It’s called “wine meeting” because it is not a fair or a commercial event. It’s not even an “anterpima” meaning a preview of the last vintages of local wines. It’s a meeting as I wrote!

A meeting among professionals of the sector with different backgrounds who met to discuss about the main issues focusing on strengths and weaknesses of the local wine world that are slowly coming up in Campania region, southern Italy.

The organizers, mr. Filippo Staiano and mr. Stefano Fontanella, wanted us to discuss about Internationalization at this 3^rd edition which took place in November 2015 near Napoli, southern Italy.

As I wrote when I announced the event, here is the list of panelists of the first day, each with a different point of view:

• Mr. Festa, Director of “Wine Business course” at the University of Salerno.
• Mr. Matarazzo, Director of Wine Consorzio in Sannio area.
• Mr. Giraud Director of the foreign dept. Along with ms. Longobardi from Uniimpresa company of Napoli
• Mr. De Lucia, CEO of the MDL Global Marketing & Comunication
• Mr. D’Antonio Journalist for “Italia a Tavola”

I had the pleasure of moderating and intervene directly in the discussion and it was interesting to see how we all agreed on the main points that are not particularly original but this why it is important to still underline them:

– Open up to international markets is no longer just an opportunity but a need and if in the past English language was enough, today the East part of the world is becoming crucial. Communication professionals are necessary not only for the language ​​but to adopt the right (cultural) approach;

– communication and public relations are not well exploited yet, including wine tourism activities that concretely allow to create the fateful personal relationship with customers and wine lovers as social networks do;

– The digital marketing was also the subject of technical seminars in order to fully understand the potential of social media first. We are going beyond the era of Web 2.0, we will have robots and “electronic noses” to analyze our wines. It is not as far as it may sound because the scientific research is going on but too many people in Italy today still does not understand –just to give an example- the centrality of the blogging and social media;

– The tourism has changed, people look for “experiences”. The agency VieniViaConMe (in Napoli) amazed me by the originality of the packages offered to discover the traditions and the hidden areas of ​​Naples!

vieni via con me, travel agency in naples

– To invest in this directions would help to gain powerful image and finally allow wines from Campania region to be positioned as top class.

Get together around a table will not make a miracle but it is the starting point to set in motion a mechanism before it is too late.

Have you ever tried campania wines in your country?!