As if the recent James Suckling dot com teaser videos weren’t bad enough, now we have two more horrors. They are two rather awful videos supporting natural cork. A strange, rather dated brand of ‘humour’ is the vehicle preferred to get the message that natural corks are good for the environment across to consumers. Am I alone in finding these quite toe curlingly bad?
22 Comments on Oh dear – awful videos promoting natural cork
Yep…they’re crap!
Desperation, I suppose. Screw caps are inevitable. You just need a Nekker to make it look less industrial.
From which planet do these people come?
Good gracious, take a deep breath already
I’m an ardent supporte of natural cork, but those vids make me want to go out and buy a screwtop AND a plastic stopper! The people who made them and/or the poeple who approved them, should be … should be … (I dont know what should be done to them!)
Oh god, a great sadness has just befallen me. I’m an advocate of natural cork, but those adverts have managed to make me feel quite hostile to them. Those adverts show a terribly outdated view of wine and wine drinkers. The people at 100percentcork.org are clearly out of touch with the majority of wine drinkers. Shame on them!
Astonishing to think that people must have sat down, brainstormed, come up with these ideas and then someone approved the scripts and story boards and then they made them and at no point did anyone say ‘You can’t be serious, this will offend large sections of our audinece and make us look stupid’, Gob smakingly stupid. I’m off to open a bottle with a screwcap. If I’m lucky I’ll end up with a job in the public sector.
Definitely weird–but here’s another way to look at it- They got Jamie Goode’s attention enough to have him posting them on his blog and tweeting about it! That got us (and how many others) talking about it. And how many will retweet them?
Yes, they’re bad… but so bad they’re funny in an absurd sort of way… and honestly, are any of us going to start choosing synthetic corks or screw caps just to go AGAINST the cork? In an odd twist of fate, the videos did their job and may turn out to be marketing genius!
I bet they go viral!
@Margaret: I take your point, but ultimately it makes the pro-corkers look dumb and out of touch, which is hardly what they need if they want to hang on to their dwindling market share. I sat and watched these in Porto last week at the Wines of Portugal conference, then got on a bus and visited an Amorim plant, where the group got given paper bags full of brochures and… more paper. I came away feeling torn: I wanted to like the cork guys, but boy, they were turning me off big time with their paper-wasting ways and silly videos.
Actually Margaret, I would have never seen the streams if it wasn’t for your tweet.
@Paul-yep! See what I mean? I had no idea until I saw Jamie’s tweet!
they’re so bad that they create an irresistible urge to say “hey, check this out–what’s up with THESE guys?”
Nah, it’s just you being from the UK and therefore humorless… 😉
In all seriousness, the first video is only bad, while the second is epically, epically, horribly bad.
I’m only wishing I’d seen these before I’d gone to Portugal last week so I could have told the cork folks to their faces how bad of an idea these were…!
If an appeal to snobbery is the best argument you can come up with for your marketing… Love how they managed to align the product with sexism and the stereotype of the ‘swarthy’ Portuguese.
I had to stop video two half way through. I wonder how the hell this chump claims to be a sommelier, and in which New York establishment, that he has no clue of the merits of various closures. That video was stomach turning propaganda.
No, you’re not alone Jamie.
Somewhat of an unwritten basic rule; never diminish competitors to gain your own followers. It only has the opposite effect and makes you look desperate.
And just on top of all; popped a corked bottle last weekend. Yesterday, it happened again. No, dear cork industry; i’m not convinced.
Best,
Niklas
Pure marketing genius…
So what’s cork again?
Halliday 2010 Australian Top 100 Wines
Category Screwcaps Corks (including Diam and ProCork)
Under $20 Whites 98.6% 1.4%
Under $20 Reds 96.7% 2.3%
Over $20 Whites 98.5% 1.5%
Over $20 Reds 83.2% 16.8%
Mm, yes, striking presentations. But I wonder if to some viewers they might just work in cork’s favour?
an amazing number of commenters over on Alder Yarrow’s vinography actually find these amusing.
They make me squirm.
Baffling.
C
really bad taste.
Hey Jamie, talking of Alder Yarrow, your book is in his top ten!
http://www.vinography.com/archives/2010/12/the_wine_lovers_essential_libr.html
Never never never promote your own product by criticising another. It never works, in any walk of life.
Boy these are ‘cheesy’. But maybe they were produced that way to get attention. Do they do the cork industry justice…..no. As Nick above says ‘do not promote your product by criticising others’….sell your own product or service on it’s merits and benefits.