New World Wine Awards 2020: Corks pop as the top drops under $25 are revealed

Each year New World’s international-standard wine competition seeks to find the best quality, affordable wines. The Top 50 wines, from more than 1200 entries, are sold in New World supermarkets nationwide, giving winning brands a big boost and helping shoppers discover their next favourite drop.

Our approach:

Network helped develop a highly-targeted and integrated media relations programme spanning June to November, which helped raise awareness and trust in the awards as well as celebrate the winners.  

We kicked off the call for entries by sharing the excitement around the 2020 vintage (and a bottle of a 2019 winner as a tasty reminder) with trade media, wine writers and wine-lovers on social.

We then embraced the change to a new ‘judging hubs’ format due to COVID-19 to create a week-long ‘roadshow’ where we hosted media and influencers, and shared the yet untold stories of the ‘lockdown harvest’ through high-profile media opportunities.

Finally, the big Top 50 winners announcement  launched with two business trend articles in the NZ Herald and local media coverage in the country’s top wine regions. Coverage continued to pour in throughout the 5-week promotion with more than 100 national and regional media clips recorded, including in lifestyle news, magazines, news and entertainment radio and morning television. A concerted effort was made to ensure all Top 50 wines got their time in the sun, while two successful media partnerships allowed us to engage directly with specific audiences, share New World liquor manager expertise, communicate in-depth stories from ‘behind the vines’ and keep the award winners front of mind until the very end of the promotion.

Results:

• 163 media clips - equivalent to nearly one per day for the entire six-month campaign
• 34 items of sponsored coverage leveraged through successful partnerships with Allied Press and NZME’s The Hits, ZM and Viva
• Broadcast coverage at every phase: from regional radio stations promoting entries open, to TV One News and Newshub Late covering judging, to the Chair of Judges appearing with winning Rosé on the AM Show
• Strengthened relationships with journalists and wine KOLs in key wine-producing regions
• Increase in social media buzz among wine-lovers and trade publications, including a tweet from the Graham Norton