“Make it darker” is not an acceptable form of feedback

Feedback can be a wonderful thing, as I’ve shared many times on here (like “ Feedback is a gift”), but only if it’s the right kind of feedback. If someone says “ I like it “, that’s not very helpful, because our clients are not the people that we build websites for. Their liking it or not is often irrelevant to the goal of the project.

In his book “ The Win Without Pitching Manifesto “, author Blair Enns says it like this:

We welcome the client’s input on the strategy and in exchange we ask him to grant us the freedom to explore various ways of executing it. This means we invite him to say, “That blue isn’t bold enough to deliver on our core value of strength.” But we explain that he is not invited to say, “Make it darker.” Suggestions on this front are always welcome, but dictates are not.

Of course, that puts more work back on us, as it should — we need to be able to defend all of our strategy, content, and design decision with solid reasons for everything, and never with “it just looks better that way”.

Related is something that David Ogilvy shared in his book “ Ogilvy on Advertising “:

“When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”