Look around the world of PR and communications and there are born PR operators out there. Blessed with the gift of the gab and constantly looking at whatever angle and whatever it takes to get coverage for their clients.
Chris Mitchell and James Gabbani are not like that. In fact, they admit they are almost reluctant PR executives who have ended up in a field they still feel somewhat at odds with even though they are marking 25 years as one of the drinks industry’s most successful media communications agencies.
That’s because Cube Communications goes way beyond what a traditional PR agency does. Yes, straight forward PR is part of its beat, but the business has evolved over the years into a major food and drinks events organiser, adding B2B training business and consumer research to its range of services, all of which come together to offer brands the right comms strategy not just for the UK but for other key markets around the world.
Chris Mitchell and James Gabbani admit they are not natural PR executives and see themselves far more as brand consultants capable of offering their drinks clients ideas and solutions for their communications needs
Neither Mitchell or Gabbani had any direct PR experience when they set up Cube in 2001, having met and worked together on Wine Magazine and the International Wine Challenge in the mid to late1990s.
Having helped double the size of the Wine Challenge they felt there was an opportunity to take the skills they had learnt working on the competition to find other ways for producers to tell their stories.
“We started out simply with the intention of being useful to people. Our grasp of conventional PR was pretty basic,” admits Mitchell. “We were certainly learning on the job.”
It was actually Peter Franz, co-founder of Sensible Wine Services, who first encouraged them to make a go of it on their own.
“What we did identify,” adds Mitchell, “was a gap in the market.”
Just what that gap was took a little longer to define, but they inherently knew they had the skills to help brands and producers not just tell their stories, but to do it in a way that other agencies weren’t.
“In fact, at the start it was almost everything but PR,” says Mitchell.
Gabbani picks up the story: “The existing wine PRs were very traditional. They did not offer any other services other than straight media relations. We set out to be a solutions provider and coming up with the best, tailored solutions for any particular business.”
Multi service operator
Claire White, who joined the business from a more formal branded PR background in 2015, having worked with the likes of Innocent Drinks, says the fact that Cube is effectively a “multi-service communications agency” is what still sets it apart from other drinks PR agencies.
“We are a media relations business that can do pretty much everything from communications, events, PR, training, sales and more,” she says.
“Claire joining strengthened the business, particularly on the PR side,” says Mitchell, “with a more FMCG and lifestyle focus.”
Cube Communications sees itself as a multi media agency that is as good at running major consumer evenrts - like the McGuigan City Vineyard in the City of London - as it is a drinks trade PR campaign
Cube’s business model has allowed it to firmly position itself as a leading agency not just in the UK, but increasingly in other key markets around the world.
Perhaps one of its most comprehensive and impressive projects was helping Diam first introduce its closures to the market through what Gabbani describes as a “perception and technical analysis trial”.
“For over two years, we worked with leading retailers to trial Diam closures alongside screwcap and natural cork in real bottlings. Regular tasting and testing showed how reliably Diam performed and how noticeable cork taint truly is to the everyday drinker and we were able to prove to retailers that using Diam was an effective way of eradicating TCA in their wines,” says Gabbani.
Such was the success of that project that Diam enlisted Cube to do similar trials in India and the US - which resulted in Diam also finding a distributor in the US.
“We have opened the door for a lot of people,” he says.
Mitchell adds: “The Diam project is a great example of how we are good at solving problems. We like working with brands that have a reputation to manage - we like that sort of challenge.”
Business relevance
Interestingly Cube does not measure its success only in terms of how many column inches, or social media posts, it can get for its clients - although they are clearly crucial - but in how relevant it is to brand managers of drinks brands in how they spend their marketing budgets.
“We want to help them use their budgets in the most cost effective and efficient way,” says White. “They want to know how they can get their wine brand seen. We work creatively yet pragmatically to develop ways to help them do that.”
Increasingly that means offering them what White calls an “integrated solution” that goes well beyond PR and into real practical trading areas such as in-house staff training, and educational events that are going to help them widen their front line on and off-trade distribution and sell more wine.
Gabbani says it is all about being able to offer its clients a “tool box” of solutions that they may or may not have thought of - and making sure they always have a few new tools in that box to play with.
It’s also about finding the right companies to work with that share your vision and ambitions.
Cube prides itself on coming up with creative ideas for its clients - like hosting a wine tasting high above London for Provence wines
Cube is particularly proud of how long its relationships are with a number of its key clients. It has, for example, worked with Gallo for 24 years; and has represented both Bordeaux Wines and Vins de Provence in the UK for just over 10.
“They just get what we do,” says Mitchell.
“They are very open minded and open to try different things,” adds White. “We have grown up together with our clients."
It has also fostered and built a 23-year relationship with Tesco and its wine department. It has been running its in-house wine PR since 2002 - and it is currently the only retained external PR agency that Tesco uses across all its categories.
Cube Communications has worked with Tesco as its in-house PR team for over 20 years and helped create the Tesco Wine Fairs and even helped devise and run a pop-up wine bar in Soho
It was behind setting up some landmark Tesco customer and media engagement moments, such as the Tesco Finest Wine bar in Soho and the Tesco Wine Fairs.
“The Fairs came out of us writing and running their staff training guides” says Mitchell. “We said to Tesco why don’t we take this expertise and bring it to life for your customers by holding your very own wine fairs? We went from doing one fair to running five a year for 13 years across the country,” he says.
Integrated campaigns
Although Cube has worked on drinks projects across the industry, the majority of its work has been in the wine sector.
“Wine has been such fertile ground for us. There’s no other category quite like it and It has allowed us to grow so many complementary products,” says Mitchell.
More recent international campaigns have seen Cube work with Martini to help grow the reputation and visibility of its sparkling wine portfolio in key export markets by working with local sales and marketing teams to offer customer training to front line on-trade and retail staff.
“Effectively, we gave the sales teams credible, persuasive reasons to believe in the brand, and specific selling points against each of its major sparkling wine competitors in each key market, including Russia, Sweden, Germany and the UK,” adds Mitchell.
The Bordeaux Experience included runnning a major trade and consumer tasting combined with an educational campaign with wine merchants and wine professionals across the country
It devised and delivered the Bordeaux Experience in the UK in 2024, alongside running major trade tasting programmes in partnership with wine educators nationwide, delivering training sessions for key trade customers, sommeliers and media.
Cube also masterminds regular retailer and wine merchant promotional campaigns where it will send out POS kits and marketing tools to help retailers merchandise and get behind certain wine generic and regional campaigns. Launched in 2017, Bordeaux Wine Month has doubled in size over the past nine years and is one of the largest promotions of its kind in the UK, gaining exposure across trade, consumer and social channels.
White says it’s great to work with clients willing to go the extra mile and have some fun along the way. The award-winning Make Your Life Rosé campaign for Vins de Provence in 2022, for example, saw touches of rosé takeover London – from branded pink taxis ferrying consumers to the Hampton Court Festival for pre-concert rosé tastings to convincing residents of a street in South West London to have their front doors painted pale pink in association with Farrow & Ball.
Such is the breadth of the services it now runs that it’s hard, says Mitchell, “to define what we do”.
Evolving with the times
Mitchell says Cube is a very different business now to when it first started out.
“We have had to evolve as wine has evolved and particularly how it is written about and how consumers engage with it,” he explains. “We are constantly learning and adapting.”
Cube also works extensively with the wine trade organising masterclasses, tastings and here a blending exercise with Bordeaux wines
One of the key disciplines it has always tried to follow when looking to pitch for new business or come up with ideas for existing clients is to put themselves in their shoes and think “how can we most help them” be it their brand managers or marketing teams.
“We are always asking why? Why do you want to do something in a particular way? Is there another way of doing it?”, he asks.
White says the biggest satisfaction for them is seeing the direct impact a campaign they have run has had on consumers, or when “we get coverage that really does make a difference”.
Team work
Cube has remained a tight ship and looked to keep its staff numbers at around 10, relying on its senior management team that also includes events director Sabrina Brooks, and a team of younger executives.
White says they are well set up to give those starting out in their PR and communications careers a wide and varied experience which they might want to take on and gain promotions and more management roles elsewhere.
“It is a particularly good starting place for those who want to stay in the wine industry,” says White and it will offer all levels of wine education up to WSET diploma level for those who want it.
Mitchell says it is deeply satisfying to see so many former Cube staff go on and succeed with senior marketing roles in the industry.
Digital times
Cube Communications works increasingly with influencers and a new generation of social media-focused wine communicators like the team behind the Wine Collective pictured here as part of a Vins de Provence campaign
The arrival of digital media has certainly made things more “complex” as well as opening up a whole new area of communication, most particularly around social media with the emergence of influencers, or wine communicators, providing a clear marketing stream in its own right.
White says digital media has certainly made wine as a category “more accessible” and there is a greater need for agencies like Cube to come up with original ideas that connect with larger audiences online.
“The creativity of our ideas and output is critically important because we generally drive earned coverage,” says Mitchell, “We are not in the game of ‘paying for’ hits and likes on social media.”
It does, though, work successfully with influencers on targeted co-promotional campaigns.
“It is even more crucial that you get your messaging right using digital and social media”, stresses White, “and what you do has to be relevant and authentic to both parties.”
AI - threat or opportunity?
Which brings us to the rise in AI and what role and impact it will have on media agencies like Cube.
“We are looking at how we can use it and discovering more about what it can do,” says Mitchell. “The danger with AI is that everything becomes a bit homogeneous, and lacks character – which, let's face it, is the very heart of a brand.”
The key with AI, adds Gabbani, is around “what you put into it” as to how useful and effective it might be for a communications agency, which is why he does not necessarily see AI as “a threat to what a business like Cube can offer”.
“You still need experience and knowledge of what you are talking about in order to make the most of what AI can do,” he adds. “There’s no doubt it is a really useful tool and we have the experience to know what it should be used for.”
Mitchell adds: “We are looking at other sectors to see what they are doing, and applying what we think is transferrable.”
Whilst clearly AI and digital media will become more important, you still can’t beat the value and engagement you get with face-to-face events and the personal relationships you build as a result, says White.
Staying relevant
James Gabbani and Chris Mitchell are happy to remain very much behind the scenes managing the right communications strategy for their clients
Mitchell says the demands on any agency like Cube to deliver are much harder now than when they first started out.
“You could not really get it wrong in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Wine in the UK was in growth, there was energy behind the category and building a brand was relatively easy for the courageous,” he says. “Now, we all need to be more savvy”.
But the Cube team has worked tirelessly since, to not only stay relevant but to ensure it is always going to its clients and potential leads with ideas it believes will help their respective businesses grow.
As Gabbani says: “We want to do things that move the dial. To do things that matter. We are all about problem solving and finding solutions to a client’s needs - and that requirement remains as strong as ever.”
* You can find out more and contact Cube Communications here.
