While I was grabbing a quick lunch today, I noticed a post over at Hugh MacLeod’s blog about a BBC radio appearance by Stormhoek’ s Andrew Porton. I realized with the time difference that it was only a few minutes out so I tuned into BBC 5’s stream for the interview.

I have to say that the BBC presenter seemed more intent on exposing the offer in question as not what it seemed to be rather than focusing on the key story. In a nutshell, Stormhoek blogged about a “friends and family” coupon at one of their UK retailers and the uptake via word of mouth was quite a bit higher than anyone would have expected. It’s actually enough of a story that it has crossed over into the mainstream media now. This not only shows the power of blogging but also the a key tenant of Wine 2.0 marketing strategy: viral, word of mouth marketing can be quite powerful if done right. In this case, it was a compelling offer (40% discount) that was an exclusive (blurring the lines of who “friends” really are) and disseminated via an A-list blogger in the form of a PDF voucher. The network effect took over from there and now there’s tens of thousands of customers ready to use these coupons.

It’s not surprising the mainstream media missed the point here. They seem more interested in chasing controversy than reporting an interesting business story, but I digress.

I’m hoping this kind of offer spreads the wine retailers in the US. Anyone listening from Surdyk’s, Haskell’s or Solo Vino?