[Selling Wine with Blogs]

There was an obscure small wine brand abroad, but it carried out a successful marketing through blogs, which rapidly expanded the sales and popularity of its products.

In 2004, Mal bought an 80-hectare vineyard in Doolhof Valley, South Africa, and started his new business - Stormhoek Wine Company. Stormhoek, a small wine manufacturer, produced "freshness matters" wine, which was sold in large and small shopping malls in the UK such as ASDA, Threshers, Waitrose, Majestic, Sainsbury's and Oddbins.

"New Zealand has the best technology for making white wine, but the grapes in South Africa are better." Stormhoek wine is said to be the combination of these two. But soon he fell into difficulties. Mal firmly believed that the fertile soil here could produce good wine, but how could his brand win the attention of British consumers and sign bulk sales contracts with supermarkets across the mountains and ridges of South Africa?

Stormhoek is a small enterprise with little money, so it didn't place any advertisements in the UK.

Mal had an seemingly impossible idea - using blogs.

In May 2005, six months after the birth of Stormhoek wine, Mal sent a bottle of medium-priced wine to each of the 150 hottest bloggers in the UK.

As long as the following two conditions were met, a blogger could receive a free bottle of wine:

1. Living in the UK, Ireland or France, and having been blogging for at least three months. The number of readers doesn't matter, it can be as few as three, as long as they are real bloggers.

2. Having reached the legal drinking age.

Receiving the wine does not mean you have to blog about it - you can write or not write, you can say good things or bad things.