Captain Morgan Ad

An old one but classic, wish my local was that understanding !

Wet and Wild

Recently I must admit to being slack at posting, however like most people out there Facebook has kept me busy seeing who is dating who and reading ever intimate details about everyone I have ever met even just for a second.

However not all is lost as on our Stormhoek Facebook group I received a message from a fab lady that works for SANCCOB (Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds) asking if we could sponsor some wine for a charity auction and help raise awareness for their cause. Yes was the obvious answer as I am an avid fan of the local Jackass penguins, and no they have nothing to do with the crazy American TV show.

SANCCOB was officially started in 1967 by Althea Westphal and the charities main aim is to conserve and protect the local Jackass penguin population as well as South Africa's many other sea birds. They have so far helped to treat more than 83 000 sick, injured, orphaned and oiled sea birds throughout the last 4 decades.

The above picture is SANNCOB's most recent advert designed to help raise awareness for the cause, and features famous SA model Kerry McGregor and a few equally sexy (although maybe not so good smelling) penguins. Over the next year the ad will be altered to feature a ton of other famous SA models and celebs volunteering their time to help the little fellas out.

At present the current population of SA penguins is about 10% of what it was at the turn of the 20th Century and continues to drop by around 2% every year meaning that the Jackass penguins are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the world wildlife governing bodies.

Without help it is likely there will be no more African penguins left in the wild within the near future so please visit SANNCOB's website and either make a donation or even better adopt your very own penguin (you will even get a goody bag and proper certificate of adoption) .

To adopt a penguin please go to http://www.sanccob.co.za/ or click here, it only cost R500 (approx £35, or $70) and you can sleep well knowing that you have helped save the threatened life of a cute fluffy penguin.

Smirnoff purified ad

I love looking at ads online and picked up this recent beauty done by JWT London. Made for Smirnoff triple distilled Vodka (the website is v interactive and a good excuse to not work for a few minutes) it shows the sea spitting out all the garbage on to land, and leaves behind just clear seas, fish and a bottle of the old Tsars favorite drink. Especially love all the old plane wrecks taking to the air once more, it looks awesome.

27 Dinner v6 goes down a Storm(hoek)

Last night saw in another great 27 dinner eve, complete with lots of Stormhoek social lubricant.

For those few that don't already know what the 27 dinners are about, its basically a social gathering of South Africa's greatest entrepreneurial minds, and a chance for them to network, listen to informative speeches, socialise, have a good time and drink Stormhoek etc.(for more info go to the 27 dinner wiki)

Last night as you can see from the pictures above, we had a huge turnout and the kind folks from Charly's bakery even gave us all free tasty cup cakes complete with the names of relevant companies iced on the top of the cakes (see the Stormhoek pic above). Not only that but Wine Magazine handed out copies of the best wine mag in the world (yes I'm biased), Zoopy gave away a sony camcorder and offered up 3 video ipods for people that post the most pics on their site, and Stormhoek let everyone present be amongst the first in the world to try out our pre-release new drink concept called Couture.

Their was an interesting talk done by a new company called Yeigo who have a great new application made for mobile phones that allows you to make cheap calls, chat and send SMSs to anyone, anywhere in the world quickly and easily, and is compatible with GoogleTalk, MSN, Yahoo, skype etc. For more info go to their nice website.

All in all another fab eve and big shout out to Sir Dave Duarte for pulling it off in style yet again. Also big love to the Cape Town Hotel School for hosting the venue. See you at the next one.

Cheers

Stormhoek Inner circle bookclub

A while ago my girlfriend told me she was invited to join a book club, now I as a regular guy I thought this would involve reading a book every month and then commenting on it at a meeting once a month or so.

How I was wrong! I should have realised from the first time Ceri went to one of the meetings and came back home at 3am spelling like a brewery that something was fishy, but alas I had no idea to what was coming.

Recently after meeting some of the book party animals at a club they realised I worked for Stormhoek wines. I was then asked whether the next Inner Circle (the name of the book club) could be held at my house with a Cheese and Wine tasting theme (emphasis on the wine). I agreed and the results were stunning.

The evening kicked off at about 8pm and after most of the people arrived I was asked to kindly leave my own house and then only return later when they wanted me to do the wine tasting! At about 9.30 I was summoned and began the tasting. I took the already tipsy bunch through the core Stormhoek range (Sauv Blanc, Pino Grigio, Pinotage, Shiraz, Assassin and Rose) and explained the basic differences of the wine and how Stormhoek is the best wine farm in the world, the latter they already knew of course! Some interesting discussion was had and I must thank Lara (another Inner Circle member) from Tempel wines who also helped in the educating experience.

After the tasting I was kindly asked to leave again so I cant tell you what went on, however I do remember hearing lots of laughter and girly screams so my guess is as good as yours!

The party, I mean book club finished finally at about 1am (on a Thursday!), predictably all the wine was gone but surprisingly the house was still in one piece.

I have been told that the next Inner circle book club is going to also be themed, this time the theme is "sex book club" !!!!!!! (no comment I'm just glad its not at mine again)

I have provided a picture above of the Inner Circle book club members. From left to right starting at the top is Sam, Lara, Shirley, Ceri, dean then Tash, Krista, Mbali, Tracey and Cindy.

We have been having a few chats to see if we should sponsor some more local book club Stormhoek wine tasting. If your keen or have any ideas please drop me a mail at chris@stormhoek.co.za and will see what we can do.

Cheers

Stormhoek UK promo

Recently in the UK Stormhoek began stocking our Pinotage and Sauvignon blanc with the supermarket giants Tesco. For the next two weeks at select stores accross the UK the above wines will be available at £3.99 compared to the normal price in Tesco of £4.99 and to celebrate the campaign the legend of a man that is Hugh Macleod just put a post up on the Stormhoek blog offering the following :

• A case of Stormhoek [6 bottles] to the first six people who send in a photo of themselves in Tesco's with a bottle of Stormhoek [on condition that you're over 18 years old, of course].
  


• First 500 people, aged 18 or over, who sent in a pic of themselves in Tesco, holding a bottle of Stormhoek, will receive a £5.00 Tesco voucher on us.

As usual with any of the promotions we run you do not have to buy a bottle of our fine wine (although that would be fab) and you can feel free to spend the £5 voucher on anything you like, so get to Tesco now and take a picture, all you need to to is send the picture and story to gapingvoid@gmail.com.

Please feel free to blog about it and post the pictures to your Flickr account etc.

Cheers,

Chris

Bud light TV ad

Just had to post this bud light ad, it has to be one of the most hilarious ads I have seen for a very long time. The video comes from the Budweiser beer site www.bud.tv and the site is well worth a look as has a ton of other funny videos and more.

For anyone that hasn't tried bud or bud light yet, its an American pale larger that is made with a small proportion of rice in addition to barley malt and tastes not so great generally if your used to Belgium larger or anything made with quality rather than volume in mind, which is probably why they have to do such great marketing for the brand.

Cherrypicka

This week we (Stormhoek) have finally teamed up with the legend Jon Cherry, owner of the Cherryflava Media empire, to offer you the chance to try out our new 2007 Sauvignon Blanc pre-release.

The offer is limited to 102 bottles on a first come first serve basis and each one will come complete with a custom label with your name, bottle number and date bottled, all just for you.

This offer is exclusive to Cherrypicka, the first SA site that allows you to become"a cash test dummy". The idea behind the site is to allow people to try out great products that tickle your fancy at a reduced price, in return, after you have received your product they hope you will leave a review of it on the website.

Stormhoek Sauvignon blanc 2007 will be released soon in South Africa, however for anyone that goes to Cherrypicka you can get this one off pre-release customised bottle now sent to your door for only R20! to try it out just click here on Cherrypicka.

Enjoy it and if you have any questions please feel free to comment or email me at chris@stormhoek.co.za

Cheers

Subliminal Advertising

Just had to post this video on subliminal advertising. This clip is from the Derren Brown show in the UK and shows how advertising can effect our everyday thoughts and actions.
After seeing this I would be afraid to know how many purchases and decisions in my life have been influenced by this type of advertising!

Cheers

Chris

Afrigator free ipod video competition

During my morning catch up of my Google feed reader I came across another great idea from Mike Stopforth & Justin Hartman who are the founders of Afrigator, the African equivalent of Technorati.

For those of you that don't know, Afrigator basically can track and log all your blog posts, podcasts, videocasts etc and show the most popular topics/blogs etc in Africa at any time on the site.

The way the service works is that you sign up for a free account, add a bit of pre made code into your blog (you can see i have a icon for them in the right hand column) and then that's it! simple.

The service then will track all you posts automatically and then log and categorize them. You can go to the site at any time, log in and see how many people have been visiting your site too for free, so all in all its a nifty site to use.

Anyway on to the main topic Afrigator are giving away two Apple video ipods to two randomly chosen people that sign up to use their service, One to the new user and one to the person that told them about the offer. All you need to do to enter is go to http://www.afrigator.com/go/main/join, enter your details and then if you feel nice enter my email address (chrisraw@gmail.com) into the referral box and that's it, we could soon be listening to a shiny new ipod!!

Also if you are in the first 50 bloggers to write about the competition you will receive a limited edition Afrigator T-shirt, Mike please send me a large in black if pos :)

Cheers

Chris

Skyrove

Over the weekend I had the honour of meeting up with Skyrove head honcho Henk Kleynhans.

Henk had the idea of creating pay per use Internet as a student, in his own words he said "I couldn't afford Internet unless I found a way to share with digs mates & neighbours [but] without them chowing all my bandwidth. that was back in late 2003 when Wi-Fi was just starting to make inroads."

He started the company in Jan 2005, shortly after graduating and got finance in May 2005, hired a programmer, then went live with the first hotspot in greenmarket square in Dec 2005,

the rest as they say is history, and they now have over 3281 Skyrove end-users !!

Skyrove at present has over 80 live accounts and is growing all the time, most of the hotspots are in South Africa, however plans are already in place for the system to work in the rest of the world and they already have some hotspots in London and the USA!

The way the system works is that you sign up for an account online and pay a small amount for a skyrove wireless router (as shown above), then connect the router to your existing modem, set up your account, and then other people within range of your wireless hub can sign up for a user account, buy credits and then surf the web for a small cost based per MB.

The cost per MB is set up by the provider and up to 70% of the revenue received is debited into your account every month. All tech calls are handled by Skyrove and even pamphlets for you potential clients are emailed to you, so there is very little the provider needs to do apart from have an existing broadband account. The more users you get the cheaper the service can be and also the account holder can then afford to increase the speed and bandwidth of the account.

Anyway to cut a long story short I'm sold on the idea, and so from now on if you happen to live near High Cape in Cape Town you can now get cheap wireless internet from my house. For a look at some of the other places you can find Skyrove click here to see their Google maps of providers !!

For more info you can go to there website at http://www.skyrove.com/ or feel free to call them on +27 21 448 8843.

P.S. If your worried this might be technical to set up fear not as its real easy, and besides if you need any help the fab guys at Skyrove will guide you through it.

Cheers

Chris

Vin Au Verre !

The french have been at the bottle again and have come up with something useful for a change unlike frog legs, snails and unreliable car brands!

The above gadget is made by a company called Eurocave, who by chance also happened to be the worlds first manufacturer of air conditioned wine cabinets way back in 1976.
Since the company started they seem to have gone from strength to strength and now produce a wide range of wine storage systems for lovers of wine all over the world. The above image shows their latest addition called the Vin Au Verre (wine by the glass).

The device can keep 8 bottles (4 reds and 4 whites) ready to serve via the easy pour taps on the front, and store an additional 8 bottles at a perfect temperature for serving. It comes complete with a nitrogen bottle so as to keep the wine fresh for up to 3 weeks once opened, a electronic temperature control, for storing the reds and whites separately at their ideal temperatures (15°/19°C for red wines, 6°/10°C for white and rosé wines), and even nifty LED illumination to show off your prized collection.

Mainly designed for hotels and restaurants the Vin Au Verre can be yours for the bargain price of around R46,000 ex vat (approx £3,210).

Regardless of the price personally I think it is a must have for any die hard Stormhoek fan and when I find a way to make thousands of pounds every hour, I for one will definitely be investing in one or two for my home!

If you would like one and you live in South Africa please contact Wine Essentials on (27) 044 384 1936, or if you unlucky enough to live outside SA please click here.

Cheers,

Chris

Stormhoek braai, Update post

Just a quick one to point you to a few posts that have been writing about Stormhoek and the big love braai recently.

• Dave Duarte: Stormhoek Humanizes Wine.
• Gerry : Stromy Blogger’s Braai, and he also has a great collection of pics here.
• Stii: Tattoos and Chocolates.
• Glen and Bridgitte: ZA Show #090 (great SA podcast and will have more on the braai next week too!)
• Shaun Dewberry: Don't Cry For Non-Stormhoek Growers. I Won't.

I'd just like to say a big thanks to all the guys and girls above for the support, we aim to please and I look forward to plying you with wine when we next meet.

On another note if your in South Africa (and some select places in the UK), please go pick up the latest (April) issue of Wine magazine. They have written a great 4 page article on Stormhoek and the layout is even the same as our blog!. I am trying to get a copy to post on www.stormhoek.com so will update you soon if your unable to get the magazine.

Till next time,

Cheers,

Chris

Stormhoek bloggers Love braai

Last night saw in the first Stormhoek Bloggers Braai. The event was held at Stormhoek HQ just outside Wellington. This provided the first chance for a select few of our fab fans to have a look around the vineyard, try some new wines, eat some tasty food, and receive some exclusive gifts to help spread the Stormhoek big love!

Above are just a few quick pics from the Braai, notice the sexy Lady's "High class hoeker" tops!

The evening started off with a guided walk around the farm by Stormhoek's main man Graham Knox. As night was setting in fast, the moon had to provide much of the lighting for the tour and at one stage Gerry (who road tripped from the Garden route) almost got lost from the main crowd while examining some of our vines, luckily he was found after a few loud calls for help.

Next the select few got a chance to taste some of our new wines (no spitting at this tasting, all swallowed!!) and then received a limited edition bottle of Stormhoek Champagne and some very stylish tops for their hard work drinking.

Speeches from the fab Catherine and Alistair from our UK brethren as well as the main man Sir Graham Knox, followed the hand outs, telling us a little more about the Stormhoek phenomenon and our philosophy.

Food followed, and I must say I'm still in shock that they trusted the Braai to me, an Englishman, however I am pleased to tell you that as yet I have had no calls of complaint!

Drinks and chatting carried on well after midnight and it was great to be able to talk to so many fantastic people such as Glen and Bridgitte from the ZA show, Lara , Stephanie, Dave and the night time wanderer Gerry!

Will keep you posted for links and pics from other attendees and I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who made it.

All in all a great night and definitely one I wont forget.

Cheers,

Chris

Threshers voucher, Take 2

In our ongoing quest to spread the Stormhoek love we have now posted yet another 40% of all wine from Threshers voucher on the main Stormhoek site.
This is only valid in the UK for from the 22nd of march to the 1st of April so is just in time for Easter.
If your in the UK and fancy cheap wine for Easter please feel free to download the voucher by clicking here or going to the main stormhoek site!
Will have to try and get a similar offer for our South African crowd, will keep you posted.

Enjoy,

Chris

27 Dinner Cape Town video

Thanks to the lovely chaps at Quirk, the above video is now available for your viewing pleasure, showing a recap of the sights and sounds of the last Cape Town 27 dinner. I love the bit with the Stormhoek :)

Thanks again to Dave and Mike for the organising, and just so you know the latest version of their fab podcast Amplitude is now available for your listening pleasure.

If you would like to attend the next Cape Town 27 Dinner sponsored by Stormhoek, be sure to be a blogger and please click here as the places are filling up fast!!

Cape Town Microsoft Tech day

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft Cape Town tech day 2007, held at the International convention centre.

The event was organised to get current IT professionals accustomed to Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, System Center 2007, Microsoft Forefront and many more new technologies and solutions.

Many conference rooms were hired out and great presentations were made all day, complete with the usual tea, coffee, biscuits and even a neat clip Microsoft pen and clipboard (one of my highlights).

One thing that caught my eye was something you don't normally see every day, two young gorgeous lady's in black cocktail dresses in the main conference room standing by a booth advertising a company called Chisa Technologies ( an IT Infrastructure provider) . The fact that there were two lovely lady's was not a novelty, neither that across the room there were 5 X Box 360's with working game demos, but what was, was that upon a closer look I noticed not one guy (and there must have been about 200) were being drawn to the Chisa booth, they were all glancing past and quickly heading towards the X Box 360's !!!, if you don't believe me please enlarge the above pics to see for yourself.

Maybe it was just poor luck, but having being in this industry for a while and knowing a bit about marketing I would say it was more a case of nice idea but wrong place.

I went and chatted to a jolly nice chap called Gus from Chisa and he said he just wanted to "add a bit of fun to the event", good for Chisa I say, and as far as I know after a slow start he realised the way forward was to get the girls to go to the guys, this proved much better, however I wish I had managed to get a photo of some of the guys faces when they were suddenly confronted by a blond and brunette in a little black number, priceless !!!

All in all a fun day, and if you too are in South Africa and fancy going to one of these events its not too late. To register for the 13 March 2007 at the Durban ICC,PLEASE CLICK HERE. and for Johannesburg, 15 March at Vodaworld. PLEASE CLICK HERE, Maybe you too can get a chance to meet the Chisa girls ;)

Stormhoek hits the Sunday Times!!!!

Over the weekend Stormhoek featured in the South African Sunday Times.

Below is article in full for your reading enjoyment.

Wine blogging stirs up a sales storm

Rowan Philp: London

It is a winery so small that half of its vineyard could fit into the KWV cellars. The wine it produces is hailed no greater than “pretty good” by its own marketing people.
Yet Stormhoek is now the world’s most talked-about wine online and it has trebled international sales in 18 months.

Fresh from its latest mischievous brand-building ploy in February — filming British supermarket-goers on their views on love — the Wellington winery is now selling more than one in five bottles of premium SA wine in the UK, and is set for one in four this year.
Yet experts said this week the company’s broader achievement was blazing a new marketing trail for all small SA export businesses, by harnessing the power of Internet blogs to become a global microbrand.

Established in 2003, the boutique Stormhoek label sold 50 000 cases — mostly in the UK — in 2004. Last year, it sold around 150 000 and, with a new deal signed with retail giant Tesco this week, its CEO has projected sales of 240 000 cases this year.

Stormhoek is the winery that caused headlines on three continents in December by having 3.5 million UK-based discount vouchers downloaded from its website, breaking global blogging records. Designed for suppliers and “friends” of UK liquor retailer Thresher, “40% off all wines” coupons were offered without any promotion or marketing.
Threshers stores were clogged with discount hunters, and its stocks depleted after one of its smaller customers, Stormhoek, posted the voucher on its website, and, audaciously, also linked it to Britain’s most popular blogging site. The phenomenon was described as a fluke and an error at the time, and Thresher’s profit margins were under threat as 150 000 vouchers had to be redeemed at the discount rate in 10 days.
Stormhoek estimates that it sold an extra 12 000 cases in the frenzy — and sales rose almost 500% at Sainsbury’s, another UK retail giant, over the same period.

Jason Korman of Stormhoek, said: “It’s all about being talked about. No one really cares anymore about where your wine is from, or even about its subtle qualities.”
And , rather than it being an “error”, Korman and his maverick marketing team in London said the frenzy was simply one result of “viral marketing” in an overall marketing strategy to create “a community through conversation”.
To achieve that, Korman sought to find the person in Britain who communicated with the most people for the least amount of money, and found Hugh McLeod – the man the Financial Times has called “the most influential blogger in Britain”.

A cartoonist and marketer with an online cult following, thanks to his blogsite www.GapingVoid.com, McLeod got carte blanche to innovate from Stormhoek’s marketing guru Graham Knox.
He broke rule number one by dishing out free wine to bloggers, on faith that they might talk about the wine online — and it worked. Next, he sponsored a series of “geek dinners” for bloggers in California’s Silicone Valley, and elsewhere, in a bid to generate brand awareness through “social gestures” to one of the world’s most naturally communicative communities.
“With blogging as your medium, it really is possible to create a global awareness with the marketing budget of a flea,” he said.
“You look at wines in a supermarket, and go, how do you compete with hundreds of thousands of wineries? Well, you can’t by showing people pictures of your winery, and telling them how good the wine is. You talk about what they want to talk about — often, not about wine at all — because all you need is a lot of people going, ‘Hey, we’ve heard of you guys, we like the things you do, and your wine is pretty good, so I’ll buy it’.”

In the run up to Valentine’s Day last month, McLeod and a small film crew went on a roadshow of 36 Tesco supermarkets, from Inverness to London, filming customers in the wine section responding to the question: “What does ‘love’ mean to you?”
He wore a branded T-shirt and stood around bottles of “Big Love” Stormhoek, featuring another broken rule: a cartoon wine label. He didn’t forget his on-line “community”, downloading nine three-minute clips of the documentary onto YouTube.
“A conversation is a two-way street – you can’t just preach your message; people no longer want messages about products. You’re creating a community.”

Cape Town 27 Dinner

Another fab meal and plenty of wine in the Mother city and this time with a new name!
27 dinner was launched in Joburg at the beginning of the year and a couple of nights ago saw in its Cape Town debut at Relish, complete with projectors, speakers, food, film and sound crew and most importantly the best wine in the world :)
The idea is to get a group of people that are all interested in having a conversation, learning and developing business as well as social friendships with the best of the best in and sometimes out of South Africa. For the 27 dinners those people are generally in the IT, Tech, Marketing industry but certainly not limited to it, as seen in Cape Town.
There were some great speeches, one of them by a musician called Verity, who is successfully pre-selling 5000 copies of her album that is yet to be made (visit her site and please help out, its for charity too!), and secondly a gent called Guy Lundy who's job it is to make sure that Cape Town remains and continues to grow as one of the most important developing cities in the world.
Wine was naturally sponsored by Stormhoek and if anyone who went to the dinner is wondering why they didn't see many of the bottles, it was probably because they were busy been consumed by whomever waved/screamed the most frantically, as the waiters did their best running and pouring themselves (40 bottles were consumed).
Other speeches were from Shelly Levin, on how to make cash from affiliate advertising, Angus Robinson, on the future is bright the future is mobile, and then there was also a great speech from the Stormhoek main man Graham Knox on how a little wine farm in the middle of nowhere became one of South Africa's leading wine farms/brands.
The event was very kindly organised by my good friends and owners of Cerebra, Mike Stopforth and Dave duarte. Everyone I met seemed to have a great eve and although some of the speeches lasted too long I am sure that the next one will take on a more fast speech style. This will naturally allow for much more drinking and general chit chat so I'm already looking forward to it!!.
Thanks to all those who made it, and hope you enjoyed the wine and good company, also before I forget thanks to Max (The hunter of genius) who did some stellar work on the presentations, and also to the guys from the Garden Route, Stii and Gerry for making the intrepid journey back into civilisation !!.
We also launched one of our new slogan's at the event, with t-shirts saying "high class hoeker" on the front (in glittery silver!) and one of the famous Huge Macloed cartoons on the back. Three of these were auctioned off for charity.
I could go on about the eve for ages but I am in need of a glass of wine so for more reading please go to the 27 dinner wiki here and if your keen to attend the next one book soon here as its already almost half full !!!.
P.S. The dinners take place every 27th of the month, alternating between Joburg and Cape Town.

Cerebra on Etv

Near the end of last year my great friends Dave Duarte and Mike Stopforth launched a fab new company called Cerebra and opened their doors for business, since then they have been going from strength to strength are already successfully helping many companies such as SAB, Ernst & Young and Samsung to name but a few.

The basic idea behind the company is to bring together some of the greatest minds in South Africa so as to help companies around the globe understand and apply mobile and online social-media marketing as well as other emerging trends and technologies. This enables the companies to become more customer-centric and ultimately help make the consumer feel at ease with the brand and happy to deal and spent their $ with them too!!

The Video was recorded from a digital camera so please forgive me for the quality (if your prone to epilepsy rather listen than watch:) but is a nice interview none the less and great to see a local news channel take an interest.

As for Cerebra if you want your company to prosper why not drop them a line, you can find all the details at their website or just email me at chrisraw@gmail.com and I will put you in contact with the right chap myself.

P.s. They also have a great podcast called Amplitude where Mike and Dave discuss the best and the worst of new marketing in South Africa each week. Episode 7 is now available for your listening pleasure!!