We come to the end of another Shark Week — Discovery Channel’s summer-doldrums ode to blood and water. Yes, it’s more than that. It’s educational, it’s scientific, it’s a complicated love/hate affair with an aquatic species most of us will never, ever encounter.

I mean ever.

But forget about all of that. Let’s talk about something you might not know.

This year marks Shark Week’s 23rd season, making it cable’s longest-running event. And it’s garnered more than 20 million viewers every year since 1995. On cable.

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People say that entrepreneurs are risk takers. I believe that people who start businesses are no more interested in risk than anyone else. They just have a higher tolerance for failure. Entrepreneurs view failure as just another possible step in the process: try, fail, brush yourself off, learn from the mistake, try again. They don’t see failure as the end of the road, because for them, it isn’t.

That is to say, for less adventurous types, trying and failing sends them running back to the presumed safety of a paycheck and thus their entrepreneurial days are behind them. The entrepreneurs we admire the most are the ones that never stop trying, no matter how many failures they experience. Each one actually makes them stronger and smarter.

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So reads a bottle of Old Spice body wash sitting on the edge of my bathtub. There’s a product description for you. I couldn’t resist buying it.

I think Procter & Gamble and their agency have done a great job of breaking Old Spice out of its “old guy” image, and they deserve recognition for continuously freshening the brand without changing what works about the product.

The problem was that the very name suggests “outdated,” and they became the challenger in the deodorant, aftershave and fragrance market when brands like Axe started assaulting young men’s libidos and Right Guard and Degree began insisting we all wear neon-colored “SPORT” fragrances in our armpits.

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Some say there is a “New Normal” and that business has changed in a profound way from the beginning to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. If so, then what are the implications for the concept of BRAND — is it more or less important than it was? Should more thought go into proactively creating and managing the brand experience? Should more resources be expended in shaping and defending the brand? And if the answer is yes to one or more of these questions, then by what means can we achieve this control and what can we expect as a return on our investment? These are important questions for marketers of all stripes — from agency denizens to company product managers to entrepreneurs launching new brands.

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Lots of client work is a good thing — but it left us with very little time to create a proper holiday greeting. SO ANYWAY, here are some videos we had lots of fun hastily cobbling together.

Using nothing but home-made puppets, action figures and a whiteboard, we improvised video recreations of our favorite holiday stories.

And hey… actors sometimes enjoy their performances more than the audience does. So, be kind!

As I stood with my fellow graduates from the Class of 2009 on our graduation day, I saw two emotions simultaneously from every single one of us: excitement and fear – pure, unmistakable fear.

No one was asking each other what they were doing after this milestone, because no one had any more plans than the person beside them (for the most part).While many chased after any job they could find, I followed the road less traveled with an internship at Fitting Group. And I haven’t looked back from the world of Brand Spanking since.

I knew that a few days a week interning in an industry I love was way more beneficial to me than a job that I hated. But as I spent more quality time with Brandee and the crew, I learned that Brand Spanking doesn’t end after companies or big-time consultants “get it” – branding is important for EVERYONE, especially new grads. (more…)

We’re starting a new file at Fitting Group. I’m going to call it the “turn down the heat and let it simmer” file. In this file, we will store all of the great and crazy ideas we have for clients and postdate them for 18 months to three years from now. We’re doing this to maintain our sanity.

In reviewing the work of our agency over the last three years, I began to see a pattern. In our desire to help clients get ahead of the curve, we have often promoted ideas that were viewed as too risky. So the conversation goes something like this:

FG to Banking client: (seeing the regulatory environment loosen up and allow more competition plus the trend in online banking) “We think you should change the name of your bank to UnBank. We’ll advertise that you’re a new kind of bank – completely transparent, with no hidden fees or evil practices. Unbank takes the pain out of the banking relationship for the customer. You’ll launch new products with no minimum balance requirements, no penalties for early withdrawal or loan payoffs, no ATM fees, etc.” (more…)

Senior Designer Andrew O. Ellis loves Pittsburgh. Read why.

I may have been one of the only kids in Michigan to have this card on purpose.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to spend the next few paragraphs patting myself on the back.

Why? Because I’m part of a small and exclusive group. I’m a young person who moved TO Pittsburgh and stuck around. And more than that, I did it before it was cool.

You see, I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. One Christmas during the early 1990s, we came to Pittsburgh to visit relatives who at that time lived in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. I don’t know if it was the rivers or the hills or the dinosaurs or what, but something about this town captured my imagination for the rest of my childhood. Pictures of the skyline adorned my bedroom walls. Bridges became more fascinating to me than cars and trucks, and the Pittsburgh Penguins became my hockey team – a move, in Red Wings territory, that was about as popular as being, say, a Cleveland Browns fan in Steeler Nation.

In Detroit, most of the art and design schools were rumored to be straight recruitment lines to the now-crumbling automotive industry – a path I wasn’t eager to follow. It seemed almost too perfect that I’d end up attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I still had friends questioning the move as my high school graduation loomed, but I was feeling the sort of satisfaction that you feel when things start falling into place. (more…)

Advertising, marketing and communications awards are more than just fancy dust collectors for the office walls and lobby.

Awards for a job well done are the calling cards of excellence that communicate our worth to clients, prospective clients and competitors. They’re also motivators for employees to keep up the good work.

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All eyes will be on Pittsburgh the week of the G-20 Summit in September, and local government officials, community leaders and the media are talking about what an opportunity this is to elevate the perception of Pittsburgh to something more than a dirty old steel town. Pittsburgh is not the market leader when we think of US cities. It’s definitely not the biggest. It’s not top-of-mind. And it certainly has never been thought of as the most prestigious. These characteristics make Pittsburgh a Challenger Brand city, and they’re why we must break the rules to take our rightful place in the market — as the most innovative and marketable city in the US. (Dream Big! Brand Spanking® Cardinal Rule #4*). (more…)