Wow and thanks everyone. Mirabeau’s now notched up over 10 million views on YouTube!
The idea to film parts of our journey came naturally when we first got going, and generally having an iPhone in one’s pocket means capturing these moments on film is pretty easy.
Our website and YouTube channel have many of those film snippets, from trying to get our reluctant 2CV to work as a delivery van, to following around the prettiest-goat-herder-known-to-man in Banon with many interesting vineyard features in the middle. Which brings me to the famous moment of video 222, or how to open a bottle of wine using your shoe.
Nothing could have quite prepared me for the way this video went viral, totally unexpectedly. To me it was just a grey Saturday morning and a friend had shown me someone else’s video doing the same thing. The video wasn’t easy to view and took forever, so I tried the same trick but did it all relatively quickly in order to get under the magic minute. Jeany loved it and couldn’t believe it worked, and obviously lots of people hadn’t yet seen this little life hack.
I had no idea it was going to go viral, I hoped I might get 1,000 views for this particular film, so I ‘Boosted’ it on our Facebook page for €45 to get it going. To everyone’s amazement, a month later it had been viewed around 5 million times!
The key to the success of the video were the fun subject matter, it was short, shareable and we got lucky when it got picked up on some of the popular news websites such as The Mirror, The Telegraph, Mail Online, Los Angeles Times, Metro, Huffington Post. Then it got tweeted and retweeted by many, including the British comedian (and my personal hero) Stephen Fry.
Whilst we’re constantly racking our brains to come up with the next viral video, we’ve continued to publish on YouTube and our other videos have been viewed over 230,000 times, which although rather pales by comparison, is still not too bad for a wine producer.
The question I always get asked is why do I value this kind of communication so much and what has it done for our business. The truth is these things are hard to measure, but we think social media and video channels have a lot of power and it really helps if people have seen you somewhere before and better still they liked what you did. I haven’t really been stopped the streets and still can walk down Cotignac high street without a bodyguard (unlike Brad, our neighbour) but many people have seen the video and it’s a great talking point.
I guess what’s important to us is that we did (and do) this out of real conviction, not because we thought we “ought to” or because other people are. I am a genuine fan of passing on knowledge in an easy and fun way and visual media are the best method. So have a look at our latest range of just slightly more serious videos on wine and wine etiquette that may help you enjoy wine more or understand certain situations better. Or you can go back in time and watch some of the best Mirabeau Moments over the past 5 years.
My thanks goes to you reading this and for watching our online content – please share it if you think someone else in your world might enjoy it.