ABODE Marci Bracco, one fortunate woman It's hard to know who's more fortunate, Marci or the many friends and clients who benefit from her passion for helping charities and small businesses build success around special events and packages. Jan 2008

Dan Shafer

If you spend a little time with Marci Bracco, you're likely to hear the words "fortunate" and "blessed" so often you may wonder if she really is just lucky or if there are other, perhaps more mundane explanations for her success in life. As famed French scientist Louis Pasteur once said, "Chance favors the prepared mind."

Clearly the word "prepared" fits Bracco just as well as her own choice of "fortunate." She has moved smoothly and swiftly through a marketing career that began with a dream job and just kept getting better.

Bracco, who has been associated over the years with numerous local charities including Kinship Center and CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates), has built a management career around the concept of using special events to help charities and small businesses brand themselves. It's a unique niche that has led her to become closely involved with some of the world's top brands of merchandise including Tiffany, Bentley, Bugatti, Nissan, Nike, Park Hyatt and dozens of others.

"I like to find a charity that has an immediate fund-raising need and then create a really special event geared specifically to that need," she says. She's particularly drawn to charities that work with children and animals. While she has no children of her own, she does have two pets that keep her busy: a Katrina rescue cat named Sophe and a one-year-old French Bulldog named Geno.

She recently changed jobs, moving from a five-year post as the first marketing and events director at the upscale Monterra gated community to a newly created post as catering and events manager at Quail Lodge. In her job at Monterra, she worked directly with developer Roger Mills, whom she called "an amazing man" who has been very supportive of her event-driven approach to marketing, in this case, high-end home sales.

"Now I have a series of events all set up, with the contacts and the template all set, so that he and his staff can continue them year after year as long as they wish," she says. "It's a good time for me to be leaving and moving to my next challenge."

From One Challenge to Another
It seems Bracco, a native of Morgan Hill who has spent most of her life in Northern California, has moved from one exciting challenge to another for her whole career. After graduating from Live Oak High School, she went to Long Beach State where she majored in journalism with a minor in marketing, the perfect preparation for a career that combines publicity and promotion with activities supporting product sales.

"My first job out of college," she says almost as if it still surprises her, "was at the hugely successful Chiat Day advertising agency." There, her first assignment was to coordinate an entire sports program that featured tennis star Arthur Ashe and other national celebrities. Later, she helped launch the Nissan Infiniti line of automobiles' pioneering women's marketing program.

From Chiat Day, Bracco moved to The Blaze Co. where she oversaw the grand re-opening of the world-renowned Beverly Hills Hotel. She also helped launch the Boston Market restaurant chain and Beverages and More retail chain in Southern California and worked with Hyatt hotel properties in several locations.

After a two-year leave of absence during which she helped her father phase out and close the family's heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business and stayed on the family ranch in Morgan Hill, Bracco teamed up with Pamela Musgrave, owner of a Monterey-based branding agency. After a year there, she signed up with Mills at Monterra.

Charity is Eventful
Many charities raise substantial portions of their annual funding needs through special events, but one of the problems with doing so is that putting the "special" into the event is no mean task. This is perhaps where Bracco shines most brightly.

She meets with the leaders of the charity ­ board members, staff if there is one, key volunteers and others ­ to determine the need and to get some idea of what the group may have done in the past, what seems to work for them, and what resources they have at their disposal. Then she puts together a detailed plan for a unique event.

For CASA, for example, she proposed an annual black-tie dinner with local catering. Her events have raised a minimum of $25,000 per year each time they've been held. Working with Kinship Center, Bracco helped them plan their First Annual Harvest Moon Festival; the event netted $64,000 and the center plans to repeat it into the foreseeable future.

Her current project involves her work with MY Museum, the name of the Monterey County Youth Museum on Cannery Row which recently purchased new, larger facilities in downtown Monterey. Titled "Project Dream Builder," the new undertaking features five local contractors who are each building 100-square-foot playhouses. These houses will be on display at Del Monte Center for several months, culminating on Oct. 18 when they will all be auctioned off for a minimum bid of $5,000 each.

"By creating a repeatable event, I can help these charities raise money not just for one year but for several years," Bracco points out. "With the planning work and documentation we create as we develop the event, it can be re-staged in subsequent years with less intensity, effort and uncertainty."

In virtually every case where Bracco creates a fund-raising event for a local charity, she puts the events together so that they cost the charity nothing. "I'm continually surprised and gratified at how generous people are with their donations of food, decorations, linens, materials, and time," in helping her put together these events. "The spirit of giving is alive and well in Monterey." Bracco always encourages attendees at these charity events to return the favor by supporting the businesses that provide voluntary assistance.

Bracco also serves the community as a member of the Board of Directors of the Monterey County Hospitality Association (MCHA).

"I think it is absolutely critical to have an association like this to drive business to the Monterey Peninsula," says Bracco. "That board has some of the best thinkers in the area getting together regularly to figure out how to make this an even more attractive tourist destination. One of my fellow board members, Gary Cursio of Rancho Laguna Seca, and I co-chair a golf tournament every year that raises about $20,000 for the association."

Over the years, Bracco has put on some fairly spectacular events. One of what she describes as the "coolest" events was for Tehama Golf Club in Carmel. "We put together an artist, a sculptor, a painter and a writer in different corners of the room and built a dinner and exhibit around them. People loved it. The chef researched old local recipes like dishes prepared on Fisherman's Wharf back in the 1950's to give the thing a special flair."

She also managed to get a Tiffany event staged in the private home of one charity's chief benefactor. The New York-based jewelry store, which has a local presence, brought in some of its most expensive and spectacular items for attendees at the event to try on.

"The key to these kinds of events," she says, "lies in the often-overlooked art of forming partnerships, building relationships, for the long term rather than simply to address an immediate, short-term need. For such an event to work, it has to be a true win-win-win, so you spend a lot of time talking to the participants to find out what they need or would like to get out of the connection. Then you just create an event that makes everyone involved happy."

It isn't only charities and her primary employer who get Bracco's attention these days. She has a small circle of "four or five friends" with whom she works to help them build their small businesses into successes. One of those with whom she is presently working is Bahama Billy's new owners, April and Anthony Momo, who took over the popular Barnyard restaurant from founder Bill Lee about a year ago.

It's a Dog's Life of Luxury
In the past year, Bracco, who admits to working 70 or 80 hours a week most of the year, has developed a serious relationship...with her dog. Geno goes almost everywhere with her as she travels the Peninsula in pursuit of her many interests.

"Geno even writes a column about dog-friendly places to visit," she laughs. When she dines at pet-friendly restaurants, for example, she always brings Geno. Bahama Billy's is one of their favorite spots as is the Bubbly Fish Cafe where Geno is provided with his own velvet blanket when he deigns to dine with his human companion (she scoffs at the idea of "ownership").

Bracco likes to travel, which she does three or four weeks each year. Last year, for example, she went to Chile and Argentina, and two years ago she and her boyfriend, Brandon Miller, who's the Executive Chef and partner at Stokes Restaurant and Bar in Monterey, went to Italy. "Of course when you travel with a chef, it's a major food tour. I ate more truffles and pasta than I thought possible," she laughs.

When she travels, Geno gets to hang out at the family ranch in Morgan Hill. "By the time I get home, he's got the first position in a house with several other dogs. He's got the lead position on the couch, on the bed, and everywhere else in the house."

Local artist Steven Whyte, a good friend of Bracco's, has a canine companion named Lord Wellington, an Old English Bulldog with whom Geno is, Bracco says, "absolutely in love." For Geno's first birthday, Whyte surprised the pair with a painting of the dog.

Of course, Geno didn't escape his human's penchant for events when he turned one year old. "We had 12 dogs and their humans over for a party that featured, among other things, a fire hydrant-shaped cake made entirely of dog-friendly products by the staff at Stokes Restaurant." The event was complete with a sketch artist and a photo booth. "I don't do anything small," Bracco said with a mirthful laugh. "I'm living in the large."

And a lot of businesses and charities are better off for all that. °

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