“Premio Gavi 2022” goes to the Brunello di Montalcino Consortium fot the best communication

“With a website translated into four languages, it proposes itself as a real brand by effectively communicating its “global” identity, deeply rooted in its history and at the same time capable of integrating events and news of international scope. In the foreground, the narration, in words, but above all in images, of “Benvenuto Brunello”, the flagship event, one of the main international events which attract journalists, opinion leaders and foreign operators to Italy and which also takes place in New York”. With this motivation, the Brunello di Montalcino Consortium wins the “Premio Gavi – La Buona Italia 2022, unveiled today in Milan, by the Gavi Consortium and dedicated to “Italian Wine Worldwide – La comunicazione web internazionale dei Consorzi di Tutela del Vino italiani”. The Consortium of Bolgheri, Soave and Garda were awarded, on an equal merit, with the “Special Mention”, for their ability to effectively communicate their strength, strategically using the emotional impact created by a mix of images and storytelling, and addressing directly to an international audience.
The awarding of the Prize and the presentation of the research “Communicating Italian wine abroad via web”. The role of the Consortium “conduced by Astarea, was the occasion to start a debate on the state of the art of communication of the Consortium. It always starts from concept number one: you can be the best wine producer in the world, and it’s already a great satisfaction but if nobody knows you – and you don’t make yourself known – you won’t sell your wine. Then, the Undersecretary for Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, Gian Marco Centinaio, he remained the time when a Chinese minister told him: “Italians must learn from French cousins, who behind a glass of wine build a tourist package, offering a place, a hotel, local products, a sports facility, an event, a museum, while you Italians will limit yourself to wine or a little more and don’t make us dream like them”. To conclude with Giulio Somma, the director of the newspaper “Il Corriere Vinicolo – Unione Italiana Vini”, who reiterated how “the wine tourist is hardly even looking for a wine anymore, but for an experience”.
Live topics, also addressed by Federdoc and by the journalist Anna Scafuri of Tg1 Rai, around communication abroad of the wine consortia of our country through the websites. How is it done? But above all, how should it be done (and improved)? Astarea’s research analyzed it and a jury of industry experts decided the Consortium winner of the Award, which stood out for the best online communication. It is the researchers of Astarea who have underlined the point: it is not enough to be “consortiums promoter”, “functional” or “valorisers” of a wine whose technical or natural virtues can be praised. It is necessary to become “systemic consortia”, in which wine collaborates closely with the territory in which it is born and one works in support of the other.
Italy, we know that Italy is certainly not a champion of collaborative spirit and the Consortia are often in constant tension with the cellars, jealous of their own garden. “Alone we go fast, but together we go far and this is what individual producers must understand”, reiterated Centinaio. And the final bet is that of an increasingly innovative and imaginative proposal linked of the Prosecco initiative that went to the United States together with buffalo mozzarella, bringing home resounding success”, recalled Carlo Alberto Panont, director of the Garda Doc Consortium. There is no alternative to innovation, confirmed the president of the Gavi Consortium Maurizio Montobbio: “2021 was an excellent year for Italian wine, which exceeded 7 billion in exports, 2022 certainly did not start in the best way. But it is to the future that we must look and young people do not seem so attracted to wine, we must do something to conquer them. Are we sure that in twenty or thirty years wine will still have the centrality it has today and will continue to be an ambassador of Made in Italy? in today’s meeting clear indications emerged on which path to follow for the Italian wine consortia, which are increasingly assuming a strategic role for the promotion not only for wine but of the obligatory combination of wine and territory”.
Alongside the Brunello di Montalcino Consortium, among the “Special Mentions”, the Consortium for the Protection of WInes with Designation of Origin Bolgheri is positioned as a recognized and recognizable brand. Its reference event “Bolgheri Divini” and mythical and evocative “Dinner on the avenue” of the Cypresses by 1,000 selected guests are exhaustively described on the site, completely bilingual, both through words and evocative images. And ample space is also dedicated to wine tourism with itineraries and “personalized, exclusive wine tours”, organized through a specialized operator, an index of seriousness, reliability, organization, the virtues sought by wine tourism travelers, especially if international. “Life is Soave” is instead the theme of the home page of the Soave and Recioto di Soave Protection Consortium: a play on words that works in both Italian and English, immediately referring to an international dimension. Soave is one of the rare internationally oriented consortia that have linguistic consistency between the different digital communication environments, with the official Instagram page entirely managed in English and all the news on the site in two languages. The site of the Garda Doc Consortium last but not least opens directly in the English version and the wine, free from precise contextual coordinates, is transformed into a lifestyle through the effective use of the universal languages of images loaded with symbolic value that invite you to experience the territory.
But if the consortia in the “shortlist” and in particular the winners of the 2022 Awards represent virtuous examples of strategic digital communication abroad, the overall picture of the Italian wine consortia that emerges from the mapping made by “The Round Table” for the Gavi laboratory indicates that the road to be done is still long.
Of the 123 Consortiums analyzed, almost 30% have their institutional website only in Italian. In the same “shortlist”, all the websites of the finalists have at least the English language, but only half go towards at least a third language, in 7 cases out of 16 represented by German. If the Italian wine market speaks more and more of internationality – 7 billion euros the exports turnover estimated in 2021 – there are still mani websites of the Consortia – a real business card not only of the wine product but of the whole territory – who limit themselves to communicating, even at an institutional level, only with Italian interlocutors. This is demonstrated by the fact that social media are also often used to communicate only with the Italian public; there is rarely multilingualism on the same account or a parallel account dedicated to other languages is created. The most used social media is Instagram where the image reigns supreme, a super-linguistic and emotional element, which allows you to immediately reach an international audience, but has the risk of a simplification that can limit the richness and diversification of the Italian wine and territorial panorama. Furthermore, if Facebook continues in most cases to be active and updated, but especially in Italian, Twitter instead experiences a situation of abandonment, with posts still dated several years ago. To reveal, instead, the increment in the use of visual elements – such as maps and infographics – on the Consortium sites to describe one’s identity should be noted. they are increasingly important elements thanks to their immediate use and adoption of new communication styles increasingly based on the use of images. The “Premio Gavi” promoted with the patronage of Ministero delle Politiche Agricole, Uiv-Unione Italiana Vini, Federdoc, Enit-Agenzia Nazionale del Turismo, Iwi-Iulm Wine Institute, Ferpi-Federazione Relazioni Pubbliche Italiana, “Il Corriere Vinicolo” and “Una-Aziende della Comunicazione Unite”, is assigned by a jury composed by: Gaetano Belloni (Class Editori); Massimiliano Bruni (Iulm Wine Institute, Comitato Scientifico di Iulm Communication School, CdA di Ium Ai Lab); Paolo Castellett, sg Uiv; the Undersecretary Gian Marco Centinaio; Andrea Cornelli (Una); Giorgio Dell’Orefice (“Il Sole 24 Ore/Radiocor”; Luigi Gia (“La Repubblica”); Francesco Moneta, founder of The Round Table and coordinator of Laboratorio Gavi; Maurizio Montobbio; Fabio Piccoli (“Wine Meridian”); Alessandra Piubello (“Decanter”); Anna Prandoni (Gastronomika); Alessandro Regoli, direttore WineNews; Riccardo Ricci Curbastro, president of Federdoc; Simone Roveda (WineryLovers); Rossella Sobrero, Ferpi president; Giulio Somma; Loredana Sottile (“Tre Bicchieri/Gambero Rosso”); e Isidoro Trovato “Corriere della Sera”).