Pacific Rim gave away "Save Water/Drink Riesling" cloth totebags for free on their Web site. The deal went viral, and was featured on Buxr and, yes, even on Consumerist's very own Morning Deals on June 1st. The company didn't quite expect what happened next—they received 80,000 requests for the 3,000 tote bags they had planned to give away. Oops. Their system wasn't even set up to cut off the deal after 3,000 requests.
They sent an e-mail out to the last 77,000 people to sign up for the freebie, and added—what the heck?—a sales pitch for their wines. Hey, as long as they've got thousands of extra people on the mailing list, might as well market to 'em.
Courtesy of many readers, here's the text of the e-mail:
Thanks so much for your interest in Pacific Rim and our reusable shopping bag offer. Our "Save Water/Drink Riesling" campaign (promoting conservation of our precious rivers) seems to have struck a chord with our fans. The positive response to our bag offer has been so overwhelming that - as a small, independently-owned winery - we simply do not have the resources to fulfill all the bag requests.However, it's sincerely important to us that we provide you with a "make good" limited-time offer exclusively available to people inquiring about our reusable shopping bag. We've created what we hope is a mind-blowing discount on our two most popular wines: purchase 3 bottles of Dry or Sweet Riesling and receive an additional BONUS BOTTLE and FREE SHIPPING. That's a 50% SAVINGS and a $30 VALUE. The offer expires midnight June 30th, and is limited to 1 order per household.
A little background: we produced enough bags to meet our projected demand based on a small-scale retail promotion featured on select Pacific Rim wines. Our primary hope was to generate awareness of river conservation through this offer. We did not predict the popularity of the offer as it went viral online at "freebie" websites (which posted links to our special offer without permission). These websites boosted the demand to nearly 80,000 requests for the 3,000 bags we produced.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the overwhelming response we've received. We appreciate your flexibility and understanding. Again…we hope you will try Pacific Rim wines by taking advantage of our exclusive offer to purchase 3 bottles of Dry or Sweet Riesling and receive an additional BONUS BOTTLE and FREE SHIPPING.
Must be 21 years or older to participate.
Yours sincerely,
The idea of asking permission to link to a Web site is rather quaint and amusing, though there's a difference between simply linking to a site, and encouraging people to sign up for a free deal. Lesson learned. And hey, now they have 77,000 extra people on their mailing list! Most of whom are probably about to leave that mailing list.
Save Water/Drink Riesling Special Deal [Pacific Rim Winery]
]]>Gross. It can function as a mediocre table wine and nothing more. Unfortunately, not many American wineries can get riesling right. Pacific Rim is no exception.
]]>I did note, though, that they should have looked at the link posting as free advertising instead of something that required their "permission".
]]>The company doesn't owe anyone anything.
]]>On-site sales rules are typically laxer because the sale isn't crossing state lines. All the winery needs is a license to sell alcohol. From that point on it's what the shipper is licensed to do. The shipper needs a license from the winery's state to ship liquor out, and a license from your state to ship liquor in. On-site sales are the same as if you bought the wine, drove down to a UPS store and shipped it to yourself.
Off-site sales require a lot more licensing. The winery needs not only a license to sell alcohol, but also a license to ship it out of the state. On top of that depending on what state they are shipping to they may need a license to sell alcohol in the destination state, and a license to ship.
The oversimplified view: a winery potentially needs to obtain 3 extra licenses for every state it wants to sell wine too.
Some states make it easier than others, but for the most part a winery still has to do a lot of extra work for each state. The short list of states Pacific Rim can ship to may just be the states with the simplest requirements and ,as a small winery, they can't afford the time or money to expand their distribution yet.
]]>@jbviau: It's nice that they even offer something to residents of states to which they can't even ship, eh?
]]>In this case, marketing it as "free giveaway to the first 3000 registrants" would have covered them from the get-go-and would still have allowed them to pitch their consolation discount without coming off like a company that has no experience with modern marketing.
]]>"...Due to state liquor license restrictions, we are only able to ship to the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas and Washington. If you are not a resident of one of these states, you do not qualify for this offer. Please contact us for an alternative offer at info@rieslingrules.com."
]]>No sane marketer who is trying to promote their product or cause is upset when their promo accidentally goes viral. Likewise, no sane marketer plans to cut off their demand gen at 3,000 leads.
It's more likely that the "apology" is a thinly-veiled attempt to cover the fact that the giveaway was a demand- or lead-generation activity by selling themselves as "green."
They got what they wanted: a huge list of prospects. They could have simply apologized, but now they risk pissing-off more potential customers with the way the apology was executed.
]]>Killed any sympathy for them. They don't own the internet.
]]>I go to a big trade show every year with some other people, and it kills me to see how one of them will go to every booth to get at least one, usually two (one for her mom), sometimes more, of EVERY single freebie they can get their hands on. I really don't think a lot of these small companies spend big $$ to go to this big show and get T-shirts printed so your mom can wear a shirt around the house with their logo on it.
My 2¢.
]]>@menty666: I think that's a little different. Unless you're Owen Wilson.
]]>@WearingBlue4BillyMays_GitEmSteveDave: Pfft. Forget wine altogether. What you need is some ol' fashioned Tennessee strawberry moonshine.
]]>Bait and switch?
]]>True, and while I don't think anyone did anything wrong here. I'd like to put up this example. Say I'm getting married and I have an open bar at the reception. I put the address to the reception on the invitation. That invitation gets mailed to invited guests. If someone then posted the address on craigslist under the headline of "free booze!" there'd be a problem.
However in this case I don't think Pacific Rim did a small mailing, I get the impression they put a link up on their site and it got out of hand. That...would be the equivalent of me putting up a banner myself on the outside of the reception hall then looking surprised when it turned into a very expensive kegger.
]]>The state government is one of the things in MA I'm *not* fond of....
]]>This incompetent judge apparently ignored the conclusion of this legal case (Ticketmaster vs Tickets.com):
"A URL is simply an address, open to the public, like the street address of a building, which, if known, can enable the user to reach the building. There is nothing sufficiently original to make the URL a copyrightable item, especially the way it is used. There appear to be no cases holding the URLs to be subject to copyright. On principle, they should not be."
That, above, is good legal work.
]]>Personally, I think the consolation offer was a generous one - remember, they didn't have to offer anything!
]]>I don't see the problem.
They had a limited offer, the limit was reached.
If you got in after the limit, too bad, so sad for you.
You can't rag on a company because the limited offer was not large enough for you to grab freebies, afterall, if everyone could have gotten one, it would not have been very "limited" now, would it?
I for one think it was a noce gesture on thier part to offer the deal to those who missed out. Shame on the Consumerist for ragging on a company who at least tried to make good.
@czadd: I have to agree. It was nice of them to provide a follow-up rather than never getting a tote bag and wondering why. (OK, in fairness, I would have forgotten in a month and would have pleasantly surprised to receive a tote bag in the future.)
]]>Yeah, I think they should have said "without our knowledge" (as in, we didn't know it would spread like this) rather than "without permission".
They might have felt they had to offer something but I think they could have just left it at the apology.
]]>Won't be long now before we are effectively a world-country
]]>I have to confess. I ordered the wine. I figured it cost the same as what I usually buy (~$10/bottle), so why not try it and get a free bottle and free shipping (which has typically hindered me ordering online). At worst, I have a cheap Christmas gift.
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