Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by A.I.)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant concept for wine marketers; it’s here, reshaping how wineries connect with customers and manage campaigns.

Keynote speaker at this year’s Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium in Monterey, AI thought leader and author Rishad Tobaccowala told the audience to stop being afraid of AI and to jump in and make it work for them.

“Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for us,” he said. “So in effect, AI is DEF CON Red, or high alert, for everybody in every industry. This is not tomorrow. It’s happening, and it’s happening at scale.”

AI can level the playing field for small- and medium-sized companies competing with larger corporations, he said, by delegating menial, time-consuming tasks (like coordinating email campaigns) to AI as well as using content creation tools to generate text, visual and video content.

Tobaccowala said he pays just $160 a month for computing power that gives him AI functionality equal to or better than that used by large corporations.

While many have a baseline awareness of generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, DeepSeek), he said two more types of AI are emerging: agentic AI (e.g., Salesforce’s upcoming Agentforce)
and physical AI (e.g., self-driving
cars, robots).

Pointing to recent trends in media consumption, Tobaccowala said niche media now has greater reach than mainstream media, encouraging marketers to use AI tools that can easily generate visuals (e.g., MidJourney, OpenAI’s Sora) and videos (e.g., Adobe Firefly, OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s DeepMind Veo2), saving time and money and increasing consumer engagement with wine brands.

Tobaccowala said mainstream media is now outnumbered by niche media, and with free content creation and distribution widely available, small companies can compete effectively once they master the right AI tools.

Tips for Getting Started With AI
• AI First: Save time by starting your project with AI, Tobaccowala said. “I truly believe that if you start anything without going to AI as a starting point, you wasted half your time.”

• See How Your Business Shows Up in AI Chat Results: “After you’ve looked at SEO, SEM and other metrics to see how your company and your brand show up in search, check how it shows up in ChatGPT or Gemini, because more and more people are using those instead of traditional searches,” Tobaccowala said.

AI Can Change the Way People Book Your Tasting Room and Tours
AI-savvy travelers are already using AI to plan and book trips. AI programs can provide full itineraries with suggested winery and hotel bookings, Tobaccowala said.

Coming soon: AI will also book tastings and hotels for tourists.

AI + HI (Human Intelligence)
Is AI going to take over the role of humans? No. Tobaccowala said AI is like an intern or an assistant, not a substitute for human intelligence. To learn more about what AI can do for marketers, he suggested several books:

• Marketing with AI for Dummies by Shiv Singh: While the tools it references may be outdated, it provides step-by-step roadmaps for using AI.

• Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick: A New York Times bestseller from a Wharton professor. Mollick also publishes a free Substack newsletter, One Useful Thing.

• Rethinking Work by Rishad Tobaccowala: Tobaccowala’s own take on how AI will change society, work and life.

AI in Wine Marketing Today
Many tools already used by the wine industry in marketing are infused with AI. Others still need to be adopted more broadly in marketing departments.

Those basic website chatbots, for example, can be improved to do more than collect email addresses. Wine business schools may soon offer education on what a tech stack is and how best to manage IT resources for marketing. As costs drop and technologies improve, companies that delayed investment in digital infrastructure may now catch up.

Today’s uninformed buyer can become more educated about cost-effective AI marketing tools as the best solutions rise to prominence.

Beware AI-Washing, Predatory Pricing and Other Ills
“AI will be part of much of the software we use and will be invisible, just like the code and electricity that powers it,” said wine e-commerce and marketing thought leader Paul Mabray in a follow-up interview with Grape and Wine Magazine.

He published blunt advice for marketers seeking tools in a recent article, warning against “AI-washing,” predatory pricing for analytics and aggressive Salesforce consultants.

He defined AI-washing as when “companies try to breathe new life into their products or inflate the value of what they are doing by saying they are using artificial intelligence.” Often, he said, it’s just “lipstick on a pig.” Some products simply repackage licensed tools, reselling services such as Microsoft Business Intelligence or Domo.

Mabray recommended a couple best-of-breed solutions for small- and medium-sized wineries:

• Klaviyo, a marketing platform that integrates email and SMS messaging. It was a popular choice among conference attendees, based on an informal show of hands in an email marketing class.

• A forthcoming Commerce7 (and Shopify) analytics app from Stephen Mok’s New Vintage Labs, expected to cost about $50 to $75 per month.

To show up better in AI, Mabray advised wineries to pay attention to best practices: “Better, richer websites. More earned media (publications, blogs, newsletters). Better shared media, proper content on TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.”

Developing Better Professional Expertise
Aside from the fragmentation of tools in the wine marketing space, Mabray said another major challenge is skill sets.

“We do have a problem, a knowledge-based problem,” he said, adding many winery marketing managers are people who “just failed up.”

“We need to up-level and train our staff better and get them some better skillsets around [direct-to-consumer, sales and marketing],” Mabray said. “We have a lot of knowledge training to do.”

New Opportunities and Landscapes
In his book, Tobaccowala outlines a new approach to organizational structures and leadership, writing that “how talent is used will shift as technology changes the nature of jobs and industries.” He is convinced AI “can make all of us more productive by at least 10% right away.

“AI is moving faster and deeper across more industries than we can possibly imagine,” he wrote. AI “has already begun to affect everyone’s job in some way and will continue to have an even greater impact in the next few years.”

Still, he said, talent is talent and will not be lost in the transformation. “History suggests that every advance in technology places a premium on superior ability. Talent matters.

“People who are innovative, who possess financial, marketing and other skills, who possess an ability to build strong relationships, who are brilliant leaders, their talents transcend technologies.”