Monday, November 22, 2010

The Holidays and Branding

The holiday season (I'll save my defense of using that phrase for another post) is a time of rampant consumer joy in the US and most businesses want to take advantage of it. Many B&M stores deck the aisles with lights, trees, and Santas, and many online retailers do the same to their sites. Now I see nothing wrong with capitalizing on this to increase my business but I think you should do it in a way that preserves your brand imaging.

Here's an example from my shop this year. My usual banner:
My winter banner:
I kept the same blue background color, still the product images in overlapping circles, switched from a green cuttlefish in the logo to the same one in red, changed the text to white, replaced the watery swirls with snowflakes, and made sure to include one of my platypus ornaments prominently. When I changed my profile photo on Etsy I only made the minor change of adding some snowflakes and slightly reworking the cropping:
TO:
So while my shop now looks quite festive and wintery it's still quite clearly consistent with the visual branding my shop uses the rest of the year.

So go ahead and show off your seasonal items, change your banner, welcome Santa to your shop, but keep it clearly your shop not another random holiday site and stand out from the crowd.

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