THE NEW APP IN TOWN

There’s a new app in the Bay State and it just might be revolutionary in its concept. Red White Boston is designed to bring retailers’ personal picks right to the consumer’s smartphone before they’ve even entered the store. The idea of the app is to capitalize on the 8O% (or more) of wine purchase decisions that are made in the aisle of a wine shop. The smartphone’s GPS capability allows the user to identify the wine shop nearest to them at that moment when they are looking to purchase a bottle of wine, and get door-to-door directions. Red White Boston is partnering with retail stores all over Boston, each of which will identify five to eight of their favorite wines. The user walks into a participating store and already knows five to eight wines which the owners think are especially unique to their store at that moment. Users can access information on their phone about the wines via text, audio or video. Red White Boston shelf talkers make the wines easy to find by visually highlighting the wines for the user (and for non-users as well, which invites more customer-staff interaction).
The user’s choices are archived in the app’s Wine Journal, where they can also enter notes on what they thought of the wine. The Wine Journal responds to the second biggest complaint wine drinkers have: they can never remember which wines they tried and liked. (The first biggest complaint is not knowing which wine to choose, something the app itself addresses outright.) Users can also share their thoughts or even their entire journal via Twitter and/or Facebook.
The category of Sponsored Wines – which are listed on each store’s home screen underneath their recommended wines – allows wine brands to gain exposure for their labels as an integrated feature of the app. The design of each Sponsored Wine’s information screen mirrors the store’s recommended wines, that is, the brand can enter information about the wines via text, audio or video. For the initial release of the app, each store’s home screen can list up to five Sponsored Wines; the Sponsored Wines will naturally be featured only on the screens of wine stores that keep inventory of the specific wines. The app is available to download for free via iTunes. An HTML version is also available for non-iPhone users to access on Androids and Blackberrys.