Wine Business, The Italian Way w/ Stevie Kim, Vinitaly

XChateau Wine Podcast

In part 2 with Stevie Kim, Managing Director of Vinitaly, she explains how parent company Veronafiere invested in the various Vinitaly products and allowed her to experiment. Stevie also dives into her prolific content strategy, including the Italian Wine Podcast, which has over 2M downloads to date and where she sees value in marketing.

Detailed Show Notes:

Italian Wine Podcast

• Initially created to develop content for VIA candidates
• Something different every day - up to 9 episodes published / week
• Example shows: Ambassador’s Corner - Italian Wine Ambassadors go deep with their favorite Italian producer; US Market Focus - different perspectives on the US wine market
• Now ~2,000 episodes, they had to switch podcast distributors to Megaphone (Spotify) as most only host up to 500 episodes
• Audience - early on, was ~80% US & English speaking countries (the podcast is in English), and VIA students
• ~6M total downloads with a broader audience than Vinitaly attendees

Funding the Vinitaly complex

• Significant investment by Veronafiere, which is majority-owned by the city of Verona
• Italian Trade Agency subsidizes some events - e.g., pays for transport for judges for 5 Star Wines
• Some ticket sales and sponsorship revenue
• Podcasts funded by Stevie personally

Veronafiere saw value in investing in Vinitaly products

• Wanted to become more international
• Allowed Stevie to experiment with new products and invest in them

Stevie’s team has a large staff of content producers (video, social media)

• Document everything they do
• Create tons of content, of which only ~50% is used
• Stevie believes in being prolific - promotes discovery

Marketing products

• Never advertise on LinkedIn - it is too expensive
• Instagram - sometimes does advertising, conversion doesn’t happen on IG, try to drive to the website to convert, more for attention vs. conversion
• Facebook - most wine producers on FB, more effective and efficient, can get ~$100k subscription revenue from ~$5k ad spend
• Less concerned with “vanity” metrics like views and engagement, more interested in conversions

Looking forward - wants to bring more people to Italy and Vinitaly - it is the best way to convert people to Italian wine

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