FORT COLLINS, Colo. – It’s Commencement Week at Colorado State University, and 73 Rams will become graduates this weekend!

Representing every sport program the department offers, these Rams have earned their degrees from one of the nation’s leading academic research institutions and can proudly call themselves a college graduate. Though many have elected to return to complete their collegiate eligibility next season and beyond, commencement offers another step in the closing of this chapter for many of these Ram graduates.

A complete list of graduates below. Commencement activities begin on Friday and continue through the weekend inside Moby Arena. 

Men’s Basketball

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Nicholas Bassett (Business Administration)
James Moors (Business Administration)
Isaiah Stevens (Communication Studies)
John Tonje (Business Administration)

Women’s Basketball

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Petra Farkas (Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts)
Mckenna Hofschild (Business Administration)
Sydney Mech (Art)
Destiny Thurman (Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts)

Cheer

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Emily Brandenburg (History and Sociology) 
Sarah Klatt (Psychology)
Grace Linscott (Biological Science)
Antonia Lopez (Psychology)
Juan Barreras Luna (Social Work)
Sophie Vigil (English Education) 
Presley Porter (Business Marketing)
Bailey Usher (Biology)

Football

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David Bailey (Interdisciplinary Studies)
Troy Golden (Communication Studies)
Mohamed Kamara (Human Development & Family Studies)
Dane Olson (Business Administration)
Jaylen Thomas (Business Administration)
Gary Williams (Interdisciplinary Studies)

Golden Poms

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Mackenzie Hora (Psychology)
Rylee Zurbrigen (Human Development and Family Studies)
Jacy Pringle (Communications)
Mackenzie Lorenzen (Early Childhood Education)
Grace Whitworth (Health and Exercise Science)
Rylie Shipman (Human Dimensions of Natural Resources)
Mckenzie McMillan (Health and Exercise Science)
Gianna Jackson (Communications)

Men’s Golf

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Connor Jones (Business Admin – Marketing)

Women’s Golf

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Andrea Bergsdottir (Health and Exercise Science)
Tomine Bjerkelo (Human Development & Family Studies)
Gabriella Minier (Business Administration)

Soccer

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Kaitlyn Abrams (HES Health Promotion)
Aleyse Evers (Biomedical Sciences)
Rachel Hall (Business Administration)

Softball

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Peyton Allen (Business Administration )
Julia Cabral (Communications Studies)
Kaitlyn Cook (Health and Exercise Science)

Swimming and Diving

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Jessica Albanna (Health and Exercise Science)
Katelyn Bartley (Mechanical Engineering )
Amanda Hoffman (Human Development and Family Studies)
Liza Lunina (Nutrition and Food Science)
Sarah Mundy (Nutrition and Food Science)
Caroline Perry (Health and Exercise Science)
Hannah Sykes (Nutrition and Food Science)
Sydney Whitty (Human Development and Family Studies)

Tennis

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Radka Buzkova (Communication Studies)
Emily Dush (Tourism Management)
Ky Ecton (Finance)
Sarka Richterova (Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts)

Men’s Track and Field

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Dawson Besst (Biomedical Sciences)
Ryan Birkmeier (Civil Engineering )
Noah Bodewes (Biomedical Sciences)
Mason Brown (Business Administration )
Thomas Chaston (Economics)
Brock Dykema (Health and Exercise Science)
John Fulton (Biological Sciences)
Lars Mitchel (Mechanical Engineering)
Michael Mooney (Communication Studies)
Jared Putney (Communication Studies)
Cameron Ross (Economics)
Drew Thompson (Biomedical Sciences)

Women’s Track and Field

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Bailee Carr (Business Admin-Accounting )
Yolonda Johnson (Political Science)
Lexie  Keller (Human Development & Family Studies)
Lauren Neugeboren (Biomedical Sciences)
Sydney Petersen (Biomedical Sciences)
Annabel Stafford (Animal Science)
Lauren Turner (Environmental Health)
Carly Wall (Biomedical Sciences)

Volleyball

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Kennedy Stanford (Journalism and Media Communication)

By Louise Uffelman
May 12, 2023

Hurricane season is an uneasy time for Wesley Rentz ’02. As senior director for Southeast Cotton Operation at Olam Cotton, he’s tasked with buying cotton futures — usually two years in advance — and cotton bales at the farm gate. Asa rain-set crop, the timing and the amount of rainfall is the difference between a harvest of low-grade to mid-grade bolls. And that translates into dollars in or out of pocket.

The Southeast, he explained, doesn’t typically produce high-grade cotton, and that’s directly linked to the weather. “October and November are fairly wet months, and that’s whenthe cotton bolls open. The years where we’ve had a lot of rain created some challenges in finding enough buyers to take those lower-grade bolls.”

When Rentz signs a forward contract with the grower, he obviously won’t know the quality of the cotton until it’s harvested. “That’s an area we want to make sure we have a good relationship with that farmer — that they’re a good credit risk.

“It’s a fairly high-stress environment,” he mused. “Risk management is one of the most important skills to have in this job.”

After teaching English in Thailand and China for a few years, Rentz joined Weil Brothers Cotton Inc. in 2005. When cotton futures dramatically spiked in 2008, the 100-year-old family-run company decided to close, and Rentz opted for an MBA to see where that led him. It took him right back to the cotton division within Olam International, the second-largest exporter of U.S. cotton. An early assignment was to grow the firm’s market share in Mexico. “We went from 0% to 10% of the market share in two years. Mexico is a tricky country to work with — there’s a lot of credit risk — but it was really neat to build the supply chain and work on the marketing, sales and management aspects.”

Rentz, who is based in Greenville, South Carolina, and is amember of the American Cotton Shippers Association, sources his cotton from Virginia to Alabama. “We basically buy any cotton we can get our hands on. The U.S. mills use mostly mid- and low-grade cotton to manufacture your white t-shirts, your underwear, your socks and some home furnishings.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Rentz breathed a sigh of relief. “Parts of South Carolina were hit pretty hard, but so far this fall has been good for the cotton crop in the Southeast,” he said. “However, there’s never a dull moment.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Olivia Fitzgibbon was an active and engaged college student, living on campus and enjoying life in the Donaghey Scholars Honors Program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

“Being in the Donaghey Scholars was good,” Fitzgibbon said. “When I was on campus, being in such a close environment, you get to make friends and pick each other’s brains. I’ve been off campus since COVID. Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Scott supported me and have been rocks for a good many years. It’s been unconditional support when it matters.”

When COVID came on the scene, the Little Rock native found herself living at home, taking classes online, and no longer able to get out and see her friends. Like many, she explored new hobbies to fill up her free time.

A marketing major, Fitzgibbon had always been a creative person, enjoying photography, graphic design, and web design. She had always wanted to learn more about sewing, and she used her unexpected free time from the pandemic to do so.

“When the pandemic hit, I needed an outlet because I wasn’t on campus anymore like I was the first two years of college,” she said. “I’m really happy to see myself grow. I think I am better for it.”

Three years later, and the graduating senior has turned her love of sewing into a new career. She will be working as a fiber arts teacher at the newly reopened Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, teaching art enthusiasts the art of sewing and mending.

“I’ll also be teaching some classes on how to repurpose garments into other things,” Fitzgibbon said. “I’m excited about that class. I think it will be popular with younger people who are into repurposing clothes.”

She even combined her new love of sewing to complete her capstone project for the Donaghey Scholars Honors Program.

“The project was a mixture of history and sewing, an anthology of different historical textile pieces that was called ‘Unfettered Stitches,’” Fitzgibbon said. “It was nice to do something creative outside of my degree.”

Fitzgibbon will graduate this semester with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing. Along with her job at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, she will also be looking for a job to put her marketing skills to use. She already works part time at Andrews Autosport since 2020, where she maintains the company’s website, created their logo, and helps with branding.

Fitzgibbon is especially grateful to Dr. Seunghyun Kim, assistant professor of marketing, who taught her graphic design and web design skills through the Adobe Creative Suite programs. She said that the skills she learned in Dr. Kim’s classes have been helpful in building her career, leading to many internships.

She’s worked as a communications intern at the Clinton Foundation, where she filmed weekly video segments from the children’s culinary camp, organized the Green Expo, wrote press releases, and helped plan the Ruth Bader Ginsburg lecture.

“Working at the Clinton Foundation was fun because there was always something going on,” Fitzgibbon said. “I’d run around and interview kids and make videos. Kids will say and do anything to get in front of the camera, so we were always laughing.”

She also worked as a public relations intern at the Sells Agency, an intern at BSR REIT, and as a web developer intern at Doughnate House.

“I did internships for several summers, and I’m glad I did them,” she said. “I think the experiences and the chance to try something new is invaluable for my career.”

Christie’s brought in $426.6m ($506.5m with fees) across its two-part evening sale in New York on Thursday (11 May), a decent result “considering the world we’re in”, as the chairman of the auction house’s 20th and 21st centuries departments Alex Rotter put it after the sale. “We felt we were going into a situation that could be difficult,” he said, alluding to an economic picture clouded by persistent concerns of a possible recession and banking crisis, and interest rates that are significantly higher than even during the last major US auction season in November. Rotter added, “the art market needed a boost”.

And indeed, the auction house received a significant boost from a set of important collections that were consigned for the series of spring sales that kicked off Thursday. The evening began with a dedicated auction of 16 works that belonged to the late Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse. Every lot sold, bringing in $150.5m ($177.7m with fees). The group was led by a small and intense Francis Bacon self-portrait from 1969, which set off a contest between Christie’s specialists fielding phone bids that pushed it past its $28m high estimate. The collector on the line with Olivier Camu, the auction house’s deputy chairman for Impressionist and modern art, prevailed with a winning bid of $29.7m ($34.6m with fees).

The Newhouse sale’s other top lots included a popping Picasso portrait of the photographer Lee Miller from 1937, which passed its $20m low estimate to hammer at $21m ($24.5m with fees), and a modestly sized but dynamic painting by Willem de Kooning, Orestes (1947). The De Kooning was expected to bring at least $25m, which it did, hammering at $26.5m (with fees, the price came to $30.8m).

The sale’s opening lot, a typically otherworldly wall relief by Lee Bontecou, the singular American sculptor who died last November, very nearly broke her auction record of $9.1m. Spirited bidding sent the untitled steel, wire and textile work (made in 1959-60) past its $5m high estimate, eventually hammering for $7.2m ($8.6m with fees).

A suite of three large Jasper Johns canvases fared less well, with each hammering for a price below its low estimate. Even so, there was no risk of any serious flops as every lot in the Newhouse collection sale was guaranteed.

Things got more interesting in the 56-lot evening sale of 20th-century art that immediately followed, in which two works were withdrawn and ten lots failed to sell, delivering a sell-through rate of 81%. Just over half of the lots (28 of 54) were backed by guarantees.

The top lot of this sale—and the entire evening—was a large, stylised tropical landscape painting by Henri Rousseau, Les Flamants (1910), which Christie’s expected to sell for between $20m and $30m.

Like many lots in the evening’s second leg, it benefited from strong participation by bidders in the crowded Rockefeller Center salesroom, with multiple specialists and a young man on his phone seated in the fourth row “holding the whole room in suspense”, as auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen put it. In the end, a phone bidder on the line with Conor Jordan, a deputy chairman for Impressionist and modern art, logged the winning bid of $37.5m ($43.5m with fees). That result was more than 10 times the previous auction record for a Rousseau, set back in 1998. (Shortly after losing out on the painting, the underbidder headed for the exit with mega-dealer Larry Gagosian, who had been sitting nearby.)

The two other auction records broken on Thursday evening came at more modest price points. The small, luminous canvas The Fountains (1926) by Transcendental painter Agnes Pelton—whose travelling retrospective was on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2020—surpassed its high estimate of $2.5m to hammer for $2.8m ($3.4m with fees), or more than 13 times her previous auction record. And a glowing ceramic sculpture by Ken Price, M. Green (1961), more than doubled its high estimate to sell for a hammer price of $440,000, or $554,400 with fees, ahead of his previous record of $509,000.

The Price sculpture was part of a suite of nine works on offer that had belonged to the late Chicagoan collectors Alan and Dorothy Press. Those works collectively brought in $37.2m ($44.4m with fees), despite one of the group’s major works—Philip Guston’s late, gloomy canvas Pull (1979)—failing to reach its $6m low estimate and ultimately going unsold. Another Guston from the Press collection, Chair (1976), sold below its low estimate ($12m) for a hammer price of $8m ($9.6m with fees) to a young woman seated at the back of the saleroom. Apparently a big fan of post-war figurative painters (or bidding on behalf of one), she later snapped up Alex Katz’s large, warm portrait of his wife, Red Band (1978), with a bid equal to its low estimate, $2m ($2.4m with fees).

While the Presses’ collection produced mixed results, a group of seven works by David Hockney, Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper from the collection of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen sparked the evening’s most sustained fervour. All seven works hammered for prices above their high estimates thanks to competitive bidding from clients in the room and on the phone lines. The two most expensive of Allen’s three Hockney landscape paintings on offer were scooped up by the same client bidding via senior specialist Cristian Albu, for $16.5m and $12.4m (with fees, $19.3m and $14.6m, respectively).

The seven works from Allen’s estate brought in a hammer total of $75m ($88.8 with fees), pushing his collection’s total take up another decimal point from last November’s $1.6bn tally, to $1.7bn.

“People want history with their paintings,” Rotter said after Thursday’s sales, underlining the marketing power of bringing individuals’ and couples’ collections to market. “We are the house of collections.”

Rival auction house Sotheby’s will try to claim that title on 16 May with its stand-alone auction of works from the collection of late Warner Bros Records executive Mo Ostin. Sotheby’s expects the evening sale’s 15 lots to bring in as much as $120m. Christie’s, for its part, will sell 214 works from the collection of late Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston trustee Gerald Fineberg across two sales on 17 and 18 May that the auction house expects could bring in as much as $270m.

Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s estimate their spring sales in New York could bring in more than $2.2bn, despite the current economic headwinds.

If you’ve got an idea for a project or artwork that will bring colour and joy to the heart of Sydney, we want to hear about it.

We invite Australian and international artists, curators and creatives of all genres to share their ideas and be part of our Art & About Sydney program.

Whether you’re a visual artist, performer, filmmaker, musician or a theatre company, we’re looking for inspiring ideas that are new, innovative, demonstrate artistic excellence, are participatory and inclusive, and create unique experiences through diverse and interesting collaborations.

For each project that is selected to be part of our program, we’re offering up to $60,000 as well as resources to assist artists including creative concept development, support with production and development applications, security, marketing and PR.

Since it was established 22 years ago, Art & About Sydney has become an internationally renowned program that attracts artists and collaborators from all corners of the globe.

Previous Art & About works

Works that have previously featured as part of Art & About Sydney include:

Lost Figures – a large outdoor mural that tells the story of Patyegarang – a young Aboriginal woman who played a significant role between the Aboriginal and British in 1788 – and William Dawes – an engineer and astronomer who worked with Patyegarang in 1790-91 to create what is now considered the first written account of the Sydney Aboriginal language.

Passenger – an immersive work that involved the audience riding in a moving suburban bus through Sydney streets, overhearing a conversation between 2 fellow ‘passengers’.

Bandaloop – one of the world’s leading dance companies brought its pioneering ‘vertical dance’ to Australia for the first time. Turning the dance floor on its side, the work had previously been performed in theatres, museums, on skyscrapers, bridges, billboards, historical sites and on cliffs around the world.

Bodies in Urban Spaces – a group of movement artists clad in colourful sweat-shirts ran, jumped and squeezed themselves into, on, around and under the urban landscape in a performance of living human sculpture.

A Million Things That Make Your Head Spin – an art installation in Customs House that incorporated 10 kilometres of different coloured ribbons woven together to create a multi-storey kaleidoscope.

HEARD.SYD – 30 life-size ‘horses’ dancing in unique, choreographed pieces transformed Pitt Street Mall into a large performance space.

“Art & About Sydney is renowned for showcasing works that attract thousands of visitors into the city to enjoy each year,” Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore said.

“This is about celebrating our city’s creativity and imagination, with local and international artists bringing their unique ideas to our parks and squares, streets and laneways.”

Applications close on Tuesday 13 June and works can be presented from November 2023.

Make it happen.

Very volatile organics (VVOCs) such as ethylene oxide in foods and the gas components in water can be analyzed in accordance with regulations thanks to the boost in sensitivity augmenting the capabilities of traditional headspace or solid-phase microextraction (SPME) when run on less sensitive detectors.

Register Free: https://www.chromatographyonline.com/lcgc_w/new-life

Event Overview:

Modern analytical laboratories still suffer from lengthy and laborious manual preparation steps and low sensitivity. This is the case especially with ageing gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) systems and the need to detect ever-decreasing levels imposed by regulatory bodies. Ingress of water or unwanted volatile interferences from the extraction process always pose an additional challenge, oftentimes resulting in poor-quality data.

Robotic automation is commonly used to reduce preparation steps and increase productivity, and its effectiveness can be improved further with the addition of a sample concentration system. This significantly enhances the sensitivity of VOC/SVOC analysis by HS- and SPME-trap and/or thermal desorption (TD).

This webinar will review how very volatile organics (VVOCs) such as ethylene oxide (amongst other residual fumigants) in foods as well as the gas components (Freons R-12, R-22 and vinyl chloride) in water can be analyzed in accordance with regulations and beyond. This is thanks to the boost in sensitivity augmenting the capabilities of traditional headspace or solid-phase microextraction (SPME) when run on less sensitive detectors. Thus, lower detection limits can be reached while maintaining focused, sharp peaks and good signal-to-noise for confident detection.

Examples will be shown of the adoption of the Centri platform in routine analysis and in those research workflows where full sample characterization is needed to make better decisions. Another inherent benefit of Centri is its compatibility with hydrogen carrier gas, future-proofing ageing GC-MS and safeguarding against rising helium shortages. Centri extraction and concentration platforms easily integrate with existing assets so that maximizing ROI is possible with minimal capital investment.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the sensitivity enhancement achievable by combining your GC-MS with the Markes world-beating backflush focusing technology to address challenging applications.
• See how efficiencies are maintained with unattended sequencing of all sample introduction modes—HS-trap, SPME-trap, and TD—for combined productivity and versatility.
• Understand how in-built multi-gas technology can bring your ageing GC-MS into the future, speed up analysis time, and reduce cost/sample by allowing the use of hydrogen carrier gas with no hardware changes, as well as remove dependency on gas bottles by using generators.
• Hear about full sample characterization using complementary techniques with complete automation on a single platform (Centri 360), which is ideal for researchers needing to obtain maximum sample detail.

Who Should Attend:

• Laboratories needing dedicated, high-throughput, high-sensitivity analysis by headspace, SPME, and SPME Arrow or TD to answer growing business demands
• Scientists interested in simplifying and expediting volatile organics analysis, whether for discovery and development or routine monitoring and quality control
• Environmental, food safety, and human health scientists investigating target lists of trace level VOCs in a variety of sample types by GC-MS
• Laboratory managers, directors, and supervisors interested in how state-of-the-art analytical instrumentation can enhance existing or ageing GC-MS assets with minimal capital investment, expanding capabilities, maximizing ROI, and providing a competitive edge

Speaker:

Rachael Szafnauer
Product Marketing Manager, Extraction & Enrichment
Markes International

Rachael Szafnauer received an MSci in Forensic Science from the University of South Wales, UK. Her final-year project focused on fingerprinting emerging psychoactive substances using advanced techniques such as GCxGC–TOF MS in collaboration with Markes International. She later took up the role of thermal desorption product specialist at Markes, providing technical and application support to the commercial team. She then took on her current role as product marketing manager for the Centri product line and specializes in the development of applications using extraction and enrichment techniques for GC-MS.

Register Free: https://www.chromatographyonline.com/lcgc_w/new-life

It is no surprise to see a big shift in consumer behaviour and marketing trends as we enter the post-pandemic era. However, creativity and innovation remain at the heart of all that is marketing today, and celebrating the achievements made by the marketing community and agency minds behind the work was crucial to us at this year’s MARKies Awards.

Taking home the coveted overall “Best of Show – Campaign” is Open to Art and Saatchi & Saatchi emerged victorious in the “Best of Show – Agency” category.

The team at Open to Art had their hand full winning four gold and three silver trophies.

Open to Art was launched to develop a campaign platform that positions HSBC at the forefront of digital art and culture, as well as to drive brand awareness and PR value via long-term activations and events.

The idea of the campaign was built on a consumer research which uncovered art, specifically digital art, was one of the fastest growing trends for younger consumers. The popularity of the Digital Art Fair and Hong Kong Art Fair’s digital installation among GenZ and Millennials was also very evident through HSBC’s social listening. 

As such, the team developed a year-long initiative that aims to allow the entire city to both exhibit and experience digital art. As one of the largest banks in Hong Kong, HSBC converted many physical and digital spaces, including events, branches, traditional media spaces and even virtual ones, into art spaces.

The brand hopes to drive the relevancy between the bank and art by creating opportunities for the local community to enjoy these experiences in ways they otherwise could not, while also highlighting Hong Kong’s brightest digital creators.

As part of the campaign, the brand developed “Art of Progress”, a live multimedia installation in its wealth centres, using AI and historical data from the Hang Seng Index to create real-time art pieces in a traditional Chinese style. It also showcased its billboards in high-traffic locations featuring both HSBC’s partnership with M+ for Kusama exhibition and local digital multimedia creator. The innovative interactive element opened up a way which consumer can interact with art, symbolling the spirit behind “Open to Art”.

Furthermore, HSBC also collaborated with K11 in creating some of the world’s largest NFT exhibitions, including turning K11 Musea into a guided tour of digital art. It also developed an “Open to Sound” installation on the West Kowloon Harbourfront, giving a live experiential sound experience to one of Hong Kong’s iconic water front.

Meanwhile, Saatchi & Saatchi took home the large haul of six gold, five silver and two bronze trophies. Across the three campaigns Saatchi & Saatchi entered, the campaign “Open to Art”, which was done for the client HSBC Hong Kong, won four gold and three silver trophies. 

Meanwhile, the agency’s another campaign done in partnership with New World Development titled “Share for Good” won two golds, two silvers and one bronze trophy.

Coming in at a close second was Hardchi Creative which secured five gold trophies. Other big winners included Durian HK, Mindshare Hong Kong, Leo Burnett Hong Kong and Omelette.

This year’s entries were filled with unrivalled creativity and innovative marketing professionals who pushed boundaries. The celebrations took place in JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong on 11 May 2023. MARKETING-INTERACTIVE would also like to thank our 26 judges who took time out of their busy schedules to go through the entries.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners. Please check the full list of winners here. 

Related articles:

Biggest winner of Loyalty and Engagement Awards Hong Kong 2023 unveiled
MARKies awards 2022 Hong Kong winners unveiled

Oozing mounds, supple paper pods, and tightly coiled handles capture the vast range of color, texture, and shape within Drip! Drop! Slice! The first guest-curated exhibition at the You Are Beautiful Gallery and the project of Colossal’s founder and publisher Christopher Jobson, the show is vibrant and energetic as it brings several mediums and works by nine artists to the Chicago space. There are tufted tapestries by the anonymous Mz. Icar Collective, Brian Giniewski’s signature drippy pots, and a collection of wildly popular mugs from Lolly Lolly Ceramics, all of which exude the playful, optimistic tone of the You Are Beautiful message.

Find available pieces on the gallery’s site, and stop in to see the works in person through July 8.

 

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 ‘Drip! Drop! Slice!’ Bursts with Color and Texture Inside the You Are Beautiful Gallery appeared first on Colossal.

“When you look into the walls of an ice cave, you are looking into the past as if you were suddenly inside of a time capsule that had been buried for 500 to 1,000 years,” says Ryan Newburn. “Every air bubble that you see is oxygen from a different time period. Every speckle of ash is from a different volcanic eruption.”

Raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and now based in Reykjavik, Newburn is closely acquainted with the ice caves that surround his adopted home. He first came to Iceland in 2018, training on the enormous Vatnajokull Glacier before working as an expedition guide and eventually launching his own tour company, Ice Pic Journeys, with his fellow American business partner Mike Reid.

Today, Newburn ventures into the frozen caverns with groups, photographing them and the landscape along the way. His images capture the immensity of the arctic masses, their smooth, ribbed surfaces, and the shapely contours of caverns and rivers carving through the ice. Explorers are often seen in the distance, at the end of a rippling, rocky tunnel or precariously posed beneath a cluster of sharp icicles to showcase the scale of the openings.

Occupying such an ancient and always evolving space is an experience that’s difficult to photograph, Newburn shares, because the constant trickle of melting water, the roar of distant rivers, or even the unique interplay of light and glacier are impossible to depict entirely. “Underneath the ice, where the sun cannot penetrate,” he says, “your eyes slowly adjust from the bright sun to the glowing deep blue crystal walls of the ice cave. The more that your eyes adjust, the more saturated the blue gets. It’s a surreal visual experience that you cannot get from any photo of an ice cave.”

 

While shades of blue dominate most of his images, much of the walls are transparent and crystalline, making it appear as if you could “gaze into it for miles.” This clarity, he explains, is because glacial ice has low oxidation, about 10 to 15 percent only, due to the extreme pressure exerted during their formation that forced much of the oxygen from the snow as it compacted.

Although exploring these spaces is dangerous—Newburn emphasizes the necessity of proper gear and a guide who knows the ins and outs of performing crevasse rescues—it’s also an experience that truly only happens once. He elaborates:

What’s even more unreal is realizing that when you discover an ice cave for the very first time, you are the only human that has ever been inside. On a planet where almost every area of land has been explored, the glacier provides you with never-ending caves and structures to discover. This is because the ice is always melting away and forming something new that didn’t exist yesterday and won’t exist next year. This creates an unending sense of wanderlust of what I am going to stumble upon next when exploring.

Newburn shares many of his glacial adventures on Instagram, and you can find more about his company’s expeditions on its site.

 

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 Through Gripping Photos, Ryan Newburn Captures the Depths of Iceland’s Ancient Glacial Caves appeared first on Colossal.

_{By: Lauren Weinberg, Chief Marketing Officer, Square}

For CMOs specifically and marketers generally, determining where, when, and how to make marketing investments remains both art and science, even in our increasingly data-driven world.

As marketers, we shouldn’t expect to get everything right since we’re always adapting and evolving based on constantly changing industry and socio/macroeconomic factors. Still, while it should go without saying, but doesn’t, marketers need to be able to tie their investments to driving business results. Not all investments need to be tied to short term outcomes, but all investments do need to tie back to some business outcome.

In other words, for every marketing strategy and tactic, if you can’t clearly articulate what success means and how it effectively will be determined, don’t make the investment.

My advice, think about the balance between demand creation and demand capture. Create metric frameworks that combine short- and long-term success measures, including not just immediate transactions, but brand perception and consideration, which drive longer-term and sustainable performance and financial metrics. This helps you and your stakeholders understand and assess the intent and impact of your investments.

Be in the data

There is no such thing as the perfect measurement solution. Consumer patterns and the digital landscape move at the speed of culture, posing new challenges for marketers trying to accurately and absolutely measure ROI, especially when it comes to measuring brand marketing where there are fewer attributable touch points. Consequently, and in the absence of certainty, value progress over perfection. If this was easy, all brands would have figured it out already.

How do you do it? First, define your strategy for measuring short- and long-term goals. Then, test various technologies within your martech stack that might achieve these. Next, understand how these new technologies integrate with your existing stack, consider how each measures results, and how you’ll gauge and define success with each. Always continue to test and iterate and seek ways to improve your measurement inputs and outputs.

Finding insights in the data is where the tie of marketing investment to business results really lies. Data-driven insights will allow you to be more agile so you can either increase or contract spend as business performance varies. Take these insights and then push to evolve your measurement approach so it’s measuring what matters, not simply what it can.

Invest in brand awareness

Performance marketing will always be critical to generate leads and conversion, but performance and brand are not mutually exclusive and it’s still necessary to invest in long-term brand building to solidify awareness, steer perception, garner trust and generate demand. With only short-term performance orientation, you lose the ability to communicate brand values and distinctions, which are necessary in creating sustainable and long-term value.

While awareness investment undoubtedly returns value, there are a number of strategic approaches that drive awareness and consideration, each with their own strengths. The key is activating a mix for optimal growth velocity and investment efficiency. Increase investments in growing share of voice through new and organic channels, product seeding, events, and tradeshows, and earned media.

While brand marketing can be harder to measure, this shouldn’t put limitations on determining investment strategy, especially now, when economic uncertainty has led to media pricing efficiencies. It means brands have more opportunity to invest in market share capture.

Take principled risks

Even with a well-defined strategy, brands need to be nimble so they can not only adapt in a moment but make space to experiment and try new things. Risk-taking should be in every marketing organization’s DNA.

With risk-taking celebrated, during planning you’ll be able to reserve time and budget to test new strategies, and tactics. Creativity loves constraint, economic and otherwise. Start by taking small principled risks so you can iterate and learn quickly without investing too heavily in a novel tactic that doesn’t pan out. Keep your ear to the ground on what matters most to your customers and lean in during moments that matter. A few examples include investing in hyper-local activations, influencers, and partnerships. Moving at the speed of culture requires agility and speed. When executed well, these activations build trust and demonstrate your commitment to understanding your customers.[1]

Transparency equals advocacy

Regular reporting of efforts and results with your CEO, CFO and marketing organization is the key to advocating and influencing marketing investment. It’s important to over communicate, be transparent and accountable, and continue educating those who may not understand marketing as you do. Consistent updates highlighting objectives, approach, findings, learnings, and next steps keeps everyone aligned. By including what didn’t work, what did and what was learned enables everyone—and your marketing—to get better.

There is no “right” answer when it comes to marketing, and in today’s world, brands are being given the opportunity to return to a beginner’s mindset and find new, unique ways to achieve their goals. With smart and strategic investments, I am more bullish than ever on marketing’s ability to deliver growth.

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Lauren Weinberg is the Chief Marketing Officer of Square, where she leads global marketing and communications for the $80B company that provides technology and software solutions for millions of business owners all over the world.