Marketing Lessons from: #TheDress

The original image is in the middle. At left, white-balanced as if the dress is white-gold.At right, white-balanced to blue-black. swiked  3 versions of the dress photo wired

Social Media Marketing lessons from #TheDress Debate of 2015 (Tumblr Dress Color)

If you were paying attention to Social Media recently (or even watching the news) you’ve heard about the attention explosion and great debate on ‘The Dress’ posted originally on Tumblr. Is it white and gold or is it Blue & Black? The answer to that is not what I want to discuss, there are plenty of blogs and posts dedicated to that answer. Instead I want to pose the marketing questions related to ‘The Dress’.

One thing that this demonstrates is the unpredictability of social media. I’ll be honest, I would have never in a million years guessed that posting a photo of a dress and asking what color it is would cause such a sensation and hotly contested debate. This demonstrates to me that as in all forms of marketing you need to try different avenues and ideas and see what resonates with people (hopefully with people that will become your future clients.)

The Great Dress Debate of 2015 also shows why web designers like us need to test on all sorts of devices and browsers. Unlike printed marketing materials like brochures and business cards, websites can and often do look very different depending on numerous factors. Just like the dress looked significantly different depending on what screen you were viewing it on, the same holds true for other images on the internet.

Websites rely a great deal on each individual users settings…some people prefer to have bright settings and others dark or muted, some people want magnification or larger text size and the various browsers give them the ability to change these settings. While there are some things a website designer can to do keep things close to standard there are limits and do you really want to override the preferences of the person you want to sell to so they see it the way you prefer instead of the way they prefer? (Some people want to see the dress as White and Gold and some people want to see it as Blue and Black.)

This is admittedly a drastic exaggeration of what happens and of course you want your products and company to be represented as accurately as possible which is why it is important to make sure your website has been designed with either a responsive or adaptive design and tested thoroughly to make sure that no matter what device or browser your website appears on it still looks professional and represents you well. (It will never look exactly the same to every potential future client but the key is getting it looking good on all the major options.)

There are many marketing lessons to be learned from this and similar viral social media events, what other lessons will you take from this and apply to your small business?

Stop and Smell the Roses…Remember to Enjoy being an Entrepreneur!