Gino Colangelo is the president of Colangelo & Partners, a leading fine wine and spirits-focused public relations agency in the United States. The agency operates across five core service lines — press relations, social media and influencer marketing, event marketing, trade relations, and content marketing — for premium wine and super-premium spirits clients across the U.S., UK, France, and Italy.
The Interview
Q: What was the most important message you wanted to communicate to employees and clients when the shutdowns started?
A: The #1 message to both was: Look for opportunities in times of chaos. While other agencies might be hunkering down, let's take advantage of an open playing field. Let's communicate aggressively. Let's use all (mostly digital) tools at our disposal. For employees, we also communicated stability — we told our team early on that we would not lay anybody off through the end of the year, though we did take slight pay reductions. Because we kept our team in place, we were able to "over-service" client accounts, demonstrating commitment that most clients reciprocated.
Q: Key learnings about managing an agency remotely?
A: Communicate, communicate, and communicate again. Have regular check-ins with all employees, particularly new and junior employees, to make sure they have clear direction and expectations for their deliverables. Call people out quickly when they seem to be spinning out of the agency orbit.
Q: What's improved and what's suffered during the pandemic?
A: Our agency is focused on fine wine and super-premium spirits — businesses historically driven by events where audiences taste and connect. The event business is now gone and we don't know when it's coming back. We've taken a hit there. We are improving our ability to go from PR to purchase — connecting activities closer to the point of purchase. For example, we now do virtual tastings where consumers purchase wine to taste along with a Sommelier. We created a program called The Supper Share — a concierge service for guided consumer tastings. It grew out of a desire to help unemployed Sommeliers get gigs, and quickly became a way to drive trial and sales for clients and connect to key online retail audiences.
Q: Anything surprising about the last six months?
A: The resiliency of the wine and spirits industry. Even though restaurant business has been impacted dramatically, retail, e-commerce, and DTC business have more than made up for most clients' losses in restaurants and bars. There's "Zoom fatigue" — we have to continually refresh our approach to keep audiences engaged. I've been happily surprised by the adaptability of our team and the smooth transition to remote work.
Q: New resources you'll keep using after COVID?
A: Zoom and other video conferencing technologies are here to stay. Well before COVID we had remote employees across the US and in the UK, France, and Italy — our learning curve was less steep than other agencies.
Q: How will you market the agency differently post-COVID?
A: We'll focus more on content creation — everything starts with great content. We've always believed that speed is a strategy. We will focus on responsiveness to clients, taking advantage of opportunities, changing on the fly more than ever.
Gino Colangelo is the president of Colangelo & Partners , a leading fine wine and spirits-focused public relations agency in the United States. The agency operates across five core service lines — press relations, social media and influencer marketing, event marketing, trade relations, and content marketing — for premium wine and super-premium spirits clients across the U.S., UK, France, and Italy. The Interview Q: What was the most important message you wanted to communicate to employees and clients when the shutdowns started?
A: The #1 message to both was: Look for opportunities in times of chaos. While other agencies might be hunkering down, let's take advantage of an open playing field. Let's communicate aggressively. Let's use all (mostly digital) tools at our disposal. For employees, we also communicated stability — we told our team early on that we would not lay anybody off through the end of the year, though we did take slight pay reductions. Because we kept our team in place, we were able to "over-service" client accounts, demonstrating commitment that most clients reciprocated.
Q: Key learnings about managing an agency remotely?
A: Communicate, communicate, and communicate again. Have regular check-ins with all employees, particularly new and junior employees, to make sure they have clear direction and expectations for their deliverables. Call people out quickly when they seem to be spinning out of the agency orbit.
Q: What's improved and what's suffered during the pandemic?
A: Our agency is focused on fine wine and super-premium spirits — businesses historically driven by events where audiences taste and connect. The event business is now gone and we don't know when it's coming back. We've taken a hit there. We are improving our ability to go from PR to purchase — connecting activities closer to the point of purchase. For example, we now do virtual tastings where consumers purchase wine to taste along with a Sommelier. We created a program called The Supper Share — a concierge service for guided consumer tastings. It grew out of a desire to help unemployed Sommeliers get gigs, and quickly became a way to drive trial and sales for clients and connect to key online retail audiences.
Q: Anything surprising about the last six months?
A: The resiliency of the wine and spirits industry. Even though restaurant business has been impacted dramatically, retail, e-commerce, and DTC business have more than made up for most clients' losses in restaurants and bars. There's "Zoom fatigue" — we have to continually refresh our approach to keep audiences engaged. I've been happily surprised by the adaptability of our team and the smooth transition to remote work.
Q: New resources you'll keep using after COVID?
A: Zoom and other video conferencing technologies are here to stay. Well before COVID we had remote employees across the US and in the UK, France, and Italy — our learning curve was less steep than other agencies.
Q: How will you market the agency differently post-COVID?
A: We'll focus more on content creation — everything starts with great content. We've always believed that speed is a strategy. We will focus on responsiveness to clients, taking advantage of opportunities, changing on the fly more than ever.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
