News

Never Stop Starting, our latest Wichita-centric Bravely Onward message was the focus of a Wichita Eagle article published in the Sunday, October 29, newspaper.

Glossy pro-Wichita video is both a love letter and a call to action

By Matt Riedl

There’s a lot worth celebrating in Wichita right now.

We’re in the middle of a downtown revitalization, Wichita State University is becoming a national powerhouse, and human-friendly developments – like bicycle lanes – seemingly pop up daily.

But it’s not enough, urges a new advertisement in Fidelity Bank’s “Bravely Onward” series.

The ad, “Never Stop Starting,” was released on Monday. It highlights entrepreneurial efforts at Wichita Area Technical College, Wichita State University’s GoCreate, as well as other efforts.

“There’s always the temptation to rely on past successes,” a narrator reads over dated footage of Pizza Hut, a biplane and WSU basketball. “We fight it by pushing ourselves and each other to reinvent, reinvest – to never stop starting.”

It features basketball players from East High, Levi Fitzmier of FNL Denim and Grit Virtual Construction at WSU’s Virtual Reality Lab.

It will make you feel unabashedly good about your city, though there’s more to it than that.

“We find ourselves at this really pivotal moment as a city where we get to decide what we want the future to look like,” said Aaron Bastian, president of Fidelity Bank. “The choice that we need to continually make is that we want bigger, we want better for our city.”

It’s part of a branding campaign the bank has underwent since 2012. At that point, Boeing had just announced its withdrawal from the Wichita market.

The goal of the “Bravely Onward” campaign, officials say, is to share the bank’s vision for the future of Wichita. It’s not intended to inspire you to open a new checking account with the bank. In fact, not until the last two seconds of the video – when the Fidelity logo flashes on the screen – is it even apparent who paid for the ad.

“This wasn’t ever about the bank – our big Wichita messages ... truly are about this community and the love we have for it,” said Katie Grover, marketing director at Fidelity Bank.

Past videos have placed a heavy focus on manufacturing, though this ad highlights Wichita’s technology innovations.

“Because this is about creation and doing new things, ... a big part of that as we go forward is going to be technology,” Bastian said.

The ad will run on TV until the holidays, then again in the spring.

More videos are forthcoming, officials promise without hinting at a timeline for future releases.

To watch all the videos in the “Bravely Onward” series, visit www.bravelyonward.com.