Brand Communications
The story a property already has, written into the channels it already runs.
Most properties are not short on story. They are short on somebody whose job it is to write it down.
The wine club letter goes out because it has to. The newsletter gets written by whoever has an hour that week. The social post is a photo of the patio at golden hour with a caption that could belong to any property in the county. None of it is bad. It just is not carrying anything a guest would remember a week later.
It starts with an interview
An hour or two with the owner, the winemaker, the GM, whoever holds the history. Not a branding questionnaire. The questions come out of folklore fieldwork, which is a method built for getting people to tell you what they know without realizing they know it.
That interview is where the material comes from. Who planted what and why. What went wrong in a given year and what somebody did about it. Which block is difficult and why nobody has pulled it out. The things that never make it into marketing copy because nobody thought to ask.
Everything written afterward comes from that, and from what keeps coming up in check-ins as the season changes.
A piece of it
The block nobody wants to farm is usually the one that makes the wine worth talking about. It is steep, or it ripens late, or it sits in a pocket where the fog holds two hours longer than it does forty yards away. Somebody decided a long time ago that it was worth the trouble, and every year since, somebody else has had to decide again.
That decision is the story. Not the varietal, not the barrel program, not the awards. The part where a person stood in a difficult piece of ground and chose to keep going.
Most properties never write that down. It lives with one or two people, and it comes out across a barrel when somebody asks the right question, and then it goes back to living with one or two people.
What gets written
Wine club and member letters
The piece that goes in the box, written so a member reads it instead of skimming to the tasting notes.
The newsletter
Written for the property's own list. If there is no list, building one is part of the work.
Social stories
Not a content calendar. The occasional post that carries something real, in a voice a regular would recognize.
Menu and tasting room copy
The lines a guest reads while they wait, and the language the staff can pick up and use.
Why me
More than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger. Six sites. The job is reading a place well enough to explain it to a stranger who did not come there to be taught anything.
Folklore fieldwork training at the University of Maine. The interview method comes from occupational folklore, the study of how people who do a thing for a living talk about it.
WSET Level 3. Advanced certification in wine, spirits, and tasting. Enough to talk to a winemaker without needing anything explained twice.
A working writer. Author of Stop Leading on Empty, columnist at Senior ResQ, Edible Reno-Tahoe, and Edible San Fernando Valley, and a weekly newsletter for the trade.
One person, not an agency. Every word is written by me. Nothing goes to a junior writer or a template.
How it runs
A founding interview, then check-ins every other week to catch what is happening on the property as the season moves. Harvest, bottling, the week the tasting room is dead, the week it is not.
There is no long contract because the work should keep earning its place every month. If it stops being worth what it costs, the correct outcome is that it stops. It can run for a season or for years.
Setup fee plus a monthly rate.
Thirty days' notice to stop.
Discount for paying annually.
Who this is for
Properties with a real story and no one to write it
The history is there. The winemaker can tell it across a barrel. Nobody has written it down in a form a guest can take home.
Properties whose marketing is fine and forgettable
The emails go out on schedule, the posts are on brand, the open rates are acceptable, and none of it sounds like anywhere in particular.
Properties without a direct channel
No newsletter, no list, everything running through a platform somebody else owns. Building the channel is part of the engagement.
Owners who have tried hiring a writer
Usually someone good at marketing copy who never learned the place well enough to write about it, and the work read like it could have been about anybody.
Start with a conversation
Thirty minutes about your place and what you want guests to take away. No deck and no proposal until there is something to propose.
patrick@vianarra.com · +1 (650) 418-0507