Indiana Horticultural Congress & Trade Show

It was a busy week for members of the Market Your Craft team, traveling to Indianapolis to present on the topics of storytelling and branding to the 2019 Indiana Horticultural Congress & Trade Show.  We wanted to make sure that you and the crew at Northwestern had access to the same materials that were presented to producers from Indiana’s wine, cider and mead community.

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Organized by Purdue University, the Horticulture Congress is an educational meeting designed to meet the needs of fruit, vegetable, wine, organics, and specialty crop growers and marketers in Indiana and surrounding states.  Indiana’s wine industry now contributes more than $2.4 billion to the state’s economy, with wine sales growing by more than 15 percent each year. Since 1989, the number of Indiana wineries has increased from nine to nearly 100 and those wineries grow grapes on more than 600 acres, a 300 percent since 1991. Today, Indiana wine production exceeds 1 million gallons a year (5 million bottles) — up from 40,000 gallons a year when the Purdue Wine Grape Team began its efforts in 1991.¹

I was asked to speak to a series of topics on Day 2 of the Congress, intended to provide a value-add to attendees in the Wine Grape track. Together we reviewed the current state of craft confusion and crowding, with an emphasis on getting the fundamentals right to become “discoverable” for new customers. We then discussed objective decision making about how and where producers tell their story using high-performance media. And lastly, we discussed experiential and events-based marketing with other panelists in an open forum setting.

Below is a summary of key concepts:

• Storytelling: it’s time we told a more interesting story to our customers
  • Getting the fundamentals right:
    • Origin – what makes yours different (customer-facing)
    • Mission – what is your value system (customer-facing)
    • Vision – where are you going (internal employees)
    • Business – what product or service is provided (go beyond the obvious – both employees and customers)
    • Brand Story – your promise to the customer
  • Storytelling Index for Indiana wineries: download here
• Branding: how and where you tell your brand story
  • Strategy (all geared towards internal employees):
    • Company Position – what does success look like
    • Brand Position – what the brand stands for
    • Content Experience – how you want customers to feel
    • Customer Insights – key attributes of current and desired customers
    • Content Owners – consistency through empowerment
    • Measurement – proving the ROI of your efforts
  • Media – a review of high-performing media channels including packaging, digital, traditional, public relations, sales promotions and events (all customer-facing)
  • Local ‘X’ Factor – beyond terroir, how well does your brand establish (both customer-facing and employees):
    • A sense of place – enabling sharable moments
    • The feeling of community – inviting customers to participate in the brand
    • An ongoing relationship through best practices in customer service
  • Content Discipline – creating a calendar of activity to keep the team focused on engaging the customer consistently (internal employees)

2019 Indiana Horticultural Congress & Trade Show
Below you will find links to video and all materials presented at the event.

For more information about the Indiana Horticultural Congress & Trade Show or the sponsoring organizations, please visit www.inhortcongress.org.

MailChimp archive:
https://mailchi.mp/437499fada82/190216_indianaconference?e=a83dcf3085
Download:
https://app.box.com/s/catlmpdjecbybxmb3x2kb1dfrpr4u695