I've got a Crush...on Wine

In celebration of one of the most romantic holidays of the year, I wanted to share with you one of my greatest passions: wine. During this month, there are a handful of articles dedicated to wine and chocolate pairings, wines for special occasions, and even wines to seduce – Tablas Creek Vin de Paille Sacrerouge. Nevertheless, this post is not about to make you reel in disgust at another advertising ploy linked to one of the most marketed holidays of the year. Quite the contrary, it is about a website that encourages you to do something for yourself. Indulge your senses while engaging your mind – at Crushpad Winery, you will learn how to make your own wine.

A brief synopsis of Crushpad Winery is as follows: members can select a type of wine they want to create as seasoned wine experts guide them through a selection of grapes. Wine production experts will carefully create a wine through the members’ descriptions of wines they enjoy and once bottled, a design team will help create a personalized label for the wine. Members can keep wines for themselves or market their wines to interested buyers through Crushpad.

Although this may sound synonymous to other wine making companies, the difference between Crushpad and its predecessors is that Crushpad is online – a virtual production facility and marketplace. Crushpad Winery’s creators describe themselves as “wine industry veterans [coupled] with technology refugees.” The company has also created a virtual community space called Crushnet, where members can view other members’ profiles, learn about their wines, and form a social network based their common interests of wine and winemaking.

This is beginning to sound a little bit like Facebook-meets-Amazon-meets-a-Do-it-Yourself center, and its creators should be lauded for their brilliance. In today’s information age, individuals have a constant thirst for knowledge. With the advent of television networks such as the Food Network and HGTV, viewers are being taught to cook, home decorate, and design – services once only available by industry professionals. Our society has shifted to one of self-claimed experts, and therefore will only pay a premium for personalized services and products that they cannot easily replicate. Marketers acknowledge that consumers are not only interested in customization; today they seek an enhanced service experience aptly named customerization.

Customerization focuses on building relationships through two-way interaction between the buyer and seller. Online communities act as a platform to facilitate this communication; buyers can provide real-time feedback in a casual, forum setting, and sellers can continually adapt products and services to suit each person’s needs. Because these online communities bring together individuals with shared interests, marketers can truly understand its core consumers’ desires and adapt to changing trends in the marketplace at a faster pace.

Social media networking benefits consumers’ thirst for knowledge, the human need for social integration, and the producers’ desire to create better products and services. Building an online community can be considered a virtual product extension – a platform directly connected with the product, attracting and engaging an existing affinity group that feels strongly about that particular product. In retrospect, perhaps Crushpad Winery and Crushnet are Valentine’s gimmicks after all. Both websites do encourage members to get together and crush, but in this case they’re crushing for the love of good wine.