{"id":11648,"date":"2010-08-28T10:51:59","date_gmt":"2010-08-28T08:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=11648"},"modified":"2010-09-01T13:26:50","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T11:26:50","slug":"google-street-view-drives-sa-wine-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/google-street-view-drives-sa-wine-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Street View drives SA wine marketing!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Google Street View and Google Maps are two products that will change the world of marketing, wine estate owners and marketers were told at a presentation at the Protea Fire & Ice Hotel on Thursday.\u00a0 South Africa is the first African country\u00a0in which\u00a0Google has introduced the technology, and the South African wine estates are the first in the world to have been included on Google Street View.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Google Street View is the largest photographic project in the world.\u00a0 Google Maps has already covered 100 countries in 350000 maps, in 40 languages.\u00a0 Google Street View was launched in South Africa just before the World Cup (with some errors, in that the Metropolitan Golf Club is shown to be inside the Cape Town Stadium!).\u00a0\u00a0 Google Maps provides summary information about a wine estate, for example, and then shows the reviews about the estate on Tripadvisor, SafariNow and on other websites, providing a potential visitor with different sources of information which they can use to prepare for their visit.\u00a0\u00a0 At the presentation wine estates were encouraged to club together, and to design custom-packaged wine tours – e.g. a Pinotage tour in a specific area can be prepared via Google Maps, as the “pinotage” word would be Google-searched by the\u00a0visitor from the reviews that\u00a0contain that word, for example.\u00a0\u00a0Wine estates can also apply Google Maps into the management of their businesses, in controlling their security, crops etc, they were told.<\/p>\n

Google Street View cars\u00a0(or even bicycles), with a massive camera on them, take photographs as they drive down roads, which are then processed to put them onto Google Maps.\u00a0 To protect the privacy of the public, Google\u00a0blurs car registration numbers and faces of persons who may have been walking while the photographs were taken.\u00a0\u00a0 The imagery is not real-time once it is accessed on Google Maps, given the time that is needed to process the photographs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Google states that it respects the laws and norms re privacy on Google Maps, an issue that\u00a0is being hotly debated in Germany at the moment.\u00a0 If a\u00a0resident finds his\/her visual on Google Maps, even if the image is blurred, they can request it to be removed completely.\u00a0\u00a0 Even one’s house can be deleted, on request.<\/p>\n

Google Street View allows users to virtually explore and navigate a localised area through panoramic street-level photographs.\u00a0\u00a0 A Street View button needs to be clicked on the Google Maps, one clicks onto a camera icon above a city, and then zooms in.\u00a0 One can see a 360 degree panorama of that specific area,\u00a0so good and real that one almost does not have to go there as one has seen it on Google Street View already!\u00a0\u00a0 Not only can one find the exact location of where one is going for a meeting, for example, but one can also see which coffee shops and parking garages are close by.\u00a0\u00a0 One can check out the real environment of\u00a0a hotel one has booked at, which might be hidden in the photographs provided by the hotel in its Image Gallery, possibly due to its location close to a noisy or ugly part of town.<\/p>\n

Visitors to a wine estate or to a town\/city can upload photographs of one’s property, as well as provide information about one’s property, on Wikipedia.\u00a0\u00a0 Wine estates and tourism businesses were encouraged to add Google Maps and Google Street View onto\u00a0their websites.\u00a0\u00a0 One can customise these applications, which are free of charge, in changing the photographs, or in enlarging or reducing the size of the maps.<\/p>\n

Wine estates that are on Google Street View are Warwick Wine Estate, Vilafonte, De Wetshof, Fairview, Paul Cluver, Rustenberg, Meerlust, Morgenster, Bouchard Finlayson, Jordan Winery, Klein Constantia, Journey’s End, and Groote Post.<\/p>\n

Google Maps can be added to one’s website (www.maps.google.co.za<\/a>), so that one can create one’s own map.\u00a0\u00a0 One can also add one’s content to Mapplets, which are map layers or applications available on Google Maps.\u00a0\u00a0One can use these to display information to Google Map users, giving content to Google Maps (www.google.co.za\/apis\/maps\/documentation\/mapplets\/<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0Google Places (www.maps.google.co.za\/places)<\/a>\u00a0allows\u00a0one to put a business on Google Maps, searchable by Google on its Google Maps, Earth, Search, and Maps for Mobiles applications.\u00a0\u00a0 One can personalise this business information with contact details, opening hours, photographs and more.<\/p>\n

Leading Johannesburg wine consultant Juliet Cullinan endorsed the Google Street View application for wine estates, saying that this is the first opportunity South Africa has to launch top wine estates, icon wines, and the best wine cellars, and is the closest one can bring the consumer to a winemaker, and ‘almost’ get them to taste the wine on-line.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mike Ratcliffe from Warwick and Vilafonte wines, one of the most tech-savvy wine marketers in South Africa, has embraced Google Street View, and even got\u00a0Google to include the Big Five safari trip they offer Warwick visitors.\u00a0 Ratcliffe reiterated the growth of social media marketing, and quoted international advertising agency WPP\u00a0in stating that 26 % of the agency’s business now is on-line communications.\u00a0 The fastest growth has been magazine readership, which readers subscribe to on-line.\u00a0\u00a0 He hinted at the launch of “Google Me’, Google’s answer to Facebook.\u00a0 HD also is coming, giving even\u00a0higher screen resolution.\u00a0 Ratcliffe encouraged his wine colleagues to embrace Google Street View, as it gives the South African wine industry an edge, before it is adopted by wine regions in other countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google Street View and Google Maps are two products that will change the world of marketing, wine estate owners and marketers were told at a presentation at the Protea Fire & Ice Hotel on Thursday.\u00a0 South Africa is the first African country\u00a0in which\u00a0Google has introduced the technology, and the South African wine estates are the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,124,31,22,21,19],"tags":[2158,6955,2506,6939,32397,32378,6941,6938,7031,2381,270,560,740,6936,6956,6957,6958,2311,6951,146,6953,6943,6235,4969,6952,413,6946,6950,347,3125,3602,406,6940,6942,58,6945,5344,60,6949,2630,32388,6944,6954,407,6937,3598,32373,49,531],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t