly used press kit on the website for all to see instead of sending them out via snail mail.

2000: ONLINE DATABASES—For years, looking up who wrote for what publications or who the editor was at a magazine or newspaper meant opening up a book published by one of the 3 or 4 companies that produced the and looking up by hand the person you wanted to reach out to. About this time, these large books went on-line and made finding just the right person you wanted to communicate with a breeze.

2005: THE BLOG—The rise of the blog was a boon for publishers and independent writers, but it was also a new way for PR folks to put their client’s newsletters online instead or in addition to emailing them or snail mailing them.

2005-2010: SOCIAL MEDIA—MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. They changed everything for the PR firm. This was the technology that allowed PR and media relations pros to devise and carry out strategies for clients to interact directly with their customers, without using the media.

What’s notable about all of the ways new technologies changed wine public relations is that none of them really changed it at all. As I mentioned above, all media and public relations is about building relationships on trust and effectively communicating with the media or another constituency. Do that well, and any media relations strategy will work; any PR campaign will work.

Then came Artificial Intelligence.

ChatGPT launched in 2022. Over the past couple of years, it has become clear that generative AI will likely be a bigger game changer than email—to date, the real “killer App”. Since then numerous AI chatbots and generative IA tools have launched and are affordable. They aren’t perfect, but even today, in their infancy, we can see how they will change how media relations specialists in the wine industry work.

When I start working with a new wine client, when I embark on a new series of communications with the media, when I begin to construct a press release, the first thing I do is research. Some of it is more extensive than other types. But it’s where I begin. With AI tools that work now takes half the time.

When I devise a new marketing or public relations strategy for a client, the first thing I do is a long brainstorming session where I start with ideas, then strategy, then tactics, and then I put it into a document. With generative AI, I now have a brainstorming partner who is pretty damn smart. Oftentimes AI tools will deliver up much of what I would have concluded and created, but more often than not it will make a connection or provide an idea I did not consider. With AI tools, this process of brainstorming takes half the time.

Sometimes I am tasked with helping a winery or wine tech firm redesign their visuals. I’m not a graphic designer but I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time acting as an art director in conjunction with graphic designers. I communicate what I want to the designer, then we go through iterations of the design. With generative IA visual design tools, I can deliver very carefully calculated prompts that result in numerous different interpretations of what I want and I can use this to communicate with the graphic designer. With these AI visual design tools, this process takes half the time.

When I sit down to write for a client, be it a press release or a promotional piece or a website or anything really, I have my outline and I start writing. Some things go faster than others. But it’s always the editing of the document that takes the longest amount of time. With generative AI tools, I can ask my AI partner to provide an edited version of the release. And there it is…in seconds. I can ask it to edit the document to make it more emotional or more authoritative or more in the vein of a news story. And there it is…in seconds. With AI tools the finished product takes half the time to complete.

As with nearly any profession, there is nuance to working with a wine client and delivering media relations and public relations solutions. The nitty gritty is leveraging a history of honesty and trust when you pitch a story to a journalist. I don’t think AI can help with this. which means my services, after 30 years of working in this field with journalists and writers, will likely stay in demand.

However, wine media relations, like PR in any field, is being transformed by artificial intelligence. What’s remarkable is that today, the tools are incredibly powerful and game-changing, yet they are still in their infancy. We can imagine what’s coming down the pike. But the game continues to change so fast that we are sure to be surprised by what comes next.

One thing I’ll never do is hide from my clients is how I use this new tool. If you are my next pubic and media relations client, my promise to you is that you’l always know when any product of my work has been helped along by AI. Some will disagree with this promise, but as far as I can tell anyone working in my field that doesn’t own up to using AI is trying to hide something.