Last year, I went to Los Angeles for business.
Actually, it was more like this:
Pittsburgh girl travels to LA for the first time, flies over wildfires to get there, drives past a shootout on the way to the hotel, and sneaks into two advertising conferences before driving off into the desert to watch self-driving cars compete in a robot race.
Somehow, the advertising conferences were two of the most surprising experiences of the whole trip.
As the co-founder of
Branding Brand, a newly-formed branding firm, these events were my first “official” peek
inside the industry. When I arrived, recorder in hand, anxious to learn from the big guys, I quietly watched as they jumped on and off the stage, threw around words like “organic,” and showed slide after clip of the year’s edgiest (and most expensive) Fortune 500 campaigns.
Then something unexpected occurred. The leaders of the ad world admitted they had no idea what was happening. One after another, the speakers talked about a mysterious, undefined path called the “future of advertising.” They expressed their fascination with the declining impact of traditional television ads and tried to make sense of a growing focus on interactivity and the Internet. Even though they talked about an upcoming need to bridge the separate worlds of creative directors, tech guys, and public relation firms, no one was sure how they fit together in the end.
And then I realized: This is what Branding Brand does. We make it all fit.
See, the problem with most of the things I do is that they are never easily explained. Before traveling to LA, I spent days trying to describe exactly
what our firm does. No, we’re not just an advertising company. Yes, we do public relations and grassroots marketing. Yes, we also do things like search engine optimization, blogs, and viral video.
In the end, the people who were supposed to be on the edge didn’t even know where it was.
An entrepreneurial mixWhen we created Branding Brand, Christopher Mason, Joey Rahimi, and I set out to provide our clients with the same entrepreneurial mix of “online” and “offline” marketing we developed at our first company,
College Prowler. Even though Chris runs creative development, Joe handles online efforts, and I manage PR, we all work together in the same room.
We always knew we had something that worked, but last year’s
Adweek conferences made us realize just how special it really was. For us, the format was instinctive. We thought as entrepreneurs, not just as creative, tech, or PR guys. From the
beginning, our strategies and our team were an integrated, codependent mix.
Marble bathrooms and popcorn ceilings There’s something exciting about blending the traditional with the new in a city that shares the same characteristics. Sure, some of it doesn’t make sense—like how our office can have marble bathrooms and popcorn ceilings—but like Branding Brand, Pittsburgh does things differently. This is a city of unique opportunities, and we need to focus on them. Not everything has to fit into a mold.
The truth is that, if you want to start a business, Pittsburgh’s not a bad place to do it: There are college students and interns on every corner. It is possible to buy a house by the time you’re in your 20s, and you can get office space for hundreds, not thousands, of dollars a month. The art scene is vibrant, the food is good, and yes, there are other young entrepreneurs who actually stay here and like it. In the end, this community of believers is one of the most important things this city has
to offer.
Love Notes to PittsburghThe proof is in my inbox. A few weeks ago, Carnegie Mellon asked me to write an article that explained what it was like to start my own business (
click to read) after graduation, and ever since I wrote it, I have received a bunch of e-mails from friends, as well as complete strangers, who could relate.
For weeks, I received these unexpected love notes to Pittsburgh. I met musicians and mothers, people who left, and those who came back. There were also young entrepreneurs like Matt Hannigan, co-founder of the
Sprout Fund, and Lindsay Patross, creator of
iheartpgh.com who only strengthened my belief that it is possible to accomplish great things here. Everyone has a story, and they need to be shared.
Just as Branding Brand’s formula won’t work without a strong connected team, Pittsburgh, too, relies on the strength of its innovators and the opportunities it provides. Sometimes even when things are different, it doesn’t stop them from moving in the right direction. We just have a little more explaining to do.
Captions:
The Branding Brand crew hawking their wares in a shop front Downtown
Christina Koshzow
Joey Rahimi
Chris Mason
...Branding Brand
All photographs copyright Brian Cohen