Hugh McLeod has a great update post about the progress of his blog marketing campaign for Stormhoek:
Blogging doubled Stormhoek sales in less than twelve months.

So, great ROI, right? But more key is the insight that Hugh offers about how it worked:

I have been saying this for years, and still not everybody believes me: “Blogs are a good way of making things happen indirectly.”

No, bloggers and their friends didn’t start suddenly descending on supermarkets, buying the wine in large numbers. That’s not how it works.

What happened is that by interfacing with the blogosphere, it fundementally changed how Stormhoek looked at treating their primary customers (the supermarket chains) and the end-users (the supermarkets’ customers).

i.e. It caused an internal disruption, both within the company and the actual trade. Wine drinkers’ basic purchasing habits didn’t change because of the meme, but the meme allowed Stormhoek to align itself more closely with said habits.

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