After a short hiatus from the previous site, CannonWines.com has returned. I wasn’t a fan of how the old site was used, so I started from scratch. Previously, the site had to be updated manually by editing javascript to change the menu system, which only allowed you to browse the portfolio by loading huge PDFs through text links. There wasn’t anybody on staff to do that before I got there, nor would there be if I were on vacation or got hit by a truck (knock on wood), so the site needed a method for previewing all wines in the portfolio that could be updated on the fly by anyone. Sounds like a need for a Content Management System (CMS).

So I designed a new front-end UI that shows a brief, the bottle, the data, the accolades, the tasting notes and download links for resources on every wine, including tech sheets, shelf-talkers, brochures, hi-res bottle shots and hi-res labels:

Then I asked a few buddies to build a custom CMS to manage it all. They built it over a few weekends in CakePHP, which makes updating the site as easy as logging in and filling out a short form. All of the portfolio info is stored in the site’s MySQL database, from which we can pull data for almost anything. More on that after the jump. Read more »

Artist: Matt & Kim

Track: Daylight

Album: Grand

Discovered & downloaded on:
KEXP Song of the Day

This song isn’t new – I saw these kids open for Cut/Copy at the House of Blues in Vegas months ago – but it’s certainly memorable.  Their set up was no more than a drum set, a keyboard and two stools at the edge of the stage, where they were jamming for the crowd around them.  They played almost an hour without stopping, jumping in place with endlessly intense smiles on their faces.  The same pure and simple energy carries their single “Daylight.”  Check out the video here, (embedding was disabled for some reason) and get the song at KEXP.

Artist: Phoenix

Track: Lisztomania

Album: Wolfgang Amadeus

Discovered & downloaded on:
KEXP Song of the Day

I heard “Lisztomania” on KEXP weeks ago and was hoping it would show up on the Song of the Day podcast.  Today it finally did.  Get it while you can.

Less than two weeks ago, I was here in San Francisco presenting a few proposals to Cannon Wines Limited, a wine importer and marketer.  Today I’m back in the office as the new Marketing Director, charged with promoting their popular labels and building some of their newest brands from the ground up. Along with producing and distributing marketing materials for sales managers all over the US market, I’ll also be revolutionizing the way Cannon does business, by streamlining many of its internal operations with web tools and bringing most of its materials online for easier access and distribution. Expect a complete redesign of www.cannonwines.com to drive those efforts in the coming months.

I’ll also be executing the freshly minted marketing agenda for Naked Earth, a collection of blends made with organically grown grapes.  First on the agenda will be an update of the Naked Earth brand site, followed by a few exciting events.  Join the Naked Earth Facebook group to receive RSVPs as those develop.

First order of business though: finding a place to live.  Homelessness is stressful.

So I was in San Francisco while this was heating up, and ironically disconnected for a couple days while on business, but I caught the ending in full tonight.  Here’s the back story: at some point, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) declared it his mission to be the first Twitter user to have 1 million followers.  The closest user to that goal at the time was CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk).  Sadly, also in the running was Britney Spears, who doesn’t even post her own content, but let’s not get into that.

Kutcher challenged CNN to beat him to a million followers, and raised the stakes with a wager that, if he becomes the first, he’ll donate $100,000 to Malaria No More, which aims to eradicate the disease from the African content using a distribution system for prevention. Well CNN accepted the challenge, and broadcast its effort on live TV, with follower counters and all.  Not to be outdone by traditional media, tonight Ashton Kutcher broadcast his own live play-by-play on his UStream account.

The race continued into the night, and victory was finally taken by Kutcher at around 11:20 PM, no doubt with help from his wife Demi Moore (@mrskutcher) and all of the tech industry’s elites.  The 1 millionth follower may have been Australian, as the continent was just waking up as it happened.

Kutcher then thanked all of the tech start-ups involved, from Kevin Rose at Digg, to the guys at Qik, to his publicist, the charity, etc.  Evan Williams and others congratulated him.  Then Kutcher watched CNN’s live concession to him on TV, and responded with this:

A toast to Ted Turner – you are a pioneer in media, in creating CNN and creating your entire network and your conglomerate… you had the foresight to see that digital media was going to be the future, even before all of us believed it.  And for that, you deserve to be congratulated.  And also, you deserve to be ding dong ditched, because at the end of the day, the old guard has passed and the new guard is here.

If Ashton Kutcher is the new guard of media, I don’t want to be inside those gates.  Yikes. Clearly Kevin Rose has created a monster.  Kutcher then goes on with generic declarations on democratizing media, blah blah blah… regurgitating lines he heard in pitch meetings, no doubt.  See it in the video.

Personally I find celebrity news trite, annoying, and hugely distracting from the real news Americans should be watching and analyzing.  So I wasn’t all that interested in documenting the occasion, but as it is my communication style of choice, I recorded the historical social networking/media moment and the thank-you speech following, as you’ll see above.

[UPDATE] CNN has posted a response to the results:

First of all, kudos to Ashton and all those in the @aplusk camp. Now more than ever, the consumer is in the driver’s seat and we couldn’t be more gratified than to be part of this historic social media milestone. We’d like to thank every one of our followers for helping CNN reach the one million mark, and we are delighted to raise our donation to 10,000 bed nets for World Malaria Day in recognition of them.

Historic? Really? Seems more like a popularity contest to me – no substance.