Marketing, telling the story, decking out your online shop window for Christmas or any season, is essential and can be a real buzz for your business and your feelgood factor.
Be sure to do it, to keep it alive and interesting, but keep your feet on the ground.
With all the techno wizardry at our disposal, the ease with which we can post, upload, comment, clamour and compete, it is essential the possibilities do not take you off the considered business path you have set yourself.
Imagine it is a long journey before the age of satnav. You plan it carefully. You have a clear and considered business development mapped out, drawn up using Stefan Töpfer’s invaluable advice on being active but also organised and realistic, and you set off.
Suddenly the wealth of things you can add, load, inflate and colour begins to be bewitch you. You lose track of both schedule, budget and the simple truths.
You start putting things in caps, making the typeface bigger and, heaven forbid, start lobbing in crass adjectives and exclamation marks.
Froth begins to clog your profile and message. Colours blur and in worse case scenarios claims become ambiguous “truths”.
Always be sure that what you are saying is accurate and qualified both about your business and in any comments.
There was a time, many moons ago, when I worked on newspapers and the colour age dawned. It was mad.
Instead of letting an amazing colour photograph stand alone on a page and be all the more powerful because it was the only colour on the page, journalists went bonkers and put colour borders on pictures and stories and put white text on purple background.
Why? Because all of a sudden they could.
We ended up with typographical pizzas.
Now it is the same for everyone, on the web and in general design terms because it is fast becoming the online DIY age.
But as well as colour that means words too. So, whatever you want to say, keep it simple and easy to understand. Resist inflated adjectives and be clear on the legal responsibilites.
Stick with the plan. Stay on track.
