JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge- The Experience!

15,000 people ran this year's Corporate Challenge. The Challenge spans multiple US cities and countries around the globe. It is truly an experience. You can't go 3 inches without seeing some sort of JP Morgan branding, but what I found truly interesting is the myriad of brands- every company that participates takes advantage of the opportunity to brand the heck out of themselves- from the t-shirts the runners wear to branding at the hospitality tents, to the homemade signage the spectators and cheering sections brought.

My unofficial estimate is that about 80% of the companies participating at this year's Challenge were banks. If you haven't read the news in the last year or so- banks have a pretty bad rep. Which is why participating in events like this are so important. They give people (read: the people who work for banks and are starting to question if they working at the right place) a warm, fuzzy feeling of camaraderie and humanity. As they run past a giant banner with the Goldman Sach's logo, they think to themselves: maybe working here isn't so bad after all, they are donating money to multiple charities around the globe, they are making a commitment to my health and fitness goals and they chipped in to buy me this oversized scratchy t-shirt. It makes the whole Senate Banking Committee investigation seem a little easier to swallow.


" I swear to make sure our executives understand that physical fitness is just as important as fiscal fitness."

JP Morgan has been holding these Corporate Challenge events for the last 32 years. Each year the event seems to get bigger, more diverse and full of flashy signage and branded t-shirts- which is all in the name of physical fitness and making people hate banks a little less.