WOSA (Wines of South Africa) partners with Rocketseed to drive global awareness of 350 year celebrations.

Although South Africa is counted amongst the New World’s wine producers, the first grapes were pressed for wine at the Cape, nearly 350 years ago, in 1659 under Jan van Riebeeck. He had come to the Cape in 1652 to establish a settlement on behalf of the Dutch East India Company.

As South Africa’s presence on contemporary world markets is still in its relative infancy, really only since the advent of democracy in 1994, the perception in these markets is that the South African wine industry is a comparative new-comer..

As you can well imagine, to mount a global awareness campaign of the 350 year anniversary could be very costly. But, in what is arguably a first in any wine industry, WOSA has partnered with Rocketseed to help drive global brand awareness of the 350 year campaign, by using the marketing force of its membership and a marketing channel they already own – email!

Consider the numbers

• WOSA has over 500 members who export their wines.
• So, these members, including WOSA, have over 2500 people that actively communicate by email to recipients abroad.
• Typically these recipients are international customers, prospects, distributors, media, private buyers etc (and these recipients have a global reach too as they act on behalf of multiple countries).
• Each of the 2500 email users will broadcast the 350 year campaign on every one of the 30 emails they send everyday as a combined marketing force.
• So, WOSA and its members will be able to secure over 15 million exposures of this fact to a targeted audience over the course of one year.
• By using Rocketseed, WOSA and its members are able to measure and track the success of this campaign, knowing exactly how many exposures and, in fact, click throughs achieved – to the members’ websites, WOSA’s website and the WOSA350 year website.

An example of what a typical WOSA member’s email, who has joined this campaign, will look like with the 350 year logo on it:

Not only is this true leadership through innovation, but it also shows how businesses and marketing bodies with common interest and objectives can use technology to unite around a very important common cause, and drive a joint campaign irrespective of the fact that in many cases they are competing in the same markets.

Rob Love, MD of Rocketseed SA, commented “not only are we proud to be associated with this campaign, but we are also excited to provide the software and support that enables this unified industry campaign which according to our knowledge is definitely a World First. We want to congratulate Sue Birch, CEO of WOSA, and her team on their foresight and leadership through innovation. It simply shows that South Africa and its people can lead the way in the world, even in the fields of marketing and technology.”