Mirabeau case study: How a small family business achieved YouTube success

This is the story of how an entrepreneur used a shoe and a wine bottle to create one of the most successful videos in YouTube history and transform his small family-owned business.

A few years ago, I was approached by a fellow named Stephen Cronk for help on developing a new marketing strategy. Here was his story:

• Left his corporate job in London.
• Moved his family to Provence.
• In the teeth of a recession, started a new winery called Mirabeau.
• Has 600 established competitors.

You read that correctly. 600 established Rosé producers — just in Provence!

This was a tough assignment but I do love a challenge and most important, I believed in Stephen. He possesses an excellent business mind, an urgency to learn digital marketing, and is a wonderful story teller. I had to say yes!

We DID NOT begin with a social media strategy.

We had to step back and figure out where he could maneuver in a highly saturated, low-growth market. We could not be a “me too.” Our initial activity was to come up with the data that could lead to insight. We conducted a complete market and competitive analysis — there was a lot of existing material out there so we could bootstrap most of the research.

We discovered that among the hundreds of wineries in his region making Rosé wine, none of them demonstrated any capacity to do digital marketing. At the same time, his potential retail customers were trying to gain a foothold in the social media space and were creating a pull for digital competency (especially in key markets of the US and UK). We found our opportunity.

And so, we began.

We had to scale a content marketing effort quickly and decided that Stephen’s primary source of “rich content” would be video. He was a natural on camera and the lush and ancient countryside of Provence proved to be an ideal backdrop to explore wine making, food. history, art and local color of the region.

Stephen was in it for the long haul and consistently documented his wine-making journey in a very human and entertaining way. He talked about a labeling crisis that almost crushed his business. He created a funny video about the ridiculous paperwork he faced from the French government, what it was like to attend a wine-tasting competition, how the grapes were harvested in the first morning sunlight, and many other interesting little vignettes. He shined a light on his village, his pets, his family. He lost his balance on a grape harvester. He put a human and modern face to a stodgy, traditional business.

In addition to producing content, we also had a network strategy and continuously worked on building an active wine-loving audience. As his numbers and engagement grew, Stephen was able to use this data with huge wine retailers to prove a point of differentiation. No winemaker in the region had the presence and audience that the upstart Mirabeau had. The strategy worked and the orders started coming in.

Then viral happened.

On his 222nd video, Stephen hit paydirt. In a 29-second video, he demonstrated how to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. It has now attracted well over 6 million views!

Why this one?

There is no way you can predict “viral” but this video had four key elements going for it. The video was high quality, it was short, it was entertaining, and it was practical.

But there was also another critical element.

If you do a search for “how to open a wine bottle with a shoe,” you will find at least five other videos that demonstrate the same trick. All of them were made before the Mirabeau video. And the most views one of them has received is less than 1,000.

Why?

Because this was not a parlour trick. This was Chapter 222 in the Mirabeau Case study and the story of his business. Cronk had spent more than two years building an emotional connection with his audience — his Alpha Audience. When this video arrived, it was primed to ignite.

Results

For most businesses, slow and steady is the way to build an audience that leads to business benefits on the social web. But what happens when that “once in a lifetime” event occurs?

“The lesson wannabe Cronks should take on board is that throughout his video-creating efforts, he has never sought to use the clips to directly promote his wines or the brand. They are all intended to be interesting in their own terms and often contain no direct reference to the brand at all. People who watch them are merely invited to visit the website if they want to know more”

But what about the money?

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