Internationally famous graffiti artist, Banksy was in Detroit recently and he did what graffiti artists do. He graffitied. One of his pieces ended up on a small fragment of a wall in the now derelict Packard plant. The image of a small boy with a paint can remembering “when all this was trees” is irony layered on irony with a thick coating of melancholy. It’s simultaneously hopeless and hopeful, acknowledging that change isn’t synonymous with death.
… or rather, it was.
After being tipped off on May 8, the folks at 555 Gallery assembled a recovery team and over a two-day period, they removed the piece and transported it to their gallery. They claim the effort was about preservation and in their defense, any building in this state of decay is likely to be destroyed at any moment. On the other hand, the critics point out that that may well have been Banksy’s intention.
Either way, a public art piece by an important, internationally recognized painter has been removed from the public eye (without permission) and no one quite knows what to do about it.
Local artist Matt Eaton (brother of another internationally renown graffiti artist, Tristan Eaton) summed it up this way on his Facebook posting about the incident:
“… and THAT is why you can’t have nice things, Detroit.”
South Street Skate Park, our across-the-street neighbors, are celebrating the Grand Opening of their new retail store on Main Street in beautiful downtown Rochester, MI today from 3-8 pm.
We’re sure there will be a great deal of sick shredding and rad wheelboard trickery for all of the young people. If you’re in the area and have no fear of breaking a hip, you should definitely check it out.
We, on the other hand, will be settling in with a nice bowl of Cream of Wheat and watching a Matlock marathon on Lifetime while we shake our fists at the neighbor kids until they get off of our lawn.
If you follow this blog at all, you know Pauline Alexander. As one of our lead designers, her work has been featured here regularly, which is why we have mixed emotions when we tell you that Pauline Alexander is no longer an employee of Brand Labs. She was great, but as of last Saturday night, she’s long gone.
She’s been replaced by this new woman, Pauline Turner. Sure, she looks just like our old Pauline, but who knows what she’s capable of? All we have to say is that this Turner woman has some pretty big shoes to fill when she shows up here next week. We sincerely hope she’s up to the challenge.
Our congratulations and good wishes go out to Pauline and her new husband, Nathan. May each of your days be better than the last.
… now get your ass back here. Your work is really piling up.
We’ve been very lucky here at Brand Labs over the last several years. We’ve managed to grow our business by several hundred percent since the Great Recession began. We’ve added hundreds of new clients and a couple dozen employees while our neighbors here in Michigan have seen some very dark times… and Michigan isn’t alone. It’s been rough for everyone and even though we like to believe that most of our success has been due to hard work and skill, we’ve seen enough clever, industrious people who have fallen on hard times for us to comfortably dismiss the idea that we’ve also been amazingly fortunate. For that good fortune, we are grateful.
If we may paraphrase the immortal Stan Lee: With great gratitude comes great responsibility. With that in mind, we’ve chosen to launch our first ongoing philanthropic effort: Brand Labs’ One Laptop Per Child Per Week program. Through this program, we will be donating one OLPC XO laptop every week. These laptops are given to children all over the globe (and right here in the States) to encourage education and connectivity in communities that are lacking in both.
We’re proud of this effort and we’ll mention it every single chance we get, and not because we want you to think we’re super awesome. We’re going to keep mentioning it because we’d like to encourage all of our customers and friends to consider giving to this very worthy cause… or the worthy cause of their choice.
Over the past decade, the world has proven two things to us. First, it can be a very cruel place. Second (and more importantly), mankind has a seemingly boundless capacity for giving, both from the heart and from the wallet.
We’ve taken a small step toward becoming the kind of corporate neighbor we intend to be. We’d be delighted if you’d like to join in…
An all-too-often overlooked feature of Analytics is the Map Overlay, located under the Visitors section. To the untrained observer, this tool simply shows you the regional breakdown of where your traffic to your site comes from around the globe, but with a little bit of refinement, you can use it to visually compare how users in different cities, states, and countries interact with your web marketing efforts, and understand how it impacts your bottom line.
While working with one of our clients from our home state of Michigan, we made great use of the Map Overlay to demonstrate a better way to target their PPC efforts. Their brand is strong, drawing customers and users from all over the world to their locations. Through the power of the Map Overlay, we were able to visualize where the site’s international traffic was coming from, and then combined it with their e-commerce reporting to see which countries converted the best.
Now, you don’t have to be a geography whiz to see that the Midwest made the strongest showing, with the Mitten State leading the pack, but this begs the question: if we’re getting most of our sales at home, how can we best reach out to our hometown crowd? We then segmented the e-commerce data for Michigan to see which traffic sources produced what revenue at what conversion rate. Our findings: Michigan residents were much more likely to convert from offline marketing efforts and organic searches; the company’s PPC efforts in the state were not drawing in the desired high-potential visitors they were in states like Illinois and Wisconsin.
Because of this analysis, we were able to re-target the client’s PPC efforts (and budget) away from Michigan to other more valuable states, and focus more of their SEO efforts on keywords that Michigan residents were converting on. Of course, this is just a single, isolated example of the depth of Map View’s utility and it bears noting that there are little gems just like this scattered throughout Google Analytics. We’ll offer tips and tricks as time goes on, but here’s one you can take with you right now: get Google Analytics on your darn site immediately. (We understand that this is more of an imperative than either a tip or trick, but you should listen and obey. You’ll thank us later)
Asking us to choose a favorite client would be like asking a parent to choose their favorite child. The suggestion alone is completely distasteful to us…
With that being said, Brand Labs is the most bestest client we’ve ever, ever had. They’re so totally awesome to work with and the entire process was an absolute pleasure. We couldn’t believe what an absolute delight they were and here’s what they had to say about us:
“Brand Labs is the best. Period. If you’re thinking of using anyone else, you’re a total dunderhead.”
Now, we don’t condone the use of antiquated Dutch insults, but they said it, not us. Anyhoo, be sure to check out the new homepage and the fancy, dynamic blog feed included therein. It’s the bestest.
Fittingly, Detroit’s motto is Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus… or for those whose Latin isn’t quite up to par: “We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes.”
We have a long and well-known history of troubled times, but despite that near-constant hardship, we endure, largely due to the efforts of people like John Hantz, whose Hantz Farm Project is taking steps to repurpose some long-neglected Motown real estate as farmland.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you dirt, make lemons.
We love our hometown… and in this case, we’re not talking about Detroit, but Rochester. Without gushing too awfully much, Rochester, Michigan is absolutely freaking adorable. Our main street (which, oddly enough, is called Main Street) boasts a variety of boutiques, cafes, and restaurants, as well as a veritable throng of happy suburbanites, walking their dogs and kids in the closest thing you can get to a Norman Rockwell-esque tableau in the modern world.
One of Rochester’s most popular and lauded traditions is the Big Bright Light Show. Each holiday season, every square inch of the building facades on Main Street are absolutely covered with Christmas lights. We’re not sure what the official count is, but we estimate it to be a skiddledyzillion individual bulbs. It’s quite something to see and we highly recommend making the trip if you’re in southeast Michigan any time in the next couple of weeks. If not, just watch the little video above. It’ll give you a glimpse into our adorable midwestern ways and at 4:28, you’ll see the magic moment. It’s well worth a look…
As we button up the office for the long Thanksgiving weekend, we’d like to take a moment to wish all of our clients (and the entire Volusion community at large) a safe and happy holiday! 2009 has been a fantastic year for Brand Labs and we owe a great deal of our success to our customers and supporters. The rest of our success comes to us through the tireless efforts and boundless creativity of our staff, for whom we are thankful each and every day.
… and remember, there’s more than one parade going on tomorrow. In the morning, for the 83rd time, thousands of volunteers will don embarrassing costumes and march straight down the center of Detroit on Woodward Avenue in America’s Thanksgiving Parade. Be sure to watch!
… and thanks again!
UPDATE: We failed to mention that our own Courtney Boehm was part of a long-standing Detroit Thanksgiving tradition: watching the Lions get pummeled on national television. Courtney had one of the best seats in the house, for the halftime show, at least. She can (barely) be seen here dancing on the 50 yard line as Vita Chambers sings “Heat Wave” as part of the show’s Motown tribute. While you can’t make out her face, at least she can rest well in the knowledge that she scored almost as many points that day as the Lions did.
There was a time, ’round these parts, that Faygo was, quite simply, summer in a bottle. There wasn’t a picnic anywhere in Detroit that wasn’t well-stocked with Redpop and Rock and Rye. The (more expensive) Coke and Pepsi were for the grownups, but we didn’t care. Why would we want some dull, brown pop (not“soda” here in the mitten state) when we could pull the tab on a fizzy, sugar-saturated tin can of bright red liquid magic? We cherished every bit of the sticky syrup as its sugar coursed through our veins and it stained our lips, hands and clothes, marking us as pink-hued warriors, battling against maturity as the impending school year loomed over the horizon like a hideous beast whose sole purpose was to remind us of the fleeting nature of childhood.
With Labor Day on its way and Summer waning quickly, we offer this love letter to the season of childhood and freedom. Enjoy.
Asking us to choose a favorite client would be like asking a parent to choose their favorite child. The suggestion alone is completely distasteful to us…
Fittingly, Detroit’s motto is Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus… or for those whose Latin isn’t quite up to par: “We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes.”
As we button up the office for the long Thanksgiving weekend, we’d like to take a moment to wish all of our clients (and the entire Volusion community at large) a safe and happy holiday! 2009 has been a fantastic year for Brand Labs and we owe a great deal of our success to our customers and supporters. The rest of our success comes to us through the tireless efforts and boundless creativity of our staff, for whom we are thankful each and every day.
