So Butler Health System came to us a while back and said they were going to build a new patient tower. It’d be made of gleaming glass and steel and cost something like $127 million. And we said, “Hmm. You might want to tell some people.”

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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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Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young professionals go to MBA Tour events to learn about schools and collect swag. But every booth has basically the same fare: pens and papers and lanyards. All hit the trash right quick.

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uSooth came to Fitting Group as Insight to Careers, a new company with big ambition and little recognition. With the help of our Brand Spanking Workshop, Insight to Careers was able to identify its potential as uSooth, the career scientists dedicated to finding the career truth behind every lost student and young professional in the Western Pennsylvania area.

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Yes, Gap is again searching for a new agency to generate creative ideas for their upcoming campaign. This is their strategy to reach their goal of increasing sales. I guess it is hard for a one-time market leader to actually do something different.

To save me from repeating myself, here’s last year’s blog: The Challenger Gap!

I still have my 1988 Gap jean jacket. It is increasingly becoming buried in the back of my closet. But as a loyalist, I’m still rooting for you, Gap. If this year’s campaign doesn’t work, maybe you’ll think about a brand spanking.

There are more than ten military bases surrounding Williamsburg, VA, and the Mason School of Business at The College of William & Mary plans to cover all of them. With the help of Fitting Group, the School of Business is recruiting all military personnel with college degrees to check out their graduate business opportunities with a new “military-friendly” campaign, spanning the entire 2010 academic year.

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Butler Health System (BHS) is opening BHS FastERcare, a new urgent care center offering treatment for minor injuries and illnesses as well as routine medical procedures. The center is convenient (open seven days a week) and focused on quality (staffed by experienced BHS physicians), but above all — it’s fast. With FastERcare, you can skip the waiting at the Emergency Room, and there’s no need to make an appointment.

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Butler Health System (BHS) had an important and exciting message for the people of Butler County: Dr. Samer Azouz is back, and he’s better than ever!

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I, along with a few of my colleagues and another guy in my building that I’ve actually never met, have been partaking in a little Foursquare action over the last several months, and I have to say my biggest motivation is that I want to accumulate more points than them — oh, and to remain Mayor of Fitting Group! This is actually hard for this new mom to do; I just don’t get out that much anymore.

Since launching a year ago, the blogosphere has been a flutter with discussions on the true value of Foursquare as the next social media outlet and about how creepy it is that people are actually identifying their locations to the world. (Come on, admit it! You have friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter that you don’t know well enough to inform them of where you are, or more importantly where you are not — @home!)

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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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