Ah, stuffing. What a perfect topic to address in November. Breadcrumbs and giblets, all jammed into a turkey, which is then jammed into the oven, and eventually jammed into your gullet, thus living up to its name. Stuffing. After Thanksgiving dinner, you’re stuffed. 
 
What on earth does this have to do with creative services? 
 
Bear with us. We’re getting there. 
 
So. You had that big dinner, you’re feeling uncomfortably bloated. People always say it's the tryptophan in the turkey that makes you tired; we've read—and believe—that it's simply the act of over-stuffing yourself that wears you out. 
 
And now we circle back to things like layouts and website design and illustration. 
 
Stuffed. 
 
Overstuffed. 
 
Bloated. 
 
Uncomfortable. 
 
They all go together, right? 
 
Not always. 
 
More is more
 
You’ve had the phrase “Less is more!” drilled into your head from the first time you ever clutched a pencil. (Or stylus.) It’s true... to an extent. 
 
Remember, here at Copel Communications, we’re huge fans of creative rule-breaking. Indeed, that’s where the creativity often happens: right at the ragged boundary between “What you’re supposed to do” and “What you dare to do.” 
 
Of course, you can’t break a rule—and get away with it, let alone achieve a creative breakthrough—unless you know what the rule is in the first place, and how it works, and why it’s there. 
 
So let’s start with “Less is more,” assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, that it’s a “rule.” 
 
“Less is more” tells you to minimize your content. To maximize your negative space. To embrace silence, white space, and sentence fragments. Like this. It tells you to let the audience connect the dots in their mind, to let them enjoy the creative leap which requires them to fill in the gaps, Rorschach-like, between what you’re telling/showing them and how they fit into that story/presentation. 
 
That’s really valuable advice. Most of the time, it’s spot-on. 
 
Except when it isn’t. 
 
Put it this way: Do you always want your audience to make assumptions on their own? Do you always want them to fill in blanks from their own tool box? Do you always want them to have just the least possible information? Do you always want them to have clean, airy space? 
 
No, no, no, and no. There are countless exceptions to this rule. And many of them create the most engaging and enjoyable audience experiences you can imagine. 
 
We read an interview with the cinematographer who was shooting a James Bond movie. And he mentioned the “James Bond ‘see-it-all’ look.” Isn’t that beautiful? It tells you everything. 
 
When James Bond first sneaks into the villain’s secret laboratory/lair, do you just see a whiff of fog and a desk or two in a sterile room? Heck, no. You see it all, in perfect deep focus: the massive cavern carved out of the inside of a volcano, with missile-launch controls festooned with chrome dials and switches and blinking lights, and scores of evil-uniformed workers busily scurrying about, and the monorail with the “Evil Industries” logo on each car zipping by, and the shark tank with the bubbles, and the huge orchestral “reveal” score and it’s just a jaw-dropping overload which defines the big-screen experience. 
 
Less is more? Hardly. 
 
Another: Think of great illustrations. Sure, some can be sparse. But the most memorable are packed—stuffed—with detail. Don’t believe us? Norman Rockwell. So there. You can spend hours--happy hours—staring at one of his illustrations, diving down the rabbit holes of detail. He put a ton of work into every composition, and you, the viewer, get the reward. 
 
If you’re old enough to remember “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” those gorgeous hand-drawn cartoons were similarly packed—every square inch of them—with cool details. Ditto for the classic Rube Goldberg inventions. 
 
More modern examples exist, too. Think of, say, a movie or TV satire in the recently-departed MAD magazine. Just because that mag is gone, doesn’t mean that the over-stuffed illustration approach is gone, too. It’s been a staple of comic-book art since its inception, and lives on today in things like the graphic novel. 
 
Get stuffed
 
The important thing, for you as a creative resource, is to know when to employ this approach. There are times when, pardon our punning, your audience will be hungry for detail. They’ll want a “big meal” of information that they can over-indulge in. Your job, at that time: Reward them.
 
Got a creative challenge—stuffed or otherwise—you need help with? Contact us. We solve these kinds of problems every day. 

​We think that the title of this blog—“Do business gifts build business?”—is provocative. 
 
A question demands an answer. And a question like this—a yes/no question—is binary. It suggests that the answer is either “Yes they do” or “No they don’t.” 
 
What do you think? Do business gifts build business?
 
Here’s what we think. We think that that question is invalid. There are lots of activities you can do to build business; read virtually any article in this series to gain insights thereon. 
 
But when it comes to gifts, there’s a different dynamic at play. 
 
A whole new light
 
What, exactly, is a gift? It’s something freely given. Why? Just because. That’s the important part. It’s like love from a dog. It’s unconditional.
 
Put it this way: What if you gave someone—say, a client—a gift, with a little note card that says “Happy holidays. Enjoy this great gift. Now give us lots of business in return!”
 
It’s hard to imagine anything that’s more patently offensive. 
 
Here’s our point: While you can, and should, expend effort (and of course some money) on gift-giving to clients and prospects, set your expectations properly. You’re sending something to a client. That sure feels like a business transaction. But in this case, it isn’t. It’s a “just because.” It’s a time—an opportunity—to step outside your professional persona, to let your guard down, to connect with another person as a person, one-to-one, stripped of any business pretense. It’s like when your cat bombs your Zoom call and it’s embarrassing yet funny. It’s a reminder that life isn’t just about making money. 
 
That bears repeating: Life isn’t just about making money. Or, to quote one of our favorite lines from Citizen Kane, “It’s no big trick to make a lot of money ...if all you want, is to make a lot of money.” 
 
Pay it forward
 
It’s early November as we post this. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are still weeks away. But you should start thinking about your annual holiday business gift-giving now. 
 
Put it this way. What if you sent your biggest client a decidedly un-business-like gift this year? We can’t tell you how many desk sets, calendars, pens, business-card holders, and so on, we’ve received back when we were in the commute-to-an-office grind. They’re certainly nice, but we can’t remember who sent what. 
 
We had a vendor, however, who sent us some cheese on a cutting board, with a little knife. It has nothing to do with advertising, or voiceovers (yep, the vendor was a voiceover artist), or business of any kind. We still remember that vendor—his name was Ron—and we still have the little cutting board. Ron’s a nice guy. So there. 
 
Pick out something fun. Something personal. Something un-businesslike. Something you’d get a friend or relative. That kind of gift. 
 
So now we can revisit the provocative question which opened this article: “Do business gifts build business?” Sure, they might. Or they may not. Depends on the recipient. Depends on the gift. 
 
The real answer is “Who cares?”
 
Get into the holiday spirit early. It’s good for you. 
 
Have a comment? Drop us a line. We’d love to hear it.