Wine PR: Stephanie Teuwen, Teuwen Communications

XChateau is a podcast about all things wine, from vine to your glass. We tackle the business of wine and keep you up to date with new and exciting developments in the wine industry.

In this episode, Robert Vernick and Peter Yeung interview Stephanie Teuwen, President and Co-Founder of Teuwen Communications, an award-winning, PR agency focused on food, wine, and spirits.  We discuss what a PR firm does in wine, how wine PR differs from other consumer brands PR, and the business model of PR. 

Other topics covered in this episode include:

• Stephanie’s background - in restaurants, from Provence, France
• Founded Teuwen Communications, splitting from a larger PR firm, to support a single restaurant
• Goals of a PR firm - build and expand awareness; support sales (PR efforts need to go back to the bottom line)
• Scope of PR efforts
  • Earned media
    • The PR firm is a strategic storyteller to journalists
    • Written, video, podcasts, audio
    • Build relationships with media, work as a team with journalists
    • 70% of the press is driven by media and public relations
    • Written publications often plan out 6 months in advance
    • Major wine magazines - have a core base that reads them, but pivoted to move a lot of content online, important for trade
    • Gets ~100-500 articles / year for clients
  • Influencer marketing
    • Influencers need to have a true voice
    • Voice should resonate with their audience
    • Influencers important to democratize wine
  • Advertising - Often to amplify the voices of other efforts
  • Events - both virtual and in-person
• Measuring sales and PR impact - through traffic and sales on the website, anecdotes from customers, how the brand is portrayed
• The difference between wine PR and non-wine
  • Passion for the product
  • Wine knowledge, highly technical - often have wine certifications
  • Don’t work with celebrities - a different area of PR
• Wineries need good distribution (either direct-to-consumer or trade) to make PR investment worthwhile
• Business model - min investment ~$50-60,000 per year
• Campaign example - Wines of Alsace - “Alsace Rocks”
  • Trying to engage with a younger audience
  • 360 campaign - trade, events, influencer marketing
  • The client now rolling out globally

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