Just this week, CNN revamped its webpage. Launched over the weekend, CNN updated the site to make it more user-friendly.
While many people critiqued the new design’s positives and negatives for the world’s leading news website, website users left mostly positive comments about the new design on the CNN blog, complimenting the new look.
While CNN claims user-friendliness is the reason behind the redesign, user-friendliness translates into something bigger. CNN wanted the website to look better. CNN wanted its site to have a makeover. CNN wanted its site to be pretty.
With all the user comments, CNN received compliments and reinforcement that society appreciates good looks. CNN, and any smart business, knows society participates in the politics of pretty.
If products look better, more people will buy them. If a product gets a makeover, more people will pay attention and take notice.The politics of pretty play out in the business world in similar forms to this all the time. With the recession, many brands redesigned logos, boxes, wrappers, and advertisements to make their products more appealing.
Hence, the politics of pretty are present every time you decide to go into a store, make a purchase, or put food in your grocery cart. Put simply, who picks a bruised, spotted, disfigured apple over a shiny, red, unbruised, perfectly symmetrical apple?
And the politics of pretty in business just translates into the politics of pretty in society. Many people pick friends, associates, and significant others based on looks. Thus, businesses are extremely smart using pretty as a tactic towards consumers. People gauge what is desirable and make purchases based on their cognitive analysis of what looks best.
If it looks better to you, you will probably want it and perhaps buy it. In the least, you will pay attention to it. It’s pretty business, a somewhat petty business, but it works. The politics of pretty of everywhere, even on CNN.com or in your grocery cart.
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