From Bling to Bond: Our Adventure at The Pfister | Julie Ferris-Tillman | Marketing Director, Bader Rutter

This fall, our team at Bader Rutter each got a turn to put on the famous Pfister Narrator hat and try their hand at drawing out meaning, metaphor and history from the hotel.

The result was thrilling and affirming.

We jokingly say we’re people-watching, but it’s so much more than that. The creative mind doesn’t just see someone pass by. They see the shoes and wonder where they’ve walked. They notice the ring and wonder if it was an anniversary or birthday gift. They watch the hushed conversations and craft the story and details for themselves. We learned Milwaukee is filled with incredible creative talent and the Pfister is a natural hub for amplifying that.

The Pfister, unlike so many other spaces, is a place for collisions. Different people passing by, sharing space. Marriages and meetings. First dates and everything new. Traditions and history.

To know that each of us can enter that space and be transported into its story, become both an observer and a character in it, affirms our connectedness. We’re all here, we’ve all been there.

Back at our Bader Rutter office, we all shared stories of the experience. Our hallways were abuzz with talk of what happened at The Pfister, who we saw, how we felt. And that’s the power of place. Iconic, symbolic, the Pfister is its own space, in Milwaukee and in time. But now we all carry it with us.

Now, it’s a part of our new building.

Now, it’s a part of a story we tell about that one time we thought we saw James Bond.

Now, it’s a part of how we treat our art, reminded by a photographer friend or a child’s questions.

And now, it’s a part of us. How we write, observe, put ourselves in the story.

That’s a gift whose value even we writers struggle to properly describe.