Landing The Boss Gino Colangelo, Was An Oh Yeah!

When You Land The Boss

It had to happen… Landing the boss Gino Colangelo was an Oh Yeah! It was quietly lovely to have him tell me that he was aware of who I was (never occurred to me). I don’t know my outreach, but I do know it was a small moment with a big weight to it. Gino Colangelo, the boss of one of the largest wine and spirits PR agencies in the country, told me he already knew who I was before I’d said a word. I don’t know exactly what got me on his radar. Thirty years of bylines, clients, and phone calls add up in ways you can’t always trace. But I do know what it felt like to hear it. It felt like arriving.

I Had Constructed Questions

And, I was looking forward to the interview. He’s such a fascinating person, so I constructed questions. There were so many that I began to repeat myself, and then I didn’t proof, because I was 200,000 mile down the road. He kindly, but firmly let me know he had already answered that one. Then, I did it again with another question. Same response. I thankfully regarded his candor, I was caught. And, I would have done the same thing. Bravo, an honest and forthcoming man. This was going to be fascinating, and it delivered. So I said, “Right, we ARE done. We don’t need to go any further. We’re simply done.” Deep sighs (all around)…

I’m Not Changing This In Any Way

It’s raw, it’s real, it’s insightful, and it’s totally honest from Gino Colangelo.

 

Gino Colangelo Interview with Jo Diaz

Getting to Know Gino

Jo: : So that career that you built, what drew you to co-founding a facing campaign like Share and Pair Sundays, rather than staying purely behind the scenes and also Come Over October?

Gino: Honestly, I’ve not been, still I’m not completely comfortable with being more public. But I think that the nature of our campaign is rather unique, with the Wine Advocacy, and it works best with independent communication professionals running it. That means Karen MacNeil, Kimberly Charles, and myself. Karen’s our main spokesperson, but there are some times when it’s just simply appropriate for me to speak to press, and I will. And it’s kind of putting my money where my mouth is because I’ve advised clients for 30 years, about speaking to press.

 

Jo: When did the first sense that the wine industry needed something like this, this grassroots community movement, rather than the traditional marketing push?

Gino: It was very clear to me. I mean, the sort of the light bulb going off over my head in terms of the need for some wine advocacy was four years ago, in the summer. I pulled my senior team together and I said, there’s something going on in the media reflecting this negative narrative about alcohol generally and wine specifically related to health. And, you know, we’re communications professionals. My business is built on a healthy wine industry.

And I said, we have to think, you know, we have to consider where this negativity is coming from and how to create a more positive narrative around wine. So I started talking to producers, importers, trade organization leaders, press. I had some stops and starts. And then I spoke to Karen McNeil in February 2024. We commiserated about all the negativity. She had written a post about why she dislikes dry January. She wrote it tongue in cheek, but she got criticized for it, in chat rooms. And the next day she called me back to say she had an idea.

And her idea was Come Over October. So, again, I started feeling the negativity four years ago and realized that it wasn’t just one-off coincidences. It was a sustained sort of anti-alcohol campaign.

Jo: Yeah. You know, I’m going to give you my thoughts, like a really quick thought on that one. And I think it’s political, because those guys are into spirits. A lot of it’s coming from the deep south, because they sell spirits. I think that they want to get people away from wine and get them into more than alcohol. That’s my take on it.

Gino: I did a lot of digging. I worked with journalist Felicity Carter, who did a lot of investigating about the anti-alcohol movement. It was coming from the WHO, who are former tobacco lobbyists, who basically were needing another job. A lot of well-intentioned people took research and looked at it in a very skewed way. They ignored anything to do with things like the Mediterranean diet, anything to do with the possible positive health outcomes of moderate wine consumption. They just had the zero-sum game about risk to health, which starts at the first glass.

 

 

Jo: So, personally, what does a Sunday around wine and food look like in your own home?

Gino:  Well, I’m Italian-American as you might tell from my name. And I grew up with big Sunday dinners around family table and wine was always part of those dinners. And when I was going up, it wasn’t fancy. It was, you know, gallo-hardy burgundy that we consumed by the four-liter jug of big family. And it’s continued into my own family with Sunday dinner being, you know, rather special and wine always being part of it.

But the wines have gotten a little better, I might say. Nothing wrong with hearty burgundy and a little more diverse. No white wine on my family table growing up, but now I really enjoy white wine depending on what I’m eating. But yeah, so wine has always been part of food for me and my family growing up and now my family and now that I’m, you know, older.

Yeah, I had that feeling having been to Italy, having been to Europe. It’s really lovely that they still have family-,Iness.

 

Jo: So that campaign itself, with 3.6 billion impressions is remarkable. I read it in an email. Which single moment or response from that campaign surprised you the most?

Gino: Yeah, I mean, yeah, 3.6 billion media impressions over the three years we’ve been active, it’s a lot. But, you know, media is so congested these days that you have to constantly be out front with your message in order to create the narrative that we want to create around wine, the positive narrative.

The single response that surprised me the most was in the very beginning when we contacted some key players in the business, including Jackson Family and including Adam Strum, the owner of Wine Enthusiast. And we got buy-in and support right away because everybody, I think, was thinking the same thing, that there’s a risk to wine as we know and love it by this negativity. And somebody ought to do something about it. So, here we are three people, Karen, Kimberly, and myself, who are prepared to try, at least, to donate our time to do something positive for wine.

This Gino Colangelo PR 7 Marketing story will continue with the “New Wine Marketing World.”

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Written by Jo Diaz, a partner of Diaz Communications, who is helping to make stars realize their dreams.
Edited by partner Jose Diaz.

To reprint, please contact Jo Diaz: jo@diaz-communications.com