Recently we celebrated the pending arrival of Alli’s baby with a nice shower at French Meadow Café.  I had to laugh as I was reminded of my own baby shower thrown six years ago by my two sole colleagues at Fast Horse – a company that at the time was a baby itself at just six months old – and our friend Bruce Benidt. 

My shower, a lovely luncheon at Vincent in Minneapolis, celebrated the arrival of my first child, Tyler, who coincidentally just “graduated” from kindergarten a couple weeks ago.  My, how the years fly.  (As a side note, my three male shower guests tried to convince me I should name my first born after one of the menu items – Baby Bok Choy.  Needless to say, I’m glad we went with Tyler.)

Being the proud mother that I am, I could go on and on about all that Tyler has accomplished in his first six years of life, but I suspect only a few close friends and family would find it interesting.  Instead, I want to take a minute to reflect on what Fast Horse has accomplished in its six-plus years of existence — which, now that I think of it, may only be interesting to a handful of colleagues and clients. But indulge me.

Sure, we have several successful programs under our belts and have forged some great client relationships, but what stands out most in my mind is the way we’ve rolled with the punches and continued to evolve as the marketing world around us has changed dramatically.  There is more “clutter” out there today than I ever thought possible six years ago.  It’s been a trip – and not always an easy one – finding ways to engage consumers and make our clients’ brands more relevant in their lives.  Branded content.  Widgets.  Facebook applications.  Microsites.  Blogs.  These weren’t common terms back in 2001, and especially not ones uttered at any agencies I’d experienced.

Now our employee count stands at a whopping 10 people, and while I’ve been known to refer to us as a “slightly dysfunctional family” at times, we sure have come a long way.  Heck, we don’t even call ourselves a public relations agency any more.  We’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter how we classify this place as long as we’re doing good work that grabs people’s attention and cuts through all that clutter everyone is always talking about.

And it doesn’t hurt that we’re able to have some fun while we’re doing it.  (By the way, I’m pretty confident Alli won’t be using the name Baby Bok Choy for her first-born, either. So it’s still up for grabs if anyone is looking for “unique” baby names.)