[our November 2021 e-newsletter]

Dear Cameron Winery Enthusiast,

You know how important marketing is to a winery. We certainly do, as you can tell from the flood of one newsletter we create every year (psst: this is that newsletter).

But that’s not all our vast, multi-national marketing agency says it does for us.

“We’re constantly innovating,” they explain when we track them down at the Day Spa. “For example, Cameron is now in a major motion picture!”

Gosh, that’s fantastic! What’s the movie?

It’s called Pig, and it stars Nicolas Cage! Set in present-day Oregon, it’s the story of a tormented former chef who has become a forest-dwelling hermit with the bathing and hairstyle habits of a Sasquatch, and whose cherished truffle-foraging pig is abducted by junkie commandos, under cover of darkness, to parts unknown. It is Cage’s solemn but emoting quest to retrieve said pig and an Oscar along with it.
Now, I know that sounds a little weird, but this is actually a real movie! And Cameron is featured prominently!

Amazing! How long are we on screen?

Well, you’re looking at it: about one frame… But this isn’t just any frame: it’s one in a scene where Cage recreates the best meal one of the characters ever had. What wine could possibly pair with that? The producers decided it could only be ours!

Well, okay, that is pretty nice. That’s… wait: “The producers decided”? This wasn’t a product placement or cross-promotion?

Er… no. We had no idea this was happening. Eh, but that’s even more flattering, don’t you think?

[ Picture us glowering. Just what have we been paying these people for all these years? ]

As if reading our pink-slipping thoughts, the team bounds off their massage tables into full powerpoint laser pen mode, leaving their towels (and shame) behind.

Pig marks the culmination of our decades-long campaign to raise the profile of Cameron! We’ve just had a bit of bad luck along the way. Take a look:
Casablanca (1943)

Our first foray into product placement could have been paradigm-shifting: Casablanca, a film pushed out along with hundreds of others during the war, would became one of the greatest movies in film history.

But sadly, a critical scene in which Rick was supposed to plumb the depths of alcoholic despair was held up when Bogart found it impossible to look miserable while drinking the Cameron in front of him. A quick-thinking prop master substituted Goldschläger in an unmarked bottle, and a newly grim Bogart nailed the revised scene in a single take.

But wait, 1943? That was decades before we even…

“But we didn’t give up,” they steamroll. “We knew Bogart was a hot property, so just a few years later…”

The African Queen (1952)

In the original script, Humphrey Bogart’s boat brought not only supplies up the river, but cases of much-needed Cameron wine. After an argument with him, Katharine Hepburn’s teetotaling character was to dump it all into the river in retaliation.

But reading through the action before the scene, Hepburn, a woman of surpassing taste and culture, balked, telling the director “I will do no such thing to so fine a wine!” The ensuing argument ended abruptly when they returned to the set and discovered all five cases had mysteriously disappeared — along with most of the production staff. As a precaution, shooting resumed a few days later with gin, which the lack of ice on set rendered undrinkable, even for film crews.

Clearly, the film business was trickier to break into than we’d thought. But marketing is about plucky resiliency: if something doesn’t work, learn from your mistakes, blame them on someone else, borrow a new idea, and call it your own:
Sean Connery for Cameron (1967)

In the mid-sixties, Sean Connery was at the peak of his Bond-driven fame. What could be better than pairing a sophisticated, international man of mystery with the mysterious, international sophisticates at Cameron wine? On the mistaken (but uncorrected!) assumption that Cameron was a brand sharing his Scottish roots, Connery was open to the idea, especially considering his compensation. “Love me that money penny,” he kept muttering, archly raising a manly brow.

But as you remember,

Wait, what?

once we started the photo shoot, Connery got into a kilt-lifting argument with our teenaged winemaker, John Paul. “I like my wine shaken, not swirled,” the actor proclaimed. You stormed off, taking the wine – and our best shot at fame – with you.

Oh come on! You expect anyone to believe that? It’s…

…Uh, so that one’s on you. But soon enough, another opportunity made our mission seem possible …
Cocktail (1988)

Fresh off the success of Top Gun, Tom Cruise was the hottest star around, so on the set of his next movie, we bribed a prop man with a gallon of hair gel to swap our wine for one of the liquor bottles Cruise had learned to juggle. Everything was going smoothly until one of his wilder tricks spilled Cameron wine into a glass of seltzer water, inadvertently inventing Cameron Spritz Rosé but exposing the truth: “This is no cocktail wine!” Cruise shouted at the couth-less crew, deftly double-twirling a cork over his shoulder and into the bottle, whispering “you complete me” and tucking it away for later.

Deciding the film business was just too risky, it would be 23 years before we tried again. But oh, by Odin’s beard, that time our quest seemed destined for glory:
Thor (2011)

As it happened, star Chris Hemsworth felt so passionately about Cameron wines he believed they gave him — and by extension, his character Thor — super powers. While this is certainly true, this also meant he insisted his character’s magical weapon (Mjolnir) be no other than a bottle of Clos Electrique, originating one of the movie’s most famous lines, “This drink, I like it! Another!”

But needless to say, it made for an awkward weapon, and as we saw above, Cameron wines are best swirled, not shaken. The standoff lasted until the day before shooting, when Hemsworth got a little too “hammered” on a bottle of 2009 Abbey Ridge and the prop department took him at his word.

Okay, we’ve heard enough. You’re all fired!

Oh, I know: a promotional mouse pad…?

Out!

Okay, fine. But before we go, if we were you we’d ask anyone who’s made it this far to sign up for your yearly mailer:
Sign up for brand synergy from Cameron Winery!

That is to say, get maybe one or two emails from us a year. Thanks in advance!

Journey back in time with us and browse the last 20 or so years of mailers, newsletters, and video.

Begin by selecting a morsel below or from the sandy column just to the right -->

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[our November 2021 e-newsletter]

Dear Cameron Winery Enthusiast,

You know how important marketing is to a winery. We certainly do, as you can tell from the flood of one newsletter we create every year (psst: […]

There’s More... >
The Cave of Fermented Dreams (2019)

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