Keeping the Promise

Gary Finnan tells NorthBay biz about the concept of marketecture—a combination of marketing and architecture used to enhance businesses in the destination and wine industries.
 
On the second floor of a renovated Victorian on Windsor River Road, Gary Finnan sits at a rectangular table in a tidy attic office. An intricate series of diagrams, organized as a sort of Byzantine flow chart, covers one side of the slanted ceiling, replete with arrows and notations.

At the heart of the intricate design is the centerpiece of Finnan’s GFC (Gary Finnan Creative) Marketecture brainchild. Looking like a molecular diagram a scientist might use in unlocking the secrets of a particular strand of DNA, the symmetrical, eight-spoked icon represents the genetic metaphor Finnan uses to describe his approach with his clients in the destination and wine industries.

Inside the cozy office, two colleagues are working, undistracted by Finnan’s animated and nonstop explanation of the birth and evolution of “creative marketecture,” a term he uses to describe a process he and his core of consultants use to strengthen a business’ weak links and bring its structure back into balance.

In conventional terms, he helps wineries and destination businesses focus on strategic essence, marketing, organizational development, guest experience, operations and business management. Finnan’s approach, however, is anything but conventional. “We’re all about changing the paradigm of the wine business,” he says. “We’re trying to bring people together to understand the opportunities in the collaborative process.”
 
Defining needs
“We have a core group, a collective brain trust,” Finnan explains. These “marketects” are the catalyst for the fusion of marketing and architecture: “We connect the seemingly unconnected.”

The Marketecture team includes designers, artists, builders, architects, winery consultants, restaurateurs, organizational development specialists and sales and marketing experts. These independent business people collaborate with Finnan on a project-by-project basis. “We’re a one-stop creative solution,” says Finnan. “It’s that collective brain trust that makes us unique. We bring the right people to the table.”

The creative marketecture process starts with the integration of the six core areas: vision, human, creative, eco, money and buzz.

Vision: A planning process is essential to developing strategies and initiatives. Marketecture includes these four mantras: Imagine it. Crave it. Create it. Share it.

Human: What does the bus look like and who’s on it? “The organizational development of your business is a critical element and also the most overlooked,” according to the company’s literature. This process helps match the right people with the right skills and ensures the organization has the optimal structure.

Creative: During the planning process, the desired guest experience is mapped out and an exceptional personal interaction between guest and host is created. Increased direct sales are a result of an exceptional, memorable, “buzz-worthy” experience that translates to a loyal following and repeat visits.

Eco: There’s considerable value in addressing the sustainability of your business. Eco marketecture addresses issues that provide savings and marketability, such as solar innovation, sustainable growing practices and technologies to reduce a business’ carbon footprint.

Money: Budgets are developed and implemented, key performance indicators are established by department heads and staff is trained.

Buzz: Even with a rapid social media strategy in place, a brand still needs to be defined and an identity established to create buzz. PR and marketing plans need to outline strategies and target audiences defined.

Meeting expectations
It’s not all talk and process. Finnan takes a project from beginning to end, including concept, strategy, finance, development, design and construction services. Whether it’s redesigning a tasting room or developing a five-year master plan and winery expansion, the emphasis is always on the guest experience—which, he points out, has become the key to success in the direct consumer market. Creating a guest experience that matches expectations is often the missing link.

“So many people come up with a message, but they don’t define the physical space,” says Finnan. “You put a message out there, and people will show up expecting certain things. The message sets the expectation; it’s the promise you make in your marketing material. You have to fulfill that promise when they turn up in your environment. We’re just connecting the dots—the message, the product, the people and the place.”

Finnan has designed a number of tasting rooms in Healdsburg, including (while he was CEO at Kyoob Design Group) the La Crema Winery tasting room that was developed with minimal retail and high technology, using plasma screens and a kiosk to tell the story.

For C. Donatiello Winery, Finnan teamed with architect Kenneth Munson to create a home for the brand that occupies the site of the previous Belvedere Winery. The renovation included every aspect of the winery and created a “Sonoma Provincial” environment, which includes a VIP Guild Room with private wine lockers and hidden plasma screens behind vintage mirrors.

Sweet success
Finnan’s client list also includes Dry Creek Vineyard, Franciscan Estates, Jordan Vineyard & Winery, Seghesio Family Vineyards, Cakebread Cellars and Prairie Berry Winery in South Dakota. And though many in the wine industry have Finnan and his team to thank for their successful branding and enhanced guest experience, they aren’t the only businesses to benefit from his unique approach. He’s also worked with financial institutions (Exchange Bank, Redwood Credit Union, HP Credit Union) and the Les Mars luxury hotel in Healdsburg.

In 2003, Finnan was instrumental in helping Michael Powell design the first Powell’s Sweet Shoppe in Windsor and later managed the expansion to franchise 17 more stores (including the Powell’s store Finnan owns in Healdsburg).

The days working with Powell were well before the evolution from Gary Finnan Creative to “marketecture,” but Finnan’s background as a designer of interior architecture and destination environments was very much the driving force behind the unique experience that defines the Powell’s franchise. “When I wanted to open the first Powell’s, I was brand new to retail,” says Michael Powell. “I came to Gary and his team looking for a full-service solution, from concept to implementation, and the Windsor Powell’s Sweet Shoppe was the result.”

Powell credits Finnan and his team for helping him realize that, “planning is essential, and that all aspects of a business are connected. They took my vision for a destination retail store and turned it into a brick and mortar reality.”

Perhaps the highest compliment a client can pay a consultant is that the final product was true to the original vision. “Gary and his team offered creative solutions and a commitment to see the project through, even get their hands dirty if needed. [They] worked and thought through problems, keeping my vision in the forefront while creating the infrastructure to make it all work. Then we all worked together to duplicate it 17 more times,” says Powell.

Credit was also given to the team that Finnan compiled to make the Powell vision a reality. “We all learned a lot in developing something unique like Powell’s, and our success is partially due to the team Gary put in place to support our development,” says Powell. “Our 18th store was a lot easier than our first.”

Redefining the approach
In his quest to challenge the paradigm of conventional marketing, Finnan and his colleagues posed the question: How do we combine marketing and architecture? “We thought we were really clever and came up with ‘marketecture,’” he remembers…only to discover they weren’t the first ones to coin the phrase. The term is officially defined as new computer architecture that’s being marketed aggressively despite the fact it doesn’t yet exist as a finished product. “We’ve taken that and put a more positive spin on it,” says Finnan. “We use it to define the perspective of combining message and place, which evolved into ‘Connecting message, product, people and place.’”

Not one to ignore his own advice, Finnan’s business model undergoes constant revamping. He recently partnered with designer David Schuemann (owner and creative director of CF Napa Brand Design) and Erica Valentine (formerly marketing director at Constellation Wines) to form the newest iteration of creative marketecture. The company’s revised name—“DNA Marketecture: The essence of your business”—better describes the collaborative approach.

Schuemann’s firm specializes in applying an integrated approach to brand strategy and design across a wide range of mediums for the wine, beer and spirits industries. His latest marketing permutation, the DNA (Developing New Avenues) process, fits nicely with Finnan’s Marketecture. “We realized we had a lot of synergy between our processes,” says Schuemann. “We saw an opportunity to create a hybrid that could address a brand across all the facets of a business.”

That synergy is evident in the way each describes their latest marketing strategy, using a creative and intuitive approach to hone in on the nature of a product or business. “Our DNA process balances strategic positioning with evocative design to establish an emotional and cognitive connection between consumer and the brand,” Schuemann explains. “Beyond the external tangible attributes of a product lies an intangible attribute, which we call the ‘brand essence.’ We’re building brand essence from the core out.”

Valentine has extensive marketing experience in the wine industry. “Our partnership brings together a creative and strategic suite of resources that can guide a start-up winery toward a successful business launch, reinvigorate existing brands or serve as an extension of a company’s brand management team,” she says. “DNA Marketecture embodies all of the attributes I’ve always looked for in creative and strategic marketing agencies—a deep understanding of the wine category, extensive experience in brand development and customer experience, and a passionate desire to over-deliver on service.”

Through the marketecture concept, Finnan is attempting to redefine the bottom line for the wine industry—literally and figuratively—and it starts with a radical shift in thinking for those accustomed to a conventional, profit-and-loss approach to achieving success. Some who’ve been in the industry for years may have no choice but to find a new way.

In the wine industry today, “It’s not business as usual,” says Finnan. “It’s an ‘adapt or die’ situation. With some clients, the question is, ‘How do we reposition you?’ Because if they don’t expose their brand to get part of the direct-to-consumer market share, they’re going to be dinosaurs.”

Finnan spent many years as a designer before breaking into the wine industry niche his company now occupies. A native of Scotland, the 45-year-old Finnan moved with his family to Rhodesia at the age of 10, and he lived in South Africa during his formative years. He started a design firm in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1989, called Belgeddes Design, that specialized in destination projects and moved to California with his wife and two children in 1999. He started the Kyoob Design Group in 2001 (and sold it in 2006), designing high-end commercial interior architecture projects (with a focus on destination environments), including several projects for wineries. That’s when he discovered an element of the wine industry he’d never thought much about.

“I’d never looked at it, as an industry, from a destination point of view before moving to California,” says Finnan.

That realization led him to focus on the wine industry and, specifically, on helping winery owners create a unique guest experience by offering an environment that focuses on the place, its story, and on showcasing the essential nature of the business: terroir, production, education and the responsible enjoyment of wine.

“The wine industry encompasses every facet of business, from real estate to product development and events,” says Finnan. “It’s one of the few industries where the customer comes to the factory. That’s what’s cool about it. It’s a very unusual animal.

“I can’t get away from the fact that I’m a designer,” he says. “I like the strategy of bringing two things together, the message and the place. That’s where we’re different [from other strategic companies]. We bring the message and the place together.”

But Finnan doesn’t want to be limited by the label of “designer,” either. “I’m proof that your DNA can change,” he says. “I like to think of myself as being a catalyst for creating new business strategies. We design experiences.”

A balancing act
There’s no shortage of metaphors in Finnan’s lexicon to describe the process his team uses to plan a destination environment. The diagram could be a molecule, or the orbits emanating from its center could be petals on a flower. But his current favorite is the DNA metaphor.

The diagram used to illustrate the process of discovery is a circular form with wine at the center (“Wine is always at the center”) and eight oval-shaped ideas orbiting around that center: wines, vineyard, guest experience, sales, guest environment, facility, business process and marketing. Each of the orbits is explored during “the DNA process.”

“It’s a discovery process,” he explains. “We have to figure out how to get the wheel back in balance. Constructing or deconstructing a strand of DNA of any of these elements will help us to create or rebuild [the entire structure].

“Often, the winemaker might not have any connection at all to the direct-to-consumer experience, or the vineyards and sustainable practices might not have any connection to the business office. We’ll go through the DNA process and find things that are out of balance, out of sync. Maybe marketing is selling the story, but the guest experience doesn’t exist. Our job is to bring it all into balance.”

The rebalancing may involve retraining staff, getting a handle on finances, repositioning the brand or even expanding or constructing a facility. Some clients simply need the guest experience enhanced, while others require a top-to-bottom overhaul.

“We’re looking for hidden assets they aren’t exploring,” says Finnan. “It may be they’re underutilizing their space, they don’t have any guest programs, or they’re not telling a piece of their story.” It’s during the DNA process that many of these deficiencies are revealed.

Finnan’s clients can range from long-established, family-owned wineries to someone who decided to build a winery but skipped the step of writing a business plan. A new market segment he’s exploring, though, is equity funds that are acquiring (or being given back) distressed wineries as owners default due to the current economy. “A lot of investors are being left with a winery they didn’t really want or don’t know how to manage,” he says. “So what do you do with it? Either put it in mothballs, sell it or nurture it.”

The DNA process can take as much as two to three months, while designing a new winery can entail a two- to five-year process. “People seem willing to embrace marketecture,” says Finnan. “It seems to have hit a chord. It’s an umbrella we can put over a whole bunch of services. It ties a bunch of disciplines together.

Christopher Huber of Cakebread Cellars in Napa, who recently started working with Finnan, says, “I like his creativity and curiosity to challenge paradigms; he digs in to see things from a fresh perspective.”

Another idea that fascinates Finnan is how to monetize social media. “People sitting at home behind their computer can’t have an experience. They have to go into a place to have an experience,” he says. “You have to attract someone into a place and provide the experience you promise. This new social media is a social contract with exponential potential. The guys who’re getting it realize that they can get the social media out there, which is all message, but they have to provide the experience to back it up. The experience has to be there. You monetize social media by fulfilling the promise in a real experience.”

Finnan and his fellow marketects are frequent speakers at national seminars and are organizing workshops to spread the message. The most recent seminar, titled “Leaving Money on the Tasting Room Bar in 2010,” took place in Santa Rosa last December and attracted about 180 attendees after a brief, three-week social media promotion blitz.

Also in the works is a book, Wine Wisdom Marketecture, a collection of information on the wine industry that doesn’t currently exist in one location. “The idea behind it is that there’s all this wisdom out there, but is anybody distilling it down to make it accessible?” says Finnan.

The question itself goes a long way in describing the DNA Marketecture concept, the aim of which is to distill a business down to its essence and make it accessible to potential customers. In answer to his own query, Finnan offers, “Our hindsight is [our clients’] foresight.”