New World Wine Awards 2019: Toasting New World’s top drops

Each year New World’s international-standard wine competition seeks to find the best quality, affordable wines for its shoppers. The Top 50 wines, from more than 1400 entries, are then sold in New World supermarkets nationwide, giving winning brands a big boost and helping wine-loving shoppers discover new favourites.

Our approach:

Network helped develop a highly targeted media relations programme to keep the awards in the media spotlight from February through to November. Success stories from past winners kicked-off the call for entries in media in the key wine regions of New Zealand, while behind-the-scenes stories from the judging event gave shoppers confidence in the forthcoming results. 

We then left no stone unturned for the big winner’s announcement, working to ensure every Top 50 winner was celebrated in media coverage in some way, considering every angle – from lifestyle trends to business, and audience – from dedicated wine-lovers to those not sure where to start. A comprehensive partnership with Stuff provided further opportunities for sponsored content and a broad range of lifestyle editorial. Finally, sampling media with handpicked wines drove story development and social chatter, while a PR tool kit helped winners create even more media and social activity of their own.

Results:

• 187 media clips featuring New World, winning wines and key messaging
• 54 items of sponsored and editorial coverage leveraged through the Stuff partnership alone
• Seven Sharp visited the judging event and the Chair of Judges appeared with winning wines on the AM Show
• Wines featured in magazines including NZ Woman’s Weekly, NZ Listener, Next, Australian Woman’s Weekly and NZ House & Garden as well as MindFood online and numerous speciality publications
• Increased involvement with winning brands for joint PR efforts
• A jump in PR-driven social presence among wine-loving followers