Scanning data at your fingertips
A partnership between two technology companies in Hawke's Bay is making orchard data more easily accessible to growers using new interactive online heat maps.
The board of Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers (HBWG) made the decision to create a new brand “Hawke’s Bay Wine” to represent the organisation’s public profile. The new brand and mark would be used across all assets both digital and physical.
The region had the ‘Hawke’s Bay Wine Country’ brand for a number of years. Through the evolution of what is now Hawke’s Bay Tourism in 2011, a change in marketing and branding was completed for the region. Since that time Hawke’s Bay’s wine industry has lacked its own brand identity. It was an imperative for the Hawke’s Bay to have a regional wine brand in order to fulfil our marketing mandate. The new brand is expected to launch this winter.
In line with the overall marketing push, Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers have also taken on a public relations partner to help build the profile of Hawke’s Bay both domestically and internationally. We recognised with limited internal resources we needed to find strong, enabled partners that can assist us in reaching our goals.
Efforts to refresh and renew our event programme are also in process. We established the Hawke’s Bay Wine Celebration to coincide with the New Zealand Winegrowers Major Events to leverage the significant influx of visitors to the country. As well, our Hot Red Hawke’s Bay roadshow events in Auckland and Wellington will see step changes in venues, programming, wine sales and promotion.
From an international standpoint, the region’s China marketing programme, a collaboration of seventeen wineries, is now in its second year. In 2014, we put on 17 events in a variety of formats in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Chengdu, Xi’an and Hong Kong. This has exposed our Hawke’s Bay wine brand and our winery member’s to over 800 trade, media, key influencers and wine lovers and enabled development of business/trade and consumer relationships. For wineries that have had little exposure to the China market it has provided a structure upon which they can quickly build in-market experience and develop relationships. For more established wineries in-market it provides a platform to meet distributors and market the brand to wine consumers.
We have established our presence on China social media platforms, Weibo, Weixin (WeChat) and Youku. In addition we have developed the Chinese section on our winehawkesbay.co.nz site with regional info, profiles of the wineries in the programme, videos, etc.
As an outcome of our focus on China and our relationship with Eastern Institute of Technology, Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers signed an MoU with Shandong Vine and Wine Association. The main points of the MoU is to support the viticulture and winemaking student exchange from Qi Lu University in Jinan, Shandong Province to Eastern Institute of Technology. Education of international students is a substantial export for New Zealand and a great opportunity to create brand ambassadors for Hawke’s Bay wine. In addition, together we will explore methods of cooperation and friendship with the aim to advance knowledge and practice in the areas of grape growing, wine making and wine culture.
It is an exciting time in Hawke’s Bay as we build the region’s brand into one that is internationally renowned.
