Accel Partners is, by many accounts, the largest global venture capital partnership in the world. Their 30-year history is marked by collaboration with big names in technology, like Spotify, Cloudera, ComScore, Etsy, GroupOn, metroPCS, Rovio/Angry Birds, and Walmart.com, among many others. Most notably, they were among the first investors in Facebook.

Read the rest of this entry »

What role does digital branding play in wine marketing? There are many ways to answer that. But here’s 20 slides with one important perspective: digital done right is always as much product development as it is traditional marketing. And the experience of wine is very much driven by expectations. So if what you’re doing online doesn’t actually make your wine taste better, then it’s probably falling short.

With both Anchor Brewing Company and Paul Hobbs Winery featured as webpicks on Communication Arts simultaneously, it’s the coveted CommArts roadblock.

Anchor Brewing’s new site is this week’s webpick of the week, and the Paul Hobbs website was featured as the webpick of the day for February 22.

Congrats to Anchor and Hobbs for this brand recognition…

Anchor Brewing Company is one of America’s oldest breweries. The San Francisco icon is credited by many for launching the movement toward locally-brewed, hand-crafted beers that have surged in popularity in recent years.

In the spring of 2011, Anchor contacted FINE Design Group about developing a new website for their beer brands and distilled spirits. As discussions continued and evolved, social media became a key component to the digital strategy, leveraging FINE’s Big Daylight division, and part of creating a complete digital ecosystem for a legendary brand. Here’s a glimpse into the process and results.

Read the rest of this entry »

In our work with The California Endowment, we’ve come to understand what it means that health is not something that happens in a doctor’s office. It’s something that happens in neighborhoods, schools, and all the places where we live and work. The starkest evidence of that is how much life expectancy changes depending upon where you live. That’s why you’ll increasingly see a groundswell behind the notion that Health Happens Here. In Neighborhoods. In Schools. And with Prevention. And you’ll increasingly see the signature pin-drop identity we created to support the concept.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Nobel prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis proposed to journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1928, she promised to marry him if he bought her a farm in Vermont with sweeping lawns, orchards, and “delicious air.”

More than eight decades later, that magical property – Twin Farms – has become Vermont’s only luxury, five-star hospitality experience, earning membership in the globally coveted Relais & Chateaux.

With a sophisticated yet eccentric private art collection throughout 20 uniquely designed accommodations on 300 acres, Twin Farms customizes every detail, yet offers one all-inclusive price.

Though the property is truly unparalleled, the new website starts with the basics: show the property, answer the questions, describe the experience, and make it easy to book. On that foundation of hospitality best practices, the experience quickly becomes exceptional.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over five generations, Brownwood Acres has developed an internationally recognized product line based around cherries, blueberries, pomegranates, red raspberries, cranberries and concord grapes harvested in Northwest Michigan.

Their FruitFast tart cherry juice has become the nation’s best-seller, and their fruit supplements use a proprietary, chemical-free, natural process to capture the entire the antioxidant-rich, healthful benefits of dark skinned whole fruits.

The redesigned FruitFast website is meant to expand the company’s reach, drawing would-be customers with their naturally enticing products, and creating the conditions for increased conversion and loyalty.

Read the rest of this entry »

If it surprises you to learn that Kendall-Jackson remains family-owned, it’s understandable. As the American wine industry has grown, its pioneering families and successful brands have often sold – some would say sold out – to large corporate interests.

Not K-J. It’s a brand misconception they’re about to correct – that even as they’ve become a household name, they’ve kept it personal, and all in the family.

The effort to re-personalize K-J’s brand kicks off with the FINE-conceived Words of Wisdom campaign, and an appearance on CBS’s hit show “Undercover Boss” on Sunday, January 29th at 8 (7 Central).

On the show, CEO Rick Tigner connects with staff incognito to learn their true stories and weave them into the company’s family legacy. It’ll have you celebrating K-J’s personal side. And maybe taking a closer look at that new guy who started in accounting at your own office.

Meanwhile, the Words of Wisdom (or, WOW) campaign begins with a comprehensive communications effort across digital (web, mobile, tablet, Facebook) and analog channels.

The Words of Wisdom website, headlined by a silhouetted image that evokes both the TV show premise and the ever-presence of the late company founder Jess Jackson, tells the K-J family story. With video and words, it forms the connective tissue between the Jackson family and the people who make K-J go. That thread extends to K-J fans with a collaborative tool that allows people to share their family’s legacy through advice, stories, and pictures.

The website is responsive, adapting for view on desktop, tablet, and mobile. It’s not just a simple sniff – even re-sizing the browser on your desktop will take you into small screen mobile mode. A back-end tool helps manage the flow of wisdom, approving submissions as they come in.

Through user submission and additional K-J video and other content in coming months, the digital experience will continue to grow. Along with it, grows the sense that K-J has retained its family roots, while inviting you to Join The Family.

The offline campaign extends to neckers, case glorifiers, mass displays, billboards, online advertising, and beyond. All are unified by the idea of continuing to build on this winery’s family legacy.

The Words of Wisdom campaign will persist long after the Undercover Boss television event. It will evolve and grow, a legacy shared and created by those with a lasting appreciation for Kendall-Jackson. And just good old-fashioned family wisdom.

Paul Hobbs is one of the first California winemakers to focus on single-vineyard wines. As one of the rare winegrower/winemakers, his integrated vision of unfiltered, unfined wines creates exciting, structured wines rooted in classic old world techniques yet distinctly Californian in expression. That attention is on display on the new Paul Hobbs website and mobile site experiences.

The site design reflects the natural, organic approach that has enabled Paul Hobbs himself to emerge as a celebrity wine authority worldwide. The rich nature imagery of the javascript-driven homepage emphasizes the texture and authenticity of the process and approach. Carefully selected images and display are able to convey the biology and science of winemaking while losing nothing of the romance and aesthetic. And the experience expands dynamically to fit your browser size. It also provides a place for philosophical quotes that drive Hobbs, like “The key to good winemaking is paying attention.”

The mobile site retains the site look and feel and focused image approach, while narrowing the content to those things most accessed on the go, with a focus on releases, purchase, and visit/contact info.

A FINE content management system – with wine industry tools developed over years of creating world-class wine brand sites – drives the web and mobile sites, managing complex information areas that are specific to Hobbs, though general to many wine brands. Thoughtful attention to the management and display of acclaim, vineyards, accolades, and even FAQs helps make that content easily accessible and updated, without overwhelming the site’s aesthetic.

The overall effect is an experience that connects the people (extending beyond Paul Hobbs to those who help to make the wine great), the place (with a reverence for the land and the process of farming it), and the product (the acclaimed wines).

2011 was a year of austerity, occupation, Congressional bickering, dictator(ship) deaths. Good or bad, for many it just wasn’t all that fun. That’s why we’re heading into 2012 with something more than the usual resolution. We’ve got a cause, and the cause is play. It’s “play with purpose”, and the purpose is play.

We’re going to enlist you in that cause. You’ll find our new Play With Fine site regularly stocked with playstarters, perhaps some opportunities for philanthroplay. And you’ll be invited to show your contributions, and share with others. It’s a playgroundswell! But it’s not simply fun and games. Play is important. We’ll let our Play Manifesto explain:

We’re serious. Play’s not just kid stuff. It doesn’t require toys, courts, boards, computer screens, or even a customized “Play With Purpose” playground ball. That’s because play is not merely a category of frivolous activities; play is an essential perspective.

Play’s that zone of enhanced learning, discovery, creativity, and productivity that’s the exact opposite of “goofing off”. What it takes is an active, alert, focused, stress-free frame of mind. Certified playologists call it “flow”. You’ll know you’re there when you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing right now. Or maybe forever.

This is the realm of open minds and happy accidents that gave us each, as children, most of what we know about how the world works. It also yielded penicillin, The Theory of Relativity, ice cream cones, gravity, Shakespeare’s plays, the computer mouse. You know, kid stuff.

As technology gives us new ways to play and “gamify” our lives, remember that it’s all an extension of the innate sense of adventure, imagination, freedom, and curiosity that’s always inspired our species. It can cost nothing but pays off big time. It has a purpose, and yet it’s an end in itself.

Perhaps the greatest thing about play is that it makes hard things seem easy. Unstructured, spontaneous play will challenge you to work through tricky situations and rules, toward new ways, ideas, and possibilities.

But you won’t even notice; you’ll be too busy playing.