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My Pitt Gear Moment..

JoeScaz

Senior
Dec 9, 2004
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As a previous poster mentioned I AM certainly also,... in my work travel. mainly NE US.. seeing Pitt gear all over... Just two weeks ago on Preakness Saturday.. I was AT Belmont Park Racetrack in NYC.. and see a guy in his 60s.. proudly in his royal blue Pitt t-shirt and Pitt ballcap betting the horses right next to me... I also have him the H2P greeting... an alum... who lived in Johnstown and hadn't been back in ages...
 
Pitt's brand isn't bad. Sure, some dolt in California might not know what "Pitt" is, and surely that is used as justification by the world travelers on here as to why the script should have never returned ("my neighbor in East Nowhere South Pango Pango doesn't know what Pitt is") but I think that "Pitt" is very recognizable and the script is loved by many within the fanbase. Why the administration ever attempted to force change nobody wanted is a disgrace.
 
Pitt's brand isn't bad. Sure, some dolt in California might not know what "Pitt" is, and surely that is used as justification by the world travelers on here as to why the script should have never returned ("my neighbor in East Nowhere South Pango Pango doesn't know what Pitt is") but I think that "Pitt" is very recognizable and the script is loved by many within the fanbase. Why the administration ever attempted to force change nobody wanted is a disgrace.

Every place I've lived except Pittsburgh...that is Philly, DC, Miami, and San Francisco...I've had people come up and ask me what "Pitt" is. Many others, and I do mean many, see it and make a comment about me being a Steeler fan. Doesn't matter what design, as I have...literally... well over 100 Pitt shirts and sweatshirts in all styles and fonts.

"Pitt" may be recognizable by college sports fans, and certainly by alumni and Pittsburgh transplants, but it is not well recognized by the general population in my experience of living near and far outside of Western PA. Pitt doesn't do itself any favors either, as the branding is muddled throughout the university's endeavors. I favor using "Pitt" everywhere, a singular style (font script or block it doesn't matter), in all academic and athletic endeavors. Shoot, I'd like to see it used by UPMC. The university needs to try to make "Pitt" as recognizable as Michigan's block M or Notre Dame's interlocking ND, because the University of Pittsburgh does not have a strong, recognizable brand in the general population compared to many peer universities.
 
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Every place I've lived except Pittsburgh...that is Philly, DC, Miami, and San Francisco...I've had people come up and ask me what "Pitt" is. Many others, and I do mean many, see it and make a comment about me being a Steeler fan. Doesn't matter what design, as I have...literally... well over 100 Pitt shirts and sweatshirts in all styles and fonts.

Have been asked what Pitt is many times on trips or down in Texas, and also have had more than a few people tell me they thought Pitt and University of Pittsburgh were 2 separate schools.
 
Have been asked what Pitt is many times on trips or down in Texas, and also have had more than a few people tell me they thought Pitt and University of Pittsburgh were 2 separate schools.

I've never had the later one, but I know many people (on the East Coast) that think Cal and Berkley are two different schools. So Pitt isn't alone in that issue.

I can't imagine anyone that lived and traveled extensively outside of Western PA, and worn lots of Pitt gear, hasn't had similar experiences.
 
Every place I've lived except Pittsburgh...that is Philly, DC, Miami, and San Francisco...I've had people come up and ask me what "Pitt" is. Many others, and I do mean many, see it and make a comment about me being a Steeler fan. Doesn't matter what design, as I have...literally... well over 100 Pitt shirts and sweatshirts in all styles and fonts.

"Pitt" may be recognizable by college sports fans, and certainly by alumni and Pittsburgh transplants, but it is not well recognized by the general population in my experience of living near and far outside of Western PA. Pitt doesn't do itself any favors either, as the branding is muddled throughout the university's endeavors. I favor using "Pitt" everywhere, a singular style (font script or block it doesn't matter), in all academic and athletic endeavors. Shoot, I'd like to see it used by UPMC. The university needs to try to make "Pitt" as recognizable as Michigan's block M or Notre Dame's interlocking ND, because the University of Pittsburgh does not have a strong, recognizable brand in the general population compared to many peer universities.

Plenty of people in the general population dont recognize the Michigan M, either. That doesn't mean it is not a strong college football brand. Perhaps I should clarify, but the Pitt logo isn't a bad brand amoung college football fans. Most know what it means. It would be stronger if not for nearly 20 years of near incompetence with th issue.
 
I've never had the later one, but I know many people (on the East Coast) that think Cal and Berkley are two different schools. So Pitt isn't alone in that issue.
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There are Notre Dame fans who don't even know what state ND is located in. That doesn't mean that their brand isn't a strong one. The Cal/Berkley thing is confusing because there are multiple schools starting with the University of California. But, a college football fan should know that Cal is a college football team in CA, even though he/she couldn't tell you what city it is in.
 
Here's the difference, people east of the Rockies may not know Cal and Berkley are the same, but they know they are colleges. They may not be able to locate South Bend on a map, but they've know Notre Dame is a college. As anyone slapping a political bumper sticker or installing a yard sign will tell you, name recognition is a major chunk of the battle. Why do you think Penn State gets so many out-of-state applications? Because its average SAT scores at University Park are lower the the University of South Carolina? No, simple name recognition.

There are many people that asked me the question "What is PITT?" They have no idea. They think it is a clothing line or some other weird thing. Or they think it is an abbreviation for the city or one of its pro teams. Who mixes up Cal with a pro sports team? Miami stumbled on their U quite haphazardly, but it immediately differentiates them from the Dolphins or Marlins. And (relatively recently) they've fully embraced "the U" across every aspect of the university as the single major mark for all university endeavors.

The pervasiveness, or the recognizability, of our university in the general population pales greatly to that of the Michigans, Notre Dames, Dukes, North Carolinas, MITs, Harvards, Yales, and Stanfords. And Pitt's decades and decades of muddled branding and switching back and forth doesn't do it any favors. Pitt needs to pick one major mark...be it script Pitt, block Pitt, a panther, the seal, the Cathedral...something...and stick with it, university wide for use by every single department and entity, for the next 100 years. Until the university gets out of its own way with branding (a major failing of the prior administrations IMO), all you can do is wear your Pitt gear as much as possible.
 
Funny story from Oakland yesterday - I stopped at Chaz's corner kiosk to buy a couple of shirts. I mentioned how I didn't want a Dinocat version and they just looked at me like I had 10 heads. The one kid said, "What's a dinocat?". My point is that our branding (Pitt? Pittsburgh?) has been all over the place and even those local don't even understand it, let alone anyone outside of the area.
 
Funny story from Oakland yesterday - I stopped at Chaz's corner kiosk to buy a couple of shirts. I mentioned how I didn't want a Dinocat version and they just looked at me like I had 10 heads. The one kid said, "What's a dinocat?". My point is that our branding (Pitt? Pittsburgh?) has been all over the place and even those local don't even understand it, let alone anyone outside of the area.

Well, to be fair, the term "dinocat" is sort of a colloquialism that is most pervasive among the message board crowd. There are a lot of fans, alumni, and students that never look at these boards and blogs. How many board old timers would be confused if you said something about Cathy?

They need one logo, perhaps the script, and just implement it everywhere: Pitt Football, Pitt Wrestling, Pitt Med, Pitt Law, Pitt Engineering... These silos they've put up where certain logos are reserved for athletics or academic departments are just terrible.
 
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This stuff is pretty normal. You guys do not want to know how many people think Penn is the same thing as Penn State. And when I correct it, they have this blank look on their faces...they've never heard of an Ivy League school called Penn.

Then there's the people who have no idea Berkley and Cal are the same school.
 
This stuff is pretty normal. You guys do not want to know how many people think Penn is the same thing as Penn State. And when I correct it, they have this blank look on their faces...they've never heard of an Ivy League school called Penn.

Then there's the people who have no idea Berkley and Cal are the same school.

Penn definitely has that problem. They even sell shirts that say "NOT PENN ST".

But I wouldn't say its normal, and Penn's branding is way more consistent across the school.
 
Penn definitely has that problem. They even sell shirts that say "NOT PENN ST".

But I wouldn't say its normal, and Penn's branding is way more consistent across the school.

Those shirts crack me up. They're still available in the bookstore as of about a year ago.
UPHS's branding is consistent with the university. Not sure how the relationship b/w UPHS/Penn compares to UPMC/Pitt, but I never understood the rationale behind UPMC's purple logo.
 
Here's the difference, people east of the Rockies may not know Cal and Berkley are the same, but they know they are colleges. They may not be able to locate South Bend on a map, but they've know Notre Dame is a college. As anyone slapping a political bumper sticker or installing a yard sign will tell you, name recognition is a major chunk of the battle. Why do you think Penn State gets so many out-of-state applications? Because its average SAT scores at University Park are lower the the University of South Carolina? No, simple name recognition.

There are many people that asked me the question "What is PITT?" They have no idea. They think it is a clothing line or some other weird thing. Or they think it is an abbreviation for the city or one of its pro teams. Who mixes up Cal with a pro sports team? Miami stumbled on their U quite haphazardly, but it immediately differentiates them from the Dolphins or Marlins. And (relatively recently) they've fully embraced "the U" across every aspect of the university as the single major mark for all university endeavors.

The pervasiveness, or the recognizability, of our university in the general population pales greatly to that of the Michigans, Notre Dames, Dukes, North Carolinas, MITs, Harvards, Yales, and Stanfords. And Pitt's decades and decades of muddled branding and switching back and forth doesn't do it any favors. Pitt needs to pick one major mark...be it script Pitt, block Pitt, a panther, the seal, the Cathedral...something...and stick with it, university wide for use by every single department and entity, for the next 100 years. Until the university gets out of its own way with branding (a major failing of the prior administrations IMO), all you can do is wear your Pitt gear as much as possible.

I agree that we need a consistent logo. The blame falls squarely on the Pitt administration (mainly Pederson and Nordenberg). I wonder how much money they lost by refusing to listen to the fans and attempting to establishing a new brand in their own image, then rebranding, and now having to go through a rebranding process once again. I think the current administration finally 'gets it' when it comes to the script logo. Many fans identify it with greatness. It is unique. Looks good on a shirt and football helmet. In fact, for all the good that Nordenberg has done at Pitt, many fans will see his tenure as the one that allowed the logo debacle to continue for decades. That is how strong our brand is among the fanbase. And that is a good thing.

If Pitt wants to be known in the general population, then it won't be through football or from the use of a consistent logo. It will be from continuing to improve academic quality. That's why people know about the schools you listed. MIT had been a good school for a long time, so people know about it. CMU has been a good school for a much shorter length of time, so fewer people are familiar with it. Pitt has a long, long, looooooong way to get for people to start recognizing the name "Pitt".

I believe the hell will probably freeze over before UPMC uses "Pitt" as part of their official logo. Perhaps if they had a stronger connection to Pitt sports... like naming a stadium for example.

What were we talking about again? ;)
 
Those shirts crack me up. They're still available in the bookstore as of about a year ago.
UPHS's branding is consistent with the university. Not sure how the relationship b/w UPHS/Penn compares to UPMC/Pitt, but I never understood the rationale behind UPMC's purple logo.

UPHS is owned by the university and overseen by Penn Med, which is a university trustee board that oversees the UPHS and the med school. Although they, like many university hospitals, have moved to further separate the hospital from the university in order to shield the university from financial problems endemic to health care, it is more like an subsidiary company.

UPMC is independent of the university, although execrably intertwined with it, particularly the schools of the health sciences. It is a combination of a Pitt spin-off (obviously one of the most successful in the history of academic spin-offs) and the amalgamation of previously independent hospitals (like Presby and Montifiore). It operates independently. It's board is construed of 1/3 community reps, 1/3 reps of affiliate hospitals, and 1/3 reps from the university. It's administrative structure is not decide by the university (other than the 1/3 reps of the uni voting on it). Through existing agreements, it provides substantial funding for Pitt's medical school and health sciences while providing a clinical home to Pitt's academic medical faculty, while Pitt provides the academic home and research infrastructure for the 99% of research conducted "by" UPMC. They also lease each others facilities. When UPMC was first created back in the 90s, it had a licensing agreement to use the university seal and its name, "University of Pittsburgh Medical Center". But it officially (i.e. legally), it has changed its name to "UPMC" and has dropped the seal from promotional materials. The purple is simply what some marketing genius told them to switch to, along with the since dropped (and thoroughly idiotic) mobius strip image. The fonts used by the the uni for "University of Pittsburgh" (Jansen) and that used by UPMC for "UPMC" are still identical.
 
I agree that we need a consistent logo. The blame falls squarely on the Pitt administration (mainly Pederson and Nordenberg). I wonder how much money they lost by refusing to listen to the fans and attempting to establishing a new brand in their own image, then rebranding, and now having to go through a rebranding process once again. I think the current administration finally 'gets it' when it comes to the script logo. Many fans identify it with greatness. It is unique. Looks good on a shirt and football helmet. In fact, for all the good that Nordenberg has done at Pitt, many fans will see his tenure as the one that allowed the logo debacle to continue for decades. That is how strong our brand is among the fanbase. And that is a good thing.

If Pitt wants to be known in the general population, then it won't be through football or from the use of a consistent logo. It will be from continuing to improve academic quality. That's why people know about the schools you listed. MIT had been a good school for a long time, so people know about it. CMU has been a good school for a much shorter length of time, so fewer people are familiar with it. Pitt has a long, long, looooooong way to get for people to start recognizing the name "Pitt".

I believe the hell will probably freeze over before UPMC uses "Pitt" as part of their official logo. Perhaps if they had a stronger connection to Pitt sports... like naming a stadium for example.

What were we talking about again? ;)

Actually, the most consistent logos Pitt has ever had have been under Pederson and Nordenberg. Like those logos or not, there was a concerted effort to standardize the branding (particularly for athletics), an effort which previously had never taken place. The rebrand was a failure, but the effort to standardize the brand was long overdue, but still fell way short of what was (and is) needed across the university.

You think Duke and Notre Dame, while great schools, are known because of their academic quality? Duke would be as recognizable as Sewanee without their basketball program. ND would be like Carleton. You think most know where Washington University is located, and it is a far, far better school than the UWub one. Do people know USC and UCLA because of their academic quality? How many people know about Cal Tech which blows both of them out of the water.

It's not about one or the other, its about leveraging everything you have into one repeatable, clear, consistent message. And the most public face of any Division 1 university's is its athletics brand. Name recognition is half the battle (or more).
 
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Actually, the most consistent logos Pitt has ever had have been under Pederson and Nordenberg. Like those logos or not, there was a concerted effort to standardize the branding (particularly for athletics), an effort which previously had never taken place. The rebrand was a failure, but the effort to standardize the brand was long overdue, but still fell way short of what was (and is) needed across the university.

You think Duke and Notre Dame, while great schools, are known because of their academic quality? Duke would be as recognizable as Sewanee without their basketball program. ND would be like Carleton. You think most know where Washington University is located, and it is a far, far better school than the UWub one. Do people know USC and UCLA because of their academic quality? How many people know about Cal Tech which blows both of them out of the water.

It's not about one or the other, its about leveraging everything you have into one repeatable, clear, consistent message. And the most public face of any Division 1 university's is its athletics brand. Name recognition is half the battle (or more).
In the 1961 Rose Bowl, CalTech played a funny prank at the Rose Bowl.....students altered the instructions of a card signal....read about it at ...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rose_Bowl_Hoax
 
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