Kim Gaskill visits the University of Arkansas to examine the newly remodeled Razorbacks stadium and its 15-foot bronze hog statue, questioning whether spending on aesthetic investments meaningful mainly to insiders is worth the cost when trying to reach a broader audience.
Good morning from the University of Arkansas. I'm Kim Gaskill, and this is the Daily Spark. I'm sitting here outside of the newly remodeled stadium for the Arkansas Razorbacks. Took quite a while, longer than they had expected, but it is beautiful, and they put a very interesting bronze statue sculpture out front. Well, a couple of them actually, but the one that caught my eye was a huge 15-foot-high bronze statue of several Razorback hogs, wild hogs. It was quite impressive, but I thought to myself, wow, somebody was commissioned to do that sculpture, and I bet it was not cheap. How much of the budget was designated for just that? Had nothing to do with the stadium. It's aesthetics only. But it's been amazing to talk with the students as they walk by here and how proud they are of this statue. Now, if you're not a Razorback fan, it's probably pretty gaudy and not very significant, but to a Razorback fan, it's absolutely awesome. So I got to thinking, how much emphasis do we put on things that only mean something to us? They don't really have meaning to many other people outside of our business or outside of our community or outside of our circle, but they have meaning to us. Are we putting too much emphasis on things, especially in our business, that really don't impact the audience that we're trying to inform or educate or impress or influence? It's great to have things that you find interesting and awesome. But if you're spending huge amounts of your budget on things that don't give that same emotion to your audience, are you spending your money in the right places? I personally think it's a beautiful statue, and I had to get a couple of selfies, of course. That's all I got for you today. See me next time on the Daily Spark.
