Second Glass PR Plan 2014_Group 3

Second Glass Wine Riot Strategic Public Relations Plan 2014
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Second Glass Wine Riot
Strategic Public Relations Plan 2014
Prepared By:
Monique Gaskins Kele Song
Matthew Sun Farida Waquar
University of Southern California
December 9, 2013

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BACKGROUND
In 2009, Second Glass founded their event, Wine Riot in Boston. They had the goal to
educate young wine enthusiasts through fun and “sassy” events. (Hsu 1) Second Glass was
founded by Co-Founder and CEO, Morgan First, a Southern California native who went to
college in Boston and her partner, Founder and President, Tyler Balliet, also a West Coast
transplant new to Boston at the time. (“About Us”) Balliet started Second Glass after working at
a wine shop on the famous Newbury Street in Boston. He noticed that lots of young people
came into the store not knowing much about wine and were very inquisitive. (“Predicting”) After
learning that wineries and producers had all of these answers, he paired up with them and started
an “unpretentious” (“About Us”) print wine magazine where Morgan First helped promote
through events. They wanted to make their events less “boring” than the general opinion of other
wine tasting parties at the time. (“Predicting”) They initially got exhibitors through friends and
acquaintances. (Hsu 1) They then decided to focus on Wine Riot events solely. Starting in 2011,
they expanded Wine Riot annual events nationwide to Washington D.C, Chicago, San Francisco,
New York, and Los Angeles. (“Predicting”)
The event itself has many wineries and vendors displaying 250 different types of wines
arranged in layout by geography (i.e. France, New Zealand, California) so one can feel as if
they’re traveling to faraway lands to try different types of wine. (“Second Glass”) In addition,
they have a “Bubbly Bar” which displays 6 sparking wines to try, a photo booth, temporary
tattoos, a DJ spinning tunes and hourly “Crash Courses” which are 20-minute informative
workshops about wine such as “Old World vs New World wines”. (“Wine Riot”)

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BUSINESS GOAL
Second Glass’s mission is to help people discover new wines, get educated, and have
unknown wineries get exposure while gaining revenue in the process. As it has been quoted,
“Wine Riot’s mission is to make wine tasting as unpretentious and unintimidating as possible.”
(“Wine Riot”) Attendees can try wines by wineries that they have never heard of before from
around the globe. They can take note of the wines they like and recommend them to their friends.
Both the attendees and their friends can then go to the www.secondglass.com website and
purchase the wines directly from there. Second Glass gets a commission from these sales.
Second Glass also makes money from the attendees in each of their national events. Tickets
purchased in advance start at $50 per person and increase to $60 per person closer to the event
date. Die-hard Wine Riot fans can sign up in advance to “volunteer” to work a session (i.e.
Saturday 1-5pm) of the event that weekend and then attend another session (i.e. Saturday 7-11pm)
for free and not pay the $50-60 cover charge. Hopefully then these “volunteers” will still
purchase the wines they like on the Second Glass website.
Vendors must pay a fee to display their wine at these events and on the website. Booths for
vendors sell out six months in advance and there is a wait list. (Hsu 1) Second Glass also has
partnerships with national and local businesses in each of the cities they have events. Second
Glass gets money from companies like Uber’s cab service in exchange for having them have a
booth at the event and offer a $20 off the first ride or 20% off the next ride for existing customers.
Second Glass is also known to partner with local city food trucks and have the food trucks sell a
special prix fixe menu at Wine Riot with an extra $5-10 charge passed down to the attendees.

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STATEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY
The six events that need to be promoted for 2014 include: the ones in Boston, New York,
Los Angeles, Washington D.C, San Francisco, & Chicago which are a great opportunity to tap
into a young, emerging target market untapped by most other wine companies. Many wine
drinkers who are of retirement age are trying to cut back, according to research group,
IBISWorld. (Hsu 1) According to the Wine Market Council, “Young drinkers are enthusiastic
wine students having been more exposed to wine at an earlier age than their parents. More than
half are boosting their wine consumption.” (Hsu 1) These “young drinkers” are known as
Millennials and range in age from 21-35. They are the fastest growing consumers (“Wine Riot”)
at 70 million strong and already show potential as a good target market as they are interested in
the craft beer craze as well. (Hsu 1) According to John Gillespie, Wine Market Council's
president, "The take-away is that while baby boomers are still technically our best customers,
Millennials as a group … are the single most dynamic target for wine marketers.” (Hsu 1) Most
of the tastings are affordable, everyday drinking wines that fit well with this price-sensitive target
demographic. Milennials have many decades ahead of their lives to be long-time wine drinkers
and be marketed to by wineries. As Tyler Balliet, Co-Founder of Second Glass said, “The wine
industry still operates in the older style, but we’re the generation that is going to push them
forward regardless of whether the industry comes along for the ride.” (“Wine Riot”)

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RESEARCH
ResearchGoals
 To learn about the public perception on current Wine Riot and Second Glass
 To dig out the market demand on wine tasting and wine purchasing
 To have a better understanding on the target demographic
 To identify the competitors and their strategy
 To learn more about how we can have the same level of attendance in each city
ResearchMethodology
 Online databases research: study the public relations strategy and business models of
competitors
 Content analysis: study the past media reports and social media mentions on Wine Riot
and Second Glass of last year
 Focus group analysis: pick a group of the target consumers of Second Glass, and ask
questions about their opinions on wine purchasing and Wine Riot
 Self-administered surveys: conduct online surveys among current consumers of Second
Glass to know their experiences with Wine Riot

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SITUATION ANALYSIS
Strengths
 Great efforts on social media, which attract much attention from active users of social
media as the potential customers
 The overall fresh design of Wine Riot is very attractive to young minds, including the
logos, the colorful webpage design, and the photo booth at the event
 The mobile application of Second Glass allows users to follow the event agenda and
makes attendees to easily remember all of the wines they try at the event
 Wine Riot is set in different big cities across the country, which largely expands the brand
influence and increases customers of Second Glass
 Wine Riot provides crash course wine seminars and a DJ photo booth, which combines
fun and education, besides the normal commercial objective of the wine tasting event
 Wine Riot brings in 250 kinds of wines from across the globe, which provides various
options for event attendees
 Second Glass connects wine drinkers to the wineries to ensure they can buy wine directly
from the source, which facilitates consumers’ wine purchase
Weaknesses
 Second Glass is an events and technology start-up with a small team, which indicates
limited intelligence support in its business operation and the public relations activities at
a large scale

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 The startup has limited financial sources, and it can not afford to largely expand business
operation or implement public relations events
 Only six cities are on the list of Wine Riot so far, and it is a small number compared to
the total number of all the cities in the United States. The events are not held in "flyover
states" but rather on the coasts (except Chicago), for instance, there are no events in big
cities like Dallas, Atlanta, Denver and Las Vegas etc.
 The official blog of Wine Riot based on the platform of Tumblr does not have many
diverse contents to attract followers, and it only covers a photo and simple words for
each event
 The current mobile application of Second Glass only provide three functions, including
the general event information, wine recommendation and personal wine record, and these
functions can not fully meet the consumer demand
Opportunities
 More people are using social media now, and the social media strategy of Second Glass
can help the company get more potential customers
 The social media trend makes some wineries adopt social media in their business, and
Second Glass can seek potential partners from it
 Not too many direct competitors that have a festival for wine specifically, so Wine Riot is
very unique
 Young drinkers between the ages of 21-35 are becoming the fast growing customers of
the wine industry

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Threats
 There are many competitive wine businesses also using social media and mobile
application, and their diverse business services, including wine deals and wine scanners
 There are similar wine events, including wineries, craft beer fests, L.A Food & Wine
Festival and the Rock & Roll Wine Festival in Las Vegas
 Some states have strict alcohol shipping laws, and it limits the business scope of Second
Glass
Strategic Implications
 Based on the limited available intelligence and financial sources, Second Glass should
mostly focus on improving the current public relations tactics, including perfecting the
blog and the mobile application
 Second Glass is an event-based company, but the communication should last all year
long
 Second Glass can encourage the enthusiastic fans to create contents about Wine Riot and
include them in the communication tactics
 The company can cooperate with local wineries to do promotions, which saves the
budget and also expands the brand influence
 We must continue to be a unique and different event so that competitors can't catch up to
us

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COMMUNICATION GOALS
There are three main communication goals that our campaign will focus on; these goals are
about the general tone of the festival, the purpose of the festival, and the most obvious involves
participation.
Goal 1: The Wine Riot is Fun
It is important for our campaign that our target audience knows that Wine Riot is fun.
Although this seems simple and clear, there will be no target audience without the idea that
there’s a good time to be had at the Riot. The festival is called The Wine Riot for a reason. Our
constituents need to know that this isn’t your everyday wine tasting. Wine Riot is a riot.
Instead of focusing on just our general audience, we would like a younger audience to feel
that Wine Riot is fun. This is not the kind of festival that is only for senior citizens. This is the
kind of riot that anyone in the legal drinking age would have a particularly good time.
Goal 2: Educating the Audience
The Wine Riot is a place to learn more about wine. It’s important that our audience knows
there are different booths that will teach them various facts about wine, while they’re drinking.
Some would say the first and second goals are somewhat contradictory but the fun of the Riot is
also finding different ways to drink the wine, and different things to pare it with. The Wine Riot
overall is about breaking stigmas for whom the average wine drinker should be and becoming
more aware of what wines the audience individually will like. One of our main goals is to
educate people on wine.

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Goal 3: Participation
The last goal is to convince the target audience to come to the festival. The audience can’t
have fun or learn if they’re not actually at the festival. The main goal is to have droves of our
audience in attendance, showing more people through their experience how fun Wine Riot is.
More than just convincing people to come to the festival, the goal is to get people to
participate in events that are sponsored by the festival. These events include contests and
exercises at different booths, as well as the citywide contests leading up to the day of the event.
The goal is to have the target audience participating in Wine Riot events.
OBJECTIVES
 Within one month of each event, there should be at least a 75% increase interest in web
searches and mentions.
 At least 50% of subscribed wine club members of each area register for the event one
month prior to the event.
 Ensure 60% of contestants in the citywide contests register for each Wine Riot in their
city at least one week prior to the event.
 Collect over 1 million impressions by June 2014 from events of the on-going riot.
 Have a 25% increase in attendance by November of 2014 compared to the attendance
numbers of the Wine Riot of 2013.

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KEY AUDIENCES
The key audiences have been separated into four specific categories: couples, clubs, special
interest groups, and females.
Clubs
There are many different kind of clubs that can be courted by the Wine Riot. The first club
includes those who are a part of wine clubs, or any wine aficionado over 21 and up. These are the
key group that is already going to be looking for a wine festival without much introduction needing
to be done. These clubs are perfect for the Wine Riot because they’re mostly city based. Also, this is
going to be the audience that is the biggest users and most aware of our product.
Local foodie clubs are also a big part of the target audience. A big sell for our product is to
know the wine can be paired with food. Foodie’s love to try new food and find new dishes to try. The
Wine Riot focuses on new wines and new dishes that can be paired with these wines.
The last group might be a bit of a stretch but monthly book clubs are perfect for the Wine Riot.
The book clubs might not be a huge constituent, but they are a pack. If one of the members is invited,
all of them will go together, and then they will end up finding a wine they enjoy, buying that wine
and making it a staple of their book club sessions.
Couples
There is a romantic picture that is associated with wine. Newlyweds of any age are our target
audience. Newlyweds want to find fun things to do together, trying to learn how to date as a married
couple. The Wine Riot is the perfect place for them to do that. Since we want to focus on attracting a
younger audience in general, couples ages 21-30 are an essential part of our key audience.

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Females
Although the Wine Riot doesn’t want to exclude men, women are the main source for our
festivals. With women, no specific age group has to be targeted, giving us a larger selection of
women to choose from. All women ages 21-65 are welcome and Wine Festivals are for girl’s days
and for a group of women to come together.
Special Interest Groups
All of these groups vary widely. First, we’d focus on graduate students ages 21-35. Again,
we’re trying to pull in a younger crowd. This is an age group that is coming out of the club scene and
searching for new venues to drink wine and try new things. It will be easy to target key graduate
programs in the different cities and cater to their needs. This age group especially plays into our
contests outside of the Wine Riot.
The next group is the contributors to the festival like owners of wineries and wine based
restaurants and their employees. This is the type of group that interlocks well with our mission. We
can help them and they can help us. It is mutually beneficial for all of us to know of each other’s
existence and add to each other’s wealth.
We depend heavily on the local groups. The local radio and tv stations need events to talk about
and sponsors for their programs. We need them to introduce our event to the public and inform them
of our contests leading up to each event. Local bloggers are also a big force in bringing in people to
the festival and informing people of dates and times and events going on inside of the Wine Riot. We
also focus on the local bars and restaurants to work with us as we work with them.

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KEY MESSAGES
 Wine Riot is fun.
 Audiences can find wines from all around the world in one room at the Wine Riot.
 Wine Riot can be educational in a fun way.
 Wine is for every adult.
 Wine Riot has events that you won’t want to miss.
STRATEGIES
The campaign strategies will focus on events and key partnerships. Within the month
leading up to the festival in each city, there will be buzz building activities locally. The campaign
will also focus on a teaser campaign with our various partners.
The buzz building will also come from our partnerships. We would like to build strong
media relations with local online media outlets. They will push the material of our campaign.
Another strategy is to forge partnerships with influential bloggers who will aide to our buzz
building campaign. It is also important that we partner with local wineries whose wine can be
featured at the festival. On the other side of that venture, we want to partner with local
restaurants as well that can feature some of the wines from our festival. Our campaign will
benefit greatly from a partnership with promotional sites like Livingsocial and Groupon who
have user information that push coupons directly to the audience that are looking for that kind of
activity. Lastly, we want to partner with cab services like Uber to ensure the safety of our
participants, while helping the business of the cab service.

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TACTICS
 Our campaign will sponsor an instagram contest with the hashtag #WineRiot. Users will
have to take a picture with their favorite wine and give a short anecdote of why it is their
favorite wine. The four winners will be chosen from each city depending on their stories
and (privately) the amount of impressions they provide.
 We will sponsor a Wine Pong tournament between six major bars in each city that will all
culminate in the major tournament at each festival. We will provide the wine for the bars,
as long as the bars promote the festival and encourage contestants to sign up. We will
keep tickets for sale, posters, and other information of the festival at each bar. We will
also make sure to also promote safety with drinking as well at these events.
 Pitch to online media outlets in the respective cities like Urban Daddy, Eater, LAist,
DCist, Eventbrite, Thrillist, BostInno, in theCapital, and top influencers on twitter from
each city. The outlets will promote our wine pong tournament throughout each city.
 Pitch story ideas to foodie bloggers. These stories will include:
 The perfect wine with different recipes that we will provide from our restaurant
partners.
 A story could educate on the difference between oaked and un-oaked wines or about
the taste difference in matured versus new wines.
 Another idea is to introduce readers to the different ways to go through the festival.
Our participants get to choose their own wine culture experience from French, or
Argentinean to Spanish. Bloggers stories could focus on the different routes and
what each has to offer.

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 We will also utilize our social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and
Pinterest pages to promote the festival in each city.
 Create and place posters throughout the city including our partner wineries, bars, and
restaurants.
 Send special invitations to our key club audience like the local wine and book clubs.
 Have “pop ups” at local liquor stores, restaurants, and farmer’s markets that feature wine
tasting like what will be at the festival.
 Pitch the bubble bar to local morning talk shows as a segment to go through the various
champagnes, their differences, and what to pair them with. This is an actual booth at our
event and it works perfectly with morning talk show segments.
 Give specifically wine restaurants our featured wine and encourage them to put it on their
menu with their signature dish, requesting the waiter mention the event when the wine is
chosen or at the beginning of each meal when giving each guest the specials.
 Pitch our events and the actual riot to print niche magazines and local newsletters.
 Encourage the wineries whose wine is featured to promote the event by giving them the
link to our website and other social media sources as well as posters.
 Create a commercial that runs on our blog and on the blogs of local influencers in the
wine world. We want to include a couple of viral videos that are outsourced to a
professional video production company and post them to YouTube and Vimeo. Then
we’ll utilize the social media like Facebook and Twitter to further create buzz and try to
create hot topic on the Internet.
 There are two viral videos: one promotes the six wine riots as a whole, the other
focuses on a specific city, which needs extra marketing promotion.

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 There is no limitation on the types of the viral videos but the content should be
amazing and related to our brand. There are so many related topics they could adopt,
such as funny or embarrassing moments, celebrity attendance, or a dramatic story
during the riot.
 During the launch of the videos on our official social media account should work
along with some accounts of celebrities and influencers to promote the videos and
try to create a hot topic in that period of time.

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TIMELINE
Second Glass will continue Wine Riot in six cities in 2014 including: New York, Boston,
Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The schedule of Wine Riot in these
cities is shown below.
Date City of Wine Riot
February 28 - March 1 New York
April 4-5 Boston
May 2-3 Chicago
June 6-7 San Francisco
September 26-27 Washington, D.C.
October 24-25 Boston
November 7-8 Los Angeles
We will implement similar tactics to promote Wine Riot in each city. Here is the timeline for the
detailed activities.
Activities Start Date Lasting
Days
Pitch to bloggers One month and a half before Wine Riot 5 days
Pitch to monthly local
magazines
One month before Wine Riot 2 days
Instagram contest One month before Wine Riot 1 month
Wineries promotion One month before Wine Riot 1 month
Viral Video Campaign One month before Wine Riot 1 month
Wine pairing promotion Contact the restaurants three weeks in advance
and launch it one week before Wine Riot
1 week
Post posters for Wine Pong Two weeks before the Wine Pong 1 day
Pop-ups Contact the stores threes weeks in advance, and
launch it one week before the event
1 week
Post posters for Wine Riot Two weeks before the event 1 day
Send out event invitations Two weeks before the event 2 days
Social media promotion More intensive posts two weeks before the event
and also post photos after the event
3 weeks
Pitch to weekly and daily
local media
One week before Wine Riot 2 days
Wine Pong tournament A Saturday night, one week before the event 1 day
TV talk show Friday Morning in that week 1 day

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The following is the detailed schedule for promoting Wine Riot in New York City, and the
activities in other five cities will follow the same pattern.
Date Activities
January 20 (Monday) - January 24 (Friday) Pitch to bloggers
February 1 (Sat) – February 27 (Thursday) Instagram contest
Wineries promotion
Viral Video Campaign
February 3 (Monday) - February 4 (Tuesday) Pitch to monthly local magazine
February 10 (Monday) Post posters for Wine Pong
February 10 (Monday) - February 14 (Friday) Contact restaurants for Wine Pairing
and liquor stores for “Pop-ups”
February 15 (Saturday) – March 7 (Friday) Social media promotion
February 17 (Monday) Post posters for Wine Riot
February 17 (Monday) - February 18 (Tuesday) Send out event invitations
February 19 (Wednesday) - February 20
(Thursday)
Pitch to weekly and daily local media
February 21 (Friday) - February 27 (Thursday) Launch Wine Pairing and “Pop-ups”
February 22 (Sat) Wine Pong Tournament
February 28 (Friday) TV Talk Show
February 28 (Friday) - March 1 (Saturday) Wine Riot at New York

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BUDGET
 Instagram contest: $0
 We can track the users directly on Instagram for free and use the free features of
Statigr.am and Instagram social monitoring tools.
 Wine Pong: $20 (average price of a bottle of wine) x 15 (amount of the wine bottles one
night each table) + $30 (amount of the table in each city) x 6 cities = $1,980
 Blogger promotion: $100 (average price of each blogger) x 50 (# of bloggers) = $5,000
 Social media: $0 (Resource time to manage this is calculated into employee’s salary)
 Posters: $500 (design fee) + $10 (printing fee each) * 20 (amount of the copies) * 6
(cities)= $12,500
 Invitations: $0
 The invitations can be sent via email to wine club members
 Pop-ups: $500 per city x 6 = $3,000
 TV Talk shows: $0
 It only requires coordination with the Talent Bookers/Executive Producers of each
TV show.
 Wine pairing promotion: $300 (each day price on the menu) x 1 day each restaurant x 5
(amount of restaurants in each city) x 6 (cities) = $9,000
 Promotion in local monthly magazines: $0
 Using press releases, there is no fee.
 Promotion in weekly media: $0
 Using press releases, there is no fee.
 Promotion with wineries: $0

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 It’s mutual cooperation.
 Viral Video Marketing Campaign: $2,000 (making each video) * 2 (amount of video) =
$4,000
 New blog live: $0
 It will be made through Wordpress using our internal web designer whose salary has
already been accounted for.
EVALUATION
1. Within one month of each event, there should be at least a 75% increase interest in web
searches and mentions.
 Measurable: Monitor web searches online through Google Analytics and monitor social
media mentions through social media monitoring tools, HootSuite and SproutSocial.
2. At least 50% of subscribed wine club members of each area register for the event one month
prior to the event.
 Measurable: On the registration form to attend each event, have an entry field for “If
you’re in a wine club, which one?” and measure responses with lists of wine club
members obtained from local wine club presidents.
3. Ensure 60% of contestants in the citywide contests register for each Wine Riot in their city at
least one week prior to the event.

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 Measurable: Through looking at the contest lead generation entry information (name,
contact info) and cross-reference (through Microsoft Excel) with the list of those who
registered for each event.
4. Collect over 1 million impressions by June 2014 from events of the ongoing riots.
 Measurable: Monitor website impressions and visits online using Google Analytics over
this time period.
5. Have a 25% total increase in attendance by November of 2014 compared to the total
attendance numbers of the Wine Riots of 2013.
 Measurable: Monitor web ticket purchases and in-person ticket purchases at each event
and compare to the previous time period.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
"About Us." Second Glass. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://secondglass.com/about-us/>.
Hsu, Tiffany. "Wineries pour efforts in targeting younger drinkers." Los Angeles Times. 01 Mar.
2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
<http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/01/business/la-fi-young-wine-drinkers-20130228>.
"Predicting a Wine Riot." Great Wine News. Patrick Media Group LLC. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
<http://greatwinenews.com/predicting-a-wine-riot/>.
"Second Glass Celebrates Five Years of Wine Riot in Boston, MA" PRWeb. Vocus, 21 Mar. 2013.
Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/3/prweb10554519.htm/>.
"Wine Riot: Enjoy a New Take on Wine Tasting" The Travel Channel. Scripps Networks Digital,
05 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://blog.travelchannel.com/the-traveling-
type/2013/10/05/wine-riot-enjoy-a-new-take-on-wine-tasting/>.

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