How to Choose a Wine or Spirits PR/Marketing Agency - Part 1

Selecting a marketing or public relations agency is consequential for any brand. For wine and spirits companies, however, the decision carries additional complexity. Alcohol beverage marketing operates within a specialized commercial environment shaped by a three-tier distribution system, regulatory restrictions, entrenched trade relationships, highly competitive categories and a consumer marketplace in which provenance, reputation and cultural relevance can be as important as product attributes.

The right agency should therefore offer more than strong creative work or media relationships. It should understand how brand positioning, public relations, trade engagement, digital marketing, social media, events and commercial objectives intersect within the beverage alcohol industry.

There is no single agency model appropriate for every company. A multinational spirits portfolio entering the U.S. market has fundamentally different requirements from an established domestic winery seeking greater national recognition, just as a luxury brand requires a different communications strategy from an emerging product attempting to generate rapid trial.

For this reason, your objective should not simply be to identify the most impressive agency. It is to identify the agency whose capabilities, experience and operating model correspond most closely to your brand’s particular business challenge.

What Should a Wine or Spirits Brand Look for in an Agency?

The evaluation should begin with strategic understanding rather than a list of services.

An effective agency should be able to articulate the relationship between the brand’s commercial objectives and the marketing activities it recommends. Increasing distribution, building awareness, supporting a market launch, strengthening luxury credentials, and generating tasting-room traffic are all examples of distinct objectives. But each requires different audiences, channels, messages and measures of success. If you find an agency simply listing out bullet points of services, either they don’t know what you need, or you have articulated your needs well.

This distinction is particularly important in wine and spirits because communications rarely operate independently of the commercial environment. Consumer awareness may be valuable, but its impact is constrained if the product is unavailable in relevant markets. Trade visibility may accelerate distribution, but it cannot substitute indefinitely for consumer demand. Editorial coverage can confer credibility, but publicity alone may not provide the frequency needed to build broad awareness.

A strong agency recognizes these interdependencies and develops programs accordingly. Its recommendations should reflect where the brand is in its development, what barriers it faces, and which audiences can most meaningfully influence its progress. For instance, if your product awareness is nascent, you would expect the agency to discuss press tours, relevant trade shows, online marketing and trial instead of trade activations that aren’t developed yet.

Specialist Agency or Generalist Agency?

One of the first decisions a brand may face is whether to engage an agency specializing in wine and spirits or a broader consumer marketing firm. The essential question is not whether an agency knows the industry. It is whether that knowledge improves the quality of its strategic decisions on what channels to propose. Wine and spirits expertise should shorten the agency’s learning curve, but brands should be cautious about treating category experience as a substitute for strategic thinking.

Specialist agencies generally begin with a deeper understanding of the industry’s commercial structure. An experienced wine and spirits industry agency should understand the language, institutions and conventions of the business without requiring the client to explain fundamental market dynamics. It should recognize the differences between marketing a $25 bottle and a $250 bottle, between a regional winery and a nationally distributed spirits brand, and between communications intended for consumers and those intended to influence the trade. They are more likely to understand the distinctions among supplier, importer, distributor, retailer and on-premisepriorities, as well as the particular influence of beverage trade media, critics, sommeliers, bartenders, buyers and other intermediaries.

Relationships also matter, particularly in public relations. Established connections with journalists, critics, editors and industry figures can facilitate access and improve an agency’s understanding of what constitutes a credible story. Relationships, however, do not guarantee coverage. Editorial interest ultimately depends upon relevance, timing and the strength of the underlying narrative.

Generalist agencies can offer advantages, particularly when a brand is attempting to participate in cultural conversations beyond the beverage category. Experience in fashion, hospitality, entertainment, luxury goods or consumer packaged goods can introduce useful perspectives and prevent category conventions from becoming creative constraints.

This knowledge can materially affect strategy. A campaign that appears compelling from a conventional consumer-marketing perspective may be impractical if it does not account for distribution, regulatory requirements, market availability or the economics of the category.

For many wine and spirits brands, the strongest solution is not specialization at the expense of broader thinking, but specialization combined with cultural fluency. An agency should understand the mechanics of the category without allowing those mechanics to limit the ambition of the work.

Brands should therefore look beyond an agency’s contact list and evaluate how it thinks. The most useful category expertise manifests itself in judgment: knowing which stories warrant attention, which audiences matter, when a particular tactic is unlikely to work and how a brand can participate in the market without becoming indistinguishable from its competitors.

PR Agency or Integrated Marketing Agency?

Brands should also determine whether their objectives require a public relations specialist or a broader integrated marketing partner.

Traditional public relations remain particularly valuable in categories where third-party endorsement carries considerable influence. Earned media can establish credibility, provide context for complex products, introduce founders and winemakers to influential audiences, and create a record of independent recognition that paid communications cannot replicate. A public relations-focused agency has spent decades building relationships and knowing the press. You’re paying them for access. They should be able to open doors to these outlets and strategically recommend article topics. Many of them also offer press training for your staff.

But public relations isn’t a faucet that turns on sales. It is a vital part of awareness marketing, but you should also understand its limitations. Public relations do not provide complete control over timing, message or reach, nor can editorial coverage alone consistently deliver the frequency necessary to build awareness in a crowded marketplace.

An integrated agency may combine public relations with social media, influencer programs, digital advertising, content development, trade marketing, events, partnerships and other disciplines. This approach can create greater continuity between earned attention and the channels a brand controls or purchases.

Integration is most valuable when it is strategic rather than administrative. Housing several services within one agency does not automatically create an integrated program. The relevant question is whether those disciplines are informed by a common strategy and reinforce one another.

For some brands, a focused public relations engagement is entirely appropriate. Others require a coordinated program capable of moving from awareness to engagement and, ultimately, commercial action. Scope should follow the business problem rather than an agency’s preferred service model.

What Questions Should You Ask Before Hiring an Agency?

An agency review should reveal how the prospective partner approaches problems, not merely provide an opportunity to examine past work.

Brands should ask how the agency would define success during the first year of the relationship and which indicators it would use to evaluate progress. The response can reveal whether the agency understands the company’s actual objectives or is defaulting to the metrics most convenient for its discipline or that make them look proficient.

It is also useful to understand who will perform the work. The senior executives leading a presentation may not manage the account once the engagement begins. Brands should know who will provide strategic oversight, who will handle day-to-day execution and how much senior involvement is built into the proposed scope.

Questions about comparable assignments can be equally instructive. Rather than asking simply for examples of successful campaigns, brands should ask how the agency addressed a challenge resembling their own, what constraints affected the strategy and what the agency learned from the assignment.

Finally, brands should discuss expectations candidly. Successful agency relationships depend upon access to information, timely approvals, clear decision-making and realistic resources. An agency should be prepared to explain what it requires from the client, not simply what it promises to deliver.

What Are the Warning Signs When Evaluating an Agency?

Some concerns become apparent before an engagement begins.

An agency that proposes tactics before demonstrating a clear understanding of the business may be applying a standardized program rather than developing a strategy. Similarly, an excessive emphasis on awards, impressions, follower counts or the volume of media coverage can obscure the more important question of whether the work advances the brand’s objectives.

Guaranteed editorial coverage should be approached carefully. Earned media is, by definition, subject to editorial judgment. Credible agencies can discuss likely opportunities and demonstrate a record of results, but they cannot legitimately control independent editorial decisions.

Brands should also be attentive to unnecessary complexity. A sophisticated strategy is not synonymous with an elaborate one. If an agency cannot explain why a particular activity is necessary, how it relates to the objective and what role it plays within the broader program, the activity may not deserve investment.

Perhaps most importantly, brands should consider whether an agency is willing to challenge assumptions. A productive partner should not simply validate every client request. Expertise has limited value if the agency is unwilling to recommend a different course when experience or evidence suggests one is warranted.