BrandDog

Every company has a room nobody goes into.

It's never a secret. Everyone knows the website is dated. Everyone knows the one-pager describes a service you stopped selling two years ago. Everyone knows that campaign hasn't worked in a while.

Nobody touches it because touching it means owning it, and it's been that way long enough to feel like furniture.

Here's the problem with the haunted room. It's usually the first place a prospect looks.

What's in yours? 👇

Friday night, we traded the office for Oktoberfest at Van Aken District.

Our team posted up at Craft Collective with branded steins, free b**r, and a pack of plush pups wearing tiny BrandDog tees. More than 100 steins went home with new owners. Every last pup found a family.

We also brought free SEO and AEO audits. Let's just say they had stiff competition from the b**r.

Here's the thing about brand awareness. It doesn't always happen in a search result or a sales deck. Sometimes it happens when someone grabs a stein off their shelf a month from now and remembers the people who handed it to them. Showing up in your own community still matters, especially when you're building something.

Thank you to The Van Aken District for having us. Prost to a great night, and we'll see you at the next one. 🍻

🐾

The journey of Dan. 🚶‍♂️

2014: meets Matt. 20+ years of design. 2 years at BrandDog. Countless steps. Two cats. Zero regrets.

Happy anniversary, Dan! 🎉

Lederhosen? Pressed. Stein? Filled. Plans for Friday? Made.

Some clients you work for. Some you show up for. This Friday, the BrandDog team is trading laptops for la**rs at Oktoberfest at The Van Aken District. Our favorite district is throwing a party, and we wouldn't miss it!

The first 100 people to swing by our table get a free branded stein and a pour on us. Come early. Say hi. Raise a glass with us.

Prost! 🍻

Most days, we're a team of little squares on a screen.

BrandDog has people across the country and around the world. We collaborate across time zones, languages, and endless Slack threads. So when we get together, we make sure it matters.

Last week, our U.S. team gathered in person while our international teammates joined us online for two days of connection, big ideas, and a lot of laughs.

We got to know each other better through the Six Types of Working Genius and talked about what makes each of us tick. We traded ideas and built things together, both in the room and on the screen.
We split into small teams and used AI to build real projects in a couple of hours. Some teammates were side by side. Some were thousands of miles away. It didn't matter.

Along the way, we captured a ton of content, from team photos and video testimonials to a Gen Z slang quiz that tested just how fluent we really are.

A few other things we learned:
→ Dan took the slang quiz seriously and is already putting it to use. Honestly, he's cooking.
→ Every one of us has a personal color palette, just like we build for brands
→ Matt Lint is a Pisces

But the best part wasn't anything we made. It was the people.

A team that shows up for each other. That jumps in outside their lane. That feels close no matter where we're logging in from.

Grateful for every one of you. 🐾

Grace named her first five cats after characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf. Bilbo. Smaug. An elf. And of course, Nori.

So for her birthday, we made her a fellowship of her own.

The truth is she plays every part here.

She played a key role in the sales process we run on. She keeps the books straight, categorizing, reconciling, and chasing until nothing sits unexplained. She spots the gap before it becomes a problem. And she will not let a loose end stay loose. All of it from twelve hours ahead in the Philippines, awake before Cleveland is.

As for the cats, only five were planned. The other seven found her. A rescue who turned out to be pregnant. A cat who lost her kittens in a hurricane and both her ears to cancer, and who is doing just fine now, thank you. Grace kept every one of them.

That's the whole thing about her. Whatever shows up needing looking after, a client, a process, a cat, she takes it in.

Happy birthday, Grace. We're lucky to have you. 🎂