Today, Google is celebrating the famed Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, who died last March (2016) in Miami of a sudden heart attack.

She was the first woman ever to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which is the prize of all prizes for architects.

Here is Google’s front page:

The building that is featured is the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. It’s an extraordinary piece of architecture. And in case you aren’t familiar with it, below is a Red Bull video of Maksim Kruglov skateboarding the building and its grounds. The building is just screaming to be skated. (Click here if you can’t see it below.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7lEGbAIU6M&w=560&h=315]

I’m not exactly sure why Google chose today to feature Hadid. Initially I thought it might be the anniversary of her death, but she died in March. Whatever the case may be, a quick search revealed that her Miami condo was just listed for $10,000,000. That’s probably not what they are celebrating.

It’s located at 2201 Collins Avenue (Unit 730) in the W Hotel Miami Beach. It’s 2,299 sf and features a totally separate guest apartment, which itself has one bedroom. The main suite was initially 2 units, but Zaha had them combined into a generous one bedroom.

Only $4,350 per square foot.

Below is a quick video prepared by the broker. You don’t need the sound on for this one. (Click here if you can’t see it below.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CD_xwYPbf8&w=560&h=315]

Those of you who know me or are regular readers of this blog, will know that I’m an avid social media user. 

My favorites – judging by battery consumption on my phone – are Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat (donnelly_b). I think it’s incredible what these platforms are doing to branding, marketing, personal connectivity, city building, and the list goes on.

To that end, the March issue of Harvard Business Review has an interesting article by Douglas Holt called, Branding in the Age of Social Media. Whether you’re running a company, a city, or a real estate development project, I think you’ll find the information relevant.

The article starts by describing a shift, brought about by social, whereby big brands are now struggling to capture the attention of consumers. Instead, consumers are listening to individuals and more grassroots movements.

“Or consider Red Bull, the most lauded branded-content success story. It has become a new-media hub producing extreme – and alternative – sports content. While Red Bull spends much of its $2 billion annual marketing budget on branded content, its YouTube channel (rank #184, 4.9 million subscribers) is lapped by dozens of crowdculture start-ups with production budgets under $100,000. Indeed, Dude Perfect (#81, 8 million subscribers), the brainchild of five college jocks from Texas who make videos of trick shots and goofy improvised athletic feats, does far better.”

So what should brands be doing? Holt argues that they need to tap into these developing subcultures and emergent ideologies:

“These three brands broke through in social media because they used cultural branding—a strategy that works differently from the conventional branded-content model. Each engaged a cultural discourse about gender and sexuality in wide circulation in social media—a crowdculture—which espoused a distinctive ideology. Each acted as a proselytizer, promoting this ideology to a mass audience. Such opportunities come into view only if we use the prism of cultural branding—doing research to identify ideologies that are relevant to the category and gaining traction in crowdcultures. Companies that rely on traditional segmentation models and trend reports will always have trouble identifying those opportunities.”

For me, this ties into one of my favorite lines from Simon Sinek: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” And now, thanks to social, it has become a lot easier to figure out what people and communities care about. It has become easier to figure out your why.

Do you see this as being relevant to your work? I am certainly thinking about it in the context of mine.