BerserkerDay VII!!! (January 27, 2016) OFFERS ARE BEING POSTED NOW!

ToddFrench · December 17, 2015, 4:10pm

The SEVENTH celebration of the community-wide credit card trauma is soon upon us, folks!! Celebrating the 7th anniversary of the founding of this great (and I use that term loosely, mostly it applies to famous people among us like Jay Hack who are featured in the Wall Street Journal) online wine community, that continues to prosper and grow, year after year.

This year, BerserkerDay falls on ‘hump day’, a Wednesday, so plan ahead (Shiela Fruman, for example) with work to tell them you will be useless all day (though that might not be a stretch for some of you, nor a surprise to your colleagues )

Eventually this thread will be moved to the forthcoming BerserkerDay VII forum, which will show up closer to the event, sometime in January, but I wanted to put out a few bits of information, and a few requests, well ahead of the event.

Participating wineries/retailers/companies: If you plan/wish to participate, PLEASE don’t email me just now, or send a private message. I promise I’ll have further information with great detail ready for you in the coming weeks. What I ask of YOU is to start thinking about the offer you are going to make - make it good, so you stand out among the many other great offers! Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on this day each year, and you want some of that jack, right? There is NO COST TO PARTICIPATE, no revenue-sharing, no commissions to pay. It’s an event held annually to benefit the community.

HELP NEEDED: Because BerserkerDay continues to grow and grow, and set new records each year, more wineries/retailers want to participate each year, and while the community here sets records for attendance each year, consecutively, I think MORE need to know about it. There are so many more wine lovers out there than who participate here, and thus I’m asking for some help. WE NEED SOME SOCIAL MEDIA HELP! I have zero extra time around BerserkerDay to push the event on all forms of social media, so I’d like not just one person, but a small team of folks to spread the word everywhere on the web - and, hopefully, some wine-related press, or otherwise. If you have any leads, connections, or are directly or indirectly working with the media, please reach out and volunteer to make this (again) the biggest BerserkerDay ever. Those who wish to volunteer to help with spreading the word through social media, please reach out, so I can create an action team. I used to be able to do it all myself, but there’s no WAY I can anymore with how big it’s become, and this year will be even bigger. Please note: I likely will reject any offers that are deemed unsuitable, because we’ll have more offers than we can handle, and thus discounts that aren’t sufficient enough might not end up on the offers for the day.

Auctions: Again, Brig Campbell has offered to head up the auctions this year, and I’m so very thankful to him for offering, as he did a great job last year, and I can’t service that part of the day myself. If your winery/retailer wishes to include an item or items for the auction, please contact Brig directly. As you see above, there’s no cost to participate as a retailer/winery, so the auctions are the way WB gets financial support for the event (and for the year, frankly).

Offers and how they will be organized/released: This one has me a bit flummoxed as there are so many offers now that those who end up at the end of the day often feel they lose out on the revenue, so I’m tossing around an idea that seems to make the most sense, and welcome your thoughts on it. One of the great benefits of this event is being introduced to new wineries and retailers, however, to properly order the massive number of deals, the idea I’m considering is to organize them based on community participation. Offers will be organized based on a combination of join date (when the individual doing the posting joined WB as a member) AND participation (number of posts). This rewards those who have been an active and valuable part of the community, BUT it does potentially disadvantage those who are the new-to-WB crew, so I might have to figure out a way to order it as indicated above, with a sort of lottery for newbies, so there’s a small number of newbies interspersed within the master order. Your thoughts on this, or ideas on other ways to organize it, would be welcomed.

A few FAQs: The event will be here, on Wine Berserkers, and like before, each winery/retailer will have his/her/their own method for purchase, as we have no e-commerce here. Subscribers will get a Preview Day, as they did the last two years, and will be able to purchase items posted by BerserkerBusiness members shown on Preview Day, one day before the event. (one of the benefits of being a WB Subscriber) The event will start when I wake up, basically, and will go until probably 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern.

Now, enjoy Europe singing Final Countdown through BerserkerDay!!!

Peter_Kleban · December 17, 2015, 4:14pm

PS: Unless there’s a new article that I missed, Jay H is in the WSJ, not the NYT…just sayin’

Brian_Tuite · December 17, 2015, 4:43pm

Is there a compendium post of participating businesses for BDVI that I can use as a teaser? That is, rather than building the list myself.

brigcampbell · December 17, 2015, 5:31pm

There was the list of offers PM to the subscribers the day before. I can’t find that PM. Maybe Todd has a copy.

As Todd mentioned for Auction items, you can PM or email me here to the left of this post.

Glad to help out with the cellartracker crowd again with Scott Brunson and a few other cross posters as we create a BD thread in the CT forum and answer any questions. There was a lot of participation from them last year.

ToddFrench · December 17, 2015, 6:15pm

There’s the BerserkerDay VI forum…

Every participant, every offer is listed there

Brian_Tuite · December 17, 2015, 7:03pm

Yeah I knew about that. I was hoping all the offers were condensed into a single post.

Allan_Pannizzo · December 17, 2015, 7:48pm

Hey Todd,

I am a Newbie to purchasing on Beserker Day. What exactly do I do. Do I E-mail vendor, call or is there a specific way to purchase. Any Feedback would help! Thanks!

ToddFrench · December 17, 2015, 9:14pm

from the FAQ section above:

A few FAQs: The event will be here, on Wine Berserkers, and like before, each winery/retailer will have his/her/their own method for purchase, as we have no e-commerce here.

Essentially, each offer is specific, and will have its own method of purchasing, whether that be phone, fax, email, PM, or e-commerce - the offer-maker determines their own method of purchase.

Allan_Pannizzo · December 17, 2015, 9:24pm

Thanks Todd! I can take it from here.

mattcitrang · December 17, 2015, 9:39pm

I’m ready. Lets go.

Shiela are you there?

Nancy_Dolce · December 17, 2015, 9:49pm

Sheila is free that day. She retired this week.

mattcitrang · December 17, 2015, 11:19pm

She’s gonna kill it this this year.

AndrewH · December 18, 2015, 1:23pm

Todd F r e n c h:

Offers and how they will be organized/released: This one has me a bit flummoxed as there are so many offers now that those who end up at the end of the day often feel they lose out on the revenue, so I’m tossing around an idea that seems to make the most sense, and welcome your thoughts on it. One of the great benefits of this event is being introduced to new wineries and retailers, however, to properly order the massive number of deals, the idea I’m considering is to organize them based on community participation. Offers will be organized based on a combination of join date (when the individual doing the posting joined WB as a member) AND participation (number of posts). This rewards those who have been an active and valuable part of the community, BUT it does potentially disadvantage those who are the new-to-WB crew, so I might have to figure out a way to order it as indicated above, with a sort of lottery for newbies, so there’s a small number of newbies interspersed within the master order. Your thoughts on this, or ideas on other ways to organize it, would be welcomed.

I realize it would have some subjectivity (as would your approach), but how about best offers first (i.e., largest discounts, most interesting opportunities, such as library wines)? Give those who are really stepping up the prime spots.

ToddFrench · December 18, 2015, 5:26pm

AndrewH:

Todd F r e n c h:

Offers and how they will be organized/released: This one has me a bit flummoxed as there are so many offers now that those who end up at the end of the day often feel they lose out on the revenue, so I’m tossing around an idea that seems to make the most sense, and welcome your thoughts on it. One of the great benefits of this event is being introduced to new wineries and retailers, however, to properly order the massive number of deals, the idea I’m considering is to organize them based on community participation. Offers will be organized based on a combination of join date (when the individual doing the posting joined WB as a member) AND participation (number of posts). This rewards those who have been an active and valuable part of the community, BUT it does potentially disadvantage those who are the new-to-WB crew, so I might have to figure out a way to order it as indicated above, with a sort of lottery for newbies, so there’s a small number of newbies interspersed within the master order. Your thoughts on this, or ideas on other ways to organize it, would be welcomed.

I realize it would have some subjectivity (as would your approach), but how about best offers first (i.e., largest discounts, most interesting opportunities, such as library wines)? Give those who are really stepping up the prime spots.

Good idea - perhaps a combination of the one described above, so it’s, rather than lottery, the newbies with the best offers?

Dennis_Kanagie · December 18, 2015, 6:19pm

Woo HOO!!!

T_Melloni · December 18, 2015, 7:17pm

The ordering part is easy; the paying side of the equation is a different story.
I did not see any answers in the FAQs for that topic.

brigcampbell · December 18, 2015, 7:19pm

The good news is you have 30 days after BD to figure it out before the other half sees the credit card statement.

AndrewH · December 18, 2015, 10:36pm

Todd F r e n c h:

AndrewH:

Todd F r e n c h:

Offers and how they will be organized/released: This one has me a bit flummoxed as there are so many offers now that those who end up at the end of the day often feel they lose out on the revenue, so I’m tossing around an idea that seems to make the most sense, and welcome your thoughts on it. One of the great benefits of this event is being introduced to new wineries and retailers, however, to properly order the massive number of deals, the idea I’m considering is to organize them based on community participation. Offers will be organized based on a combination of join date (when the individual doing the posting joined WB as a member) AND participation (number of posts). This rewards those who have been an active and valuable part of the community, BUT it does potentially disadvantage those who are the new-to-WB crew, so I might have to figure out a way to order it as indicated above, with a sort of lottery for newbies, so there’s a small number of newbies interspersed within the master order. Your thoughts on this, or ideas on other ways to organize it, would be welcomed.

I realize it would have some subjectivity (as would your approach), but how about best offers first (i.e., largest discounts, most interesting opportunities, such as library wines)? Give those who are really stepping up the prime spots.

Good idea - perhaps a combination of the one described above, so it’s, rather than lottery, the newbies with the best offers?

Hmmm . . . I guess there are lots of ways to do things . . . I was thinking best offers regardless of participation go first. Presumably some newbies will come with best offers - the purpose usually is to promote a wine people don’t know about. Understandably established wineries are less likely to make really great offers (even though they are plenty generous for BD).

Or perhaps you could do some sort of points scale - 1 to 3 for length of tenure, for activity in community, and quality of offer. But for newbies don’t apply these criteria and instead just randomly insert based on ratios (e.g., if you have 60 returners and 20 newbies, every fourth offer should be a newbie). You can sort the newbies based on perceived offer quality. Maybe mix in non-wine offers in the same way - every Xth offer is non-wine.

mattcitrang · December 18, 2015, 10:41pm

Sounds like it’s getting complicated.

brigcampbell · December 18, 2015, 10:57pm

Agree. The offers kinda sort themselves out anyway. You can’t keep a great deal down.