Bb's RealTech

As the web-marketing people will tell you, "creating passionate users" is the goal - product is just something to carry the social virus.

Transparency 2.0. Or, "theater." It's all part of the seduction, creating passionate users.

Personally, I'm confused. But then, I don't "get it," so I have an excuse. My mirror neurons aren't as shiny as everyone else's. Bad genes, I guess.

Some people sell stuff. Other people sell ideas about how to sell stuff. The rest of us suckers are buying it.

Changing subjects *slightly*. I think of this in the context of the political campaigns. In 2004, Dean had something like a proto-Web 2.0 campaign, but he failed to convert. Real people did not show up at the polls for him. Now in 2008, Obama seems to have a web-powered campaign that's able to convert, particularly in states where the traditional Democratic Party infrastructure is less established (less strong unions or city machines, purple states, or red states trending purple).

So, thinking in context of your grapes vignette, it's true that there's a lot of Web stuff (doesn't have to be 2.0) that just has no real basis. However, Web stuff connected with real on the ground operations seems to be upending at least one established political party.

PS When I started writing, I had the airplanes trailing smoke. Quite nice.

" product is just something to carry the social virus" Truer words were never spoken, especially as it relates to Stormhoek, Seth.

Dave, I'm confused by this, too. Confused and rather flabbergasted that this campaign was considered a 'success' when one company went bankrupt, and the other two are fighting over who owns the brand (when obviously, the wine doesn't matter). Creating passionate users, indeed.

Bud, Obama gives an excellent speech and that probably did it for him more than his use of the web. What the web has done for him is help fill caucuses, which have given him an edge. (I'm not even going to mention him running against a woman, and how Clinton has always trailed among liberal white males.)

If it were just the web, though, I don't think he'd be leading.

Not to wander overly into the politics, I'll just note that Obama's internet organizing has gained him both a cash advantage and helped him exploit the on the ground organizational advantage that he gained as a community organizer. To some extent, Clinton has been playing catch-up there. I'll agree that the Internet would not have helped Obama if he had been a dud candidate.

Here's what I gather so far. Graham Knox owns an old vineyard he calls Stormhoek Farm. Some of the vines date back as far as 1900 or so. Over the last many years, for at least a decade and probably longer, he has been planting new vines, and improving the cellars. There's a bulk wine buyer in Great Britain who engaged Hugh MacLeod, famous cartoonist and webpreneur, to help him build a brand. The wine producer in South Africa (Stormhoek Farm) and the marketers (the Orbital company) in Great Britain struck a deal.

Again, this is informed conjecture (see Oliver Shulman's comment and the links he provides), but I believe Orbital, the distributor, went broke owing money to Stormhoek, their supplier. They went into receivership and were purchased by a South African company called "Origin." One of the assets Orbital sold Origin was the Stormhoek brand name. Origin now intends to find another supplier to cut a deal with in order to distribute South African wine named Stormhoek but grown someplace entirely different from Stormhoek Farm.

Hugh MacLeod has been silent about the whole thing.

The Buy a Vine/Save a Job thing is a creative way that Graham Knox is making up for the cash shortfall this season since the Brits have his wine on the shelves, but he's unlikely to see any of the money. As I understand it, R2000 (around US$270) will buy you a vine in their vineyard and help them keep their workers employed. The pdf FAQ about the program is here.

There are now two Stormhoek blogs. The one that Oliver calls the "false Stormhoek blog" (www.stormhoek.com) belongs to the distributors and the real Stormhoek blog that belongs to the producers.

Thanks for the update Frank.

Well, what we have here is someone not telling the truth. The UK folks say they invented the name and the concept; that the vineyard owner had a brand called something else that didn't sell very well. They also say they have money, the footed the bill for the SxSW goodie bags, and it would seem, Hugh going to SxSW.

The vineyard owner in SA is saying he invented the name, and now he's owed lots of money and he doesn't want to lay folks off, so buy a vine.

This is all shadier than S**t, and I don't mean shady as in trees. But yeah, I would think that Hugh should say something, for all of his talk on "transparency".

Next we'll find out that the Saville Row suits are really off the rack from Sears.

Shelley, just to pick a nit, I don't believe Hugh was ever about transparency, per se. He was more about telling people to "fuck off," as I recall from one of his cards. No, it was Scoble who was all about transparency. At least, when it comes to other companies and their difficulties, not his own.

The fact that you're conflating the two probably indicates a branding deficiency of some kind.

But it's kind of sad that the guy who seems to be coming out on the worst end of this is the guy who actually made the wine, not the people who profited from a bunch of bullshit about "social objects" and what have you.

Caveat emptor, "sucker born every minute," and all the usual disclaimers apply. Markets being conversations and everything else being miscellaneous. If you'll excuse me now, I have to go "kick ass."

Feel free to moderate this intemperate, non-value added comment. :^)

Damn, there I go mixing up my Web 2.0 luminaries again

Yes, it really does sound like the vineyard owner got screwed. Lesson learned: don't actually deliver anything if you want to be successful in this environment.

Dave,
You rock! Rock on.

What a mess. I feel sorry for the vineyard owner. But this seems like another reason to stick with our local winemakers: I can actually talk to them, ask questions, and look at the vines myself if I want to. Less hype, just people and grapes.

I don't know if this says more about me or them, but I didn't realize that this was associated with the design on the canvas bags (just interactive, not film or music!) until just yesterday when I was using it as a grocery bag. I showed C the design, and only then noticed the URL on the side. The more obvious bit of advertising is the ginormous Adobe logo on the other side.