Challenge

The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) has many responsibilities, but one of those is promoting Japanese food & beverage around the world. They wished to host a series of educational events for both trade and consumers in Napa, California in November 2015. This included a series of Japanese food and sake pairings for consumers at Morimoto Napa and the Napa Valley Wine Academy offering the first local Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Level 3 Award in Sake. They needed help promoting the events to the trade and public.

Solution

This project leveraged our deep connections with the beverage media and trade. We began by working with the Napa Valley Wine Academy on a series of emails to the San Francisco Bay Area trade and media, inviting them to sign up for the WSET Level 3 Award in Sake class. This included multiple follow-ups and phone calls to encourage participation. In addition, we set up an EventBrite page for guests to register or purchase tickets, and sent out invitations to local media, asking them to attend. We wrote and distributed press releases to local trade and media announcing the events, and worked with Snooth on digital advertising and a dedicated email to their users in the local area.

Outcome

While media attention wasn’t our primary goal, we were able to garner some nice hits for this short project. With the help of our efforts, the Napa Valley Wine Academy was able to register about a dozen students for the WSET class, and the events at Morimoto Napa sold out with very positive feedback garnered from post-event surveys.