Drinking in the Benefits of Blogging

Last year, Stormhoek, a popular South African wine, started a business blog powered by Movable Type and sent out one hundred complimentary bottles of their wine to bloggers across Europe. With the assistance of well-known blog marketing expert Hugh Macleod, Stormhoek bet big on blogging, counting on the influence and voice of those bloggers to help get their message out.

The result? As you can see in Hugh's Movable Type-powered blog and in today's story on Decanter magazine's website, Stormhoek doubled sales of their wines. According to Decanter:

The result, says Stormhoek spokesman Nick Dymoke Marr, is that the wine now has a 19% share of the over-£5 South African wine market, and sales went from 50,000 cases in 2004 to 100,000 last year.

The popularity of the brand has also earned it listings in Sainsburys, Asda, Oddbins, Majestic, Waitrose and Somerfield.

Of course, the success isn't solely attributable to Stormhoek's embrace of the blogosphere. The company took advantage of the expertise of a long-time member of the Movable Type community, and Hugh was able to assist in making sure the outreach towards bloggers was personalized, individual, and presented in a human voice. The combination of smart use of technology and a canny method of communication seems to have yielded results that are worth toasting.