Why?

‘’Whoah, that is powerful!’’ he said to me, nodding his head and thinking. He is a software engineer employed by a client of ours.  And I was talking about the most important thing one should ask a designer, or a design team.

Why?

If you own a corporation then you have a Brand manager who knows this already. But if you own a SME and ‘’all you want is some’’… logo design, a banner, a flyer, a website or a newsletter, when the designer returns some mock-ups… ask them WHY?

With branding is crucial to know the answer to why.  Why a certain font, certain colour or colours, a certain shape, a motto or character. If there is no reason behind the why… then you have a problem.

Creating a new website and the designer cannot explain why he or she decided to put the menu on the left or on the right, why your social media icons are in the footer and not the header, why your call to actions are in the middle and not on the side and which call to action is more visible than the other and what message goes where?

If there is no good enough reason behind how you communicate then you have lost before you opened your mouth.

‘’Yes, we know we should invest more into marketing’’.

But it was not marketing we were talking about. It was and it wasn’t. But mainly, it wasn’t.

See… the world is changing. Smart technology - phones or tablets have created a paradigm shift. Social media has done exactly the same. 

What does this mean? The way the world is interacting has changed and it is continuing to change, technology is pushing us towards different avenues of behaviour, social media has changed how we do things online, how we see things online, how we share things online… but it has done a lot more than that… it has been creeping into the way we do business online. Sorry. This last bit about business is wrong. And THIS is where our big challenge lies, when we really do want to help our clients SEE. Actually, the whole things is wrong. Scrap online and just think... life.

The world has changed. And this is affecting your business. Not your online business. Scrap online.

‘’Yes, we know we should invest more into marketing’’… a client was agreeing as we sat in a conference room not long ago. We were talking about rebuilding their online/digital presence.

Broken down into different services, we were talking about development and SEO and design and branding and advertising and business strategy. But if one took a good honest look at what we were actually doing… it would have concluded that we are bringing their business into 2012. It is an update, an upgrade, a strategic position that will insure, first of all: survival and... continuity.

It was not about marketing, or design or development. It was about being current. About being where the world is in 2012. About being functional. 

Understand that and you will see the rest as tools to grow your business. Not your online presence. The difference is key and thinking of your www as ‘’something up there’’ is something that you need to reassess.