Artist Martin McGowan stands in front of his public sculpture at the future site of Sanborn Covered Bridge Park in Lyndon during a dedication ceremony on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.
Public Sculpture Dedicated In Lyndon
The Art of Branding: Lessons to Borrow from Google’s Success
The Art of Branding: Lessons to Borrow from Google’s Success – Spiceworks
Discover some valuable insights that brands can glean from Google’s success.
Did you know that Google was almost called “Googol”? That’s right, but a spelling mistake changed everything! Today, Google is a household name and has created its own legacy over the years. But have you ever wondered what core values have helped Google become one of the most popular brands worldwide? Well, you’re in luck because this article will provide you with valuable insights into the lessons you can learn from the Google brand. Get ready to be inspired!
If you seek to shop, dine, book a cab, secure the best deal for flight tickets, rent a house, find the end of a movie, or learn how to generate more leads, the answer to all your inquiries is Google. Google has emerged as the world’s largest search engine, thanks to the internet and smartphones. Google’s journey of 25 years commenced in September 1998, when it took its first step towards indexing and searching online web pages. Today, Google stands as one of the most iconic brands globally. Therefore, it is imperative to understand what Google has accomplished in the last 25 years that has made them the great brand they are today and what marketers can learn from Google’s success story.
Building a Strong Customer Base
As the adage goes, the customer is king, and personalized experiences are expected to provide nothing but the best services. According to a recent survey by New Genesys, 77% of consumers are willing to switch brands if they encounter five or fewer negative interactions with a brand’s customer service. Google recognized this early on and understood that to gain customers’ trust, they must respect them. Google realized that customer trust could only be won if customers could trust the information they received. As a result, Google developed algorithms that placed customer experience at the heart of their strategy. Brands must remember that product and service trends may come and go, but credibility never does. Listening to customers is another way to gain their trust. Google has always encouraged customers to share their feedback through Google reviews.
Additionally, Google invests a significant amount of time in understanding customer-generated feedback. Rather than taking it negatively, Google works to address customers’ pain points. Therefore, brands must proactively monitor the feedback that customers share.
Data privacy is a keyword that is frequently used these days. However, data has always been critical to gaining customers’ trust as they are often skeptical about the data they share. Throughout their journey, Google has been transparent about how they use data, which has helped them gain customers’ credibility.
Innovation Is the Key
Innovation is the lifeblood of success, and no one knows this better than Google. Back in the day, before ChatGPT was even a twinkle in our screens, Google launched a similar service called Google Answer. But that was just one of the 200 products and services that Google has launched over the years. If you stroll through the ‘Google Graveyard,’ you’ll find a whole host of services and products that Google has discontinued. At Google, innovation is more than just a buzzword – it’s a way of life. Since its inception, Google has always encouraged its employees to develop new, innovative ideas. Google’s culture of innovation is evident throughout the company; in fact, Google’s employees are requested to spend 20% of their time to come up with new ideas or work on something that is of more interest to them.
While we talk about innovation and new ideas, one inevitable thing is failure, but Google has always embraced failure. In Google’s blog, Susan Wojcicki, Google’s Senior Vice president, shares Google’s eight pillars of innovation. She further mentions, “Google is known for YouTube, not Google Video Player. The thing is, people, remember your hits more than your misses. It’s okay to fail if you learn from your mistakes and correct them quickly. Trust me, we’ve failed plenty of times. Knowing it’s okay to forget can free you up to take risks. And the tech industry is so dynamic that the moment you stop taking risks is the moment you get left behind.”
See More: Why Brands Should Invest in Cross-Cultural Marketing
Data-Driven Decision Making
Google is a company that knows how to use the power of data. Yes, innovation might be at the helm of Google’s strategy. But even those decisions taken by Google are data-based. Google collects and analyzes massive amounts of data to gain insights into user behavior, market trends, and other important metrics that drive business success. This approach has helped Google make informed decisions backed by data-driven insights, giving it a competitive edge in the market. Therefore, data is the answer for marketers who want to achieve success like Google. Marketers can use and analyze data to get valuable insights into customer preferences. This will later lead to improved products and services that meet customer expectations.
Keeping UX (User Experience) Simple
Minimalism is the trending word today. However, Google has mastered this art way before. And this shows in all the products/ solutions they have designed. Google realized that UX plays a vital role in customer retention and building customer loyalty. A bad UX or UI (user interface) can confuse the customer and will lead to drop-offs in page visits per session. Therefore, Google has always maintained a similar color theme over the years, leading to increased customer brand recall. Google’s clear fonts, simple, clean lines, and even more straightforward, self-explanatory names and icon designs help customers navigate better. Also, Google’s simple design aims to make their products easy to use, so they are easy to understand and adopt by non-experts. Therefore, as marketers, you must realize that UX/UI helps create a brand’s identity.
Marketers must realize that regardless of the services or applications that Google offers in any country, they have the same look and feel. However, Google focuses on localization by customizing the languages to ensure local understanding. Therefore, marketers need to realize that improving customer loyalty, creating a brand loyalty UX, and localization play an important role.
Employee Advocacy
Ask anyone what Google’s most significant assets are, and they will say it’s their employees. Over the years, Google has encouraged its employees to share their stories. How often have we encountered Google employees sharing their stories on what makes Google such a wonderful workplace? The employee might not necessarily speak about any of the Google products but will talk about the work culture at Google. Since employees are the unsung heroes of any company, companies must encourage them to share their stories, which is exactly what Google has been doing for years. Google also has a special page dedicated to its employees where the employees are welcome to share their stories. So, if you want to emulate Google’s success, start listening to what your employees are saying and what your employees want.
Building Your Brand
The process of brand building is a crucial undertaking that commences with identifying and emphasizing your unique selling propositions. Google, for instance, has effectively recognized its distinctive selling points, which include prioritizing customer experience, fostering innovation, and leveraging data-driven insights. These factors have enabled Google to distinguish itself from its rivals and cultivate a devoted customer following.
What measures have you implemented to enhance your marketing strategy and establish a distinctive brand identity? Share with us on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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NORFOLK – Norfolk Community Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to beautifying the town’s common areas, unveiled the first sculpture in its proposed Sculpture Walk last Saturday at Robertson Plaza. “Owl of Good Fortune” was created by local sculptor Jon Riedeman, who specializes in wildlife scu
Libby Hall obituary
My friend Libby Hall, who has died aged 81, was a talented street and press photographer, writer and collector.
Her collection of thousands of vintage dog photographs was published as four books by Bloomsbury between 2000 and 2007, then acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute, which called it “possibly the largest number of canine pictures ever gathered by any single person”.
Libby taught herself photography from Popular Photography magazine after receiving a Box Brownie for her seventh birthday. After leaving the Rudolf Steiner school in New York at 16, she worked for six months in the photo lab at Life magazine, then at Village Voice as distribution manager.
At 18, she moved to Vienna, where she took the photographs of which she was most proud. A friendship with the American photojournalist Walker Evans helped her refine her technique.
Having moved to Suffolk in the mid 1960s to work at AS Neill’s Summerhill school, she documented life in her local pub, the Engineer in Leiston, in a series of photographs following the opening of a nuclear power station in nearby Sizewell.
Libby was born in New York to William McKinley Osborne II, a newspaperman, restaurateur and clerk, and Charlotte (nee Cameron), a designer and antique-store owner. The family, by Libby’s account, flitted between Manhattan, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine.
From 1960, while living in Vienna, she began a four-year relationship with Arthur S (Anand) Lall, an Indian diplomat and writer, and was subsequently briefly married to Peter Wood. Meeting the writer John Berger in a Genevan supermarket in 1964 began a lifelong friendship. I met her later through writing Berger’s biography. But it was while she was a press photographer for the Daily Worker (now the Morning Star) in London in 1966 that she met the political cartoonist Tony Hall; they settled in Clapton, east London, and married in 1973.
Following her marriage, Libby wound down her professional photography career. In later years, she took Open University courses in geology and science, and became an expert on Arnold Bennett’s novels.
After Tony’s death in 2008, she had “Stop! Do not resuscitate, living will extant” tattooed on her chest. Her diagnosis with end-stage idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2017 did not dim her sense of humour, her curiosity about the world or her ability to travel it in her imagination. Shetland was her last great fascination. Though she knew she would never visit, she fell asleep every night listening to Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham’s song By Dundas Loch.
“Mine has been a good life measured out in dogs,” she wrote in her memoir, self-published in 2019. Her last, Pip, lives with her stepson, Andrew, and his wife, Laura.
Andrew and her brother, Billy, survive her.
Printmaker shares his art with Las Vegas
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Why Revisit Landscape Photography Locations
Are you the type of landscape photographer who visits a location once and then head off to other new locations, never to return? Or are you the type that returns to a location over and over? Revisiting a location presents significant opportunities for the landscape photographer.
As a landscape photographer, I like to revisit locations to help increase the odds of walking away with a portfolio-worthy image I am proud of. The repeated visits help me learn the area, find strong compositions, and determine what environmental conditions are helping create a unique photograph.
Advantages of Revisiting
If you revisit a location, it affords several advantages over just visiting an area once. You learn simple logistics that make subsequent visits easier and more efficient: which overlook is best, which trail is best, where to park. All of this helps make getting to the most promising spot more familiar and straightforward.
When approaching a scene for the first time, it is easy to get overwhelmed. I frequently find my senses overloaded at new locations. While I have techniques to help slow me down, I often take the “obvious” shot instead of really working the scene to find an interesting composition that tells a story.
I can think and process more reasonably if I revisit the scene on the second and third visits. My compositions improve or become more interesting because I am more in tune with the area.
And finally, the environmental conditions change on other visits. On first visits, the newness of a location makes everything seem like it is excellent. But was the light really the best? Were the clouds cooperating? Does fog or rain make the place even more unique? The more times you visit a location, the odds of you witnessing and recognizing special conditions increase, likely leading to stronger, more interesting images.
If you visit a location once, it might seem impressive initially, but is it just the “newness,” or is it the right conditions and composition lining up simultaneously?
My Recent Experience
I recently visited Arizona, specifically the Superstition Mountain area. I will likely be in this area several more times in the coming months, and I had considered this initial trip a scouting trip. Learn where the trail heads were, view the area from different angles, and get a feel for the area, so that on future visits, I increase my odds of success in capturing a great photo.
Upon my arrival, there was one park that I wanted to visit right away. Its location to where I was staying was convenient, and from my research, it seemed to offer lots of potential. But I needed to get a feel for the logistics: entry passes, park hours, trailheads, and what it looked like in person.
Over the course of three days, I visited, scouted, and photographed the area five times. On my first morning, I visited the park to scout what I thought was a promising trail. I made waypoints during my hike for return visits, and since it was overcast, I also took a few pictures.
The very evening of my first day in Arizona, I returned to the park for sunset and used my waypoints to reach a spot for photographs quickly. I was treated to amazing colors on the rock walls and felt good about my scouting.
The next day, I returned for sunset. I chose a slight variation of which trail I took to get a different angle. In addition, the sunset that evening was incredible, and I had different colors on the rock walls to photograph.
I returned for sunrise the next morning. That trip wasn’t the most fruitful, but I again visited a different area of the park and learned more about good angles and objects for the foreground that I could use for the more optimal sunset time.
And finally, I visited one more evening, using what I had learned on previous trips and then getting lucky with a rare rainbow over the scene. Simply by revisiting the location, I increased my odds of experiencing a more unique scene.
Why Revisit
Revisiting an area helps you become more in tune with the location, from logistics to refining your compositions. It also helps increase the chance you will witness some truly unique scenes.
How about you? Do you revisit landscape photography scenes? Do you find it helpful for your photography?
Enigmatic Wonder and Magic Envelop Sarah Lee’s Illuminated Landscapes
“Luna Moths” (2023), oil on canvas, 70 x 60 inches. Photo by Thomas Müller. All images courtesy of the artist and albertz benda, New York | Los Angeles, shared with permission
Mysterious magic emanates from Sarah Lee’s scenes. Often working at night in her East Village studio, Lee envisions quiet, unpopulated landscapes that become an escape from the electrifying energy of the city. Tempestuous storms, glowing Luna moths, and shooting stars enliven the serene vistas and illuminate what would otherwise be shrouded by the darkened skies. Each oil painting, rendered in a palette of cool tones, contains an element of surreal surprise, whether a graceful fowl floating on the clouds in “Black Swan” or a pocket of snowy earth opening to reveal the stars in “Among Trees.”
The works shown here are a fraction of those included in Lee’s solo show, Two Skies, on view now through October 14 at albertz benda in New York. Explore more of the artist’s work on her site and Instagram.
“Two Skies” (2023), oil on canvas, 70 x 80 inches. Photo by Adam Reich
“Rainbow” (2023), oil on canvas, 14 x 13 inches. Photo by Thomas Müller
“Among Trees” (2023), oil on canvas, 50 x 52 inches. Photo by Adam Reich
“Black Swan” (2023), oil on canvas, 44 x 40 inches. Photo by Thomas Müller
“Northern Lights” (2023), oil on canvas, 9 x 12 inches. Photo by Adam Reich
“Endless Night” (2023), oil on canvas, 70 x 80 inches. Photo by Thomas Müller
“The Trees of Secrets” (2023), oil on canvas, 12 x 9 inches. Photo by Thomas Müller
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Enigmatic Wonder and Magic Envelop Sarah Lee’s Illuminated Landscapes appeared first on Colossal.
Union Square Travel Agency Flies High Evoking Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center
Architecture firm Leong Leong’s reference of Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport for the Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store is one sly nod to the pursuit and pleasure of flying high – a highly curated retail exhibition space leaning into the retro-futuristic details of Saarinen’s dynamic forms with stark monochromatic simplicity.
The 2,800-square-foot space operates not only as a place to peruse high-end cannabis products, but also functions as the brand’s “laboratory and refuge.” USQTA commissioned the architecture firm to design a space intended to educate customers about the use and properties surrounding cannabis. And thus Leong Leong created the 150-square-foot curvilinear Flower Lounge as the shop’s centerpiece, framing an assortment of flowers, accessories, and paraphernalia complemented by inset and brightly illuminated shelving, and digital kiosks.
A select layout of contemporary vitrines are stationed throughout to tempt curiosity, inviting customers to learn about the various scent compounds related to the plants’ signature terpenes. Afterward, the staff offers customer recommendations matching their sensory preferences.
An application of soft luminous light washes along the walls of the space, with the ambient glow. We cannot help but notice a few of our favorite cannabis-focused designs on their shelves.
Embedded in the walls and behind the checkout registers a 12-foot-long custom lighting element glows, slowly changing hues over time.
“The design intention for our new space is tranquil, cheeky, unexpected and approachable. Leong Leong has designed a surreal sanctuary that allows for a fun escape with a nod to retro-futurism,” says Arana Hankin-Biggers, President of USQTA.
USQTA works in partnership with The Doe Fund, a nonprofit devoted to helping transition individuals from the trappings of addiction and crime, donating 51% of their profits to reinvest into the rehabilitation program.
If you happen to be in New York City and want to board the Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store, venture over to 835 Broadway at 13th St. Open seven days a week with hours from 9am-11pm Sunday thru Thursday and 9am-midnight during Friday and Saturday.
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