Tag Archives: branding

Why not green?

I am a scientist working in a design school who researches colour. I sometimes get frustrated by the simplistic view of colour and its use in branding, marketing and advertising pervades the internet (where anyone can be an expert). People often misinterpret my own work and imagine that all sorts of simplistic ideas stem from my research. So, for example, imagine that there is a company (that is aiming to deliver sustainable and environmentally responsible power) that is looking to brand itself and also imagine that my research reveals that the colour green is associated with the environment and nature. Typically people may say (or imagine that I would say) that it is obvious that the company should use the colour green as the basis of its branding strategy. However, this is a very simplistic view and one that I certainly don’t subscribe to.

When a company is constructing a branding strategy one has to consider many facets of the branding and marketing. What is the proposition that the company is making? How can colour support that or help to communicate it? A company may, for example, even may an ironic statement where it chooses colours and imagery that is the opposite of what it really stands for, just as an example. I quite enjoyed reading a post today by thebrandsquad that gave quite an intelligent and thoughtful analysis of colour in branding (using a case study rather like the fictitious example I refer to above).

See also Greenwashing – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing

colour choice

I met a chap from an Advertising Agency today and was surprised when he offered me his business card. He didn’t offer me a single card; he offered me a selection from a fan of cards of different colour.

I chose the purple one and was then surprised when my PhD student told me she has chosen the same colour. A clever experiment in colour preference perhaps? Next time we meet I’ll have to ask him for the data. I hope he is keeping a record of which colour cards are proving most popular.

If you are interested in this you may like to have a look at my colour preference poll. After you take part in the poll (takes only a few seconds) you can see the results of the study so far.

colour branding survey

Please take a moment to take part in this colour branding survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HTJJ5L6

It will only take a few minutes. This is a survey conducted by one of my students in the School of Design (http://www.design.leeds.ac.uk/) at the University of Leeds.

When the survey is complete I will post a comment about the results here for those who are interested.

Colour ownership?

Can you own a colour?

The answer is almost certainly not. However, the law on colour use in branding and marketing is complex and there have been several high profile cases of companies slugging it out over the use of colour. I have previously posted about the dispute between Google and Microsoft – http://colourware.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/four-colour-primaries/.

There are two other high profile cases I know of. One is the objection by Orange (a British Telecoms company) to the use of the colour orange by Easy Jet – http://tinyurl.com/y8la766. The other is the dispute between chocolate manufacturers over the use of the colour purple in chocolate wrappers – http://tinyurl.com/y9cgyum.

 

However, in a paper published in the open access colour journal – Colour: Design and Creativity – Paul Green-Armytage argues that the key to many of these disputes about colour ownership lies in the definitions of colour. See http://www.colour-journal.org/2009/4/6/index.htm to read Paul’s full article.

lawsuit over colour in logo

Dollar General (http://www.dollargeneral.com) is a discount store based in the USA. They used distinctive yellow and black colour combinations in their advertising material. In March this year they filed a lawsuit against their competitor (Fred’s Inc) who they claim have damaged their business by copying the trademark yellow and black colours in certain marketing information.

The lawsuit accuses Fred’s of “unlawfully and deceptively” using Dollar General’s colour scheme and typeface in a new advertising campaign. The lawsuit says the only explanation for Fred’s moving away from a traditional blue-green color combination in its advertising is an intent to capture Dollar General’s brand awareness.

For further information see http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2010/03/08/daily27.html

Effect of colour names on consumer decisions

For several decades there has been a great interest in understanding how we use colour names. Do we use the same colour categories (even though they may be called different things in different languages) irrespective of language and culture; in other words, is our perception of colour the same across all cultures and this shapes our use of colour names? Or, is our perception of colour shaped by our language. A well-known study by Berlin and Kay in the late 1960s suggested that language is shaped by perception. But the alterantive hypothesis – known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – that perception is shaped by language also has support. We may soon know more about this issue because of an interesting on-line colour experiment being carried out by a scientist at Hewlatt-Packard. California-based Nathan Moroney’s multi-lingual colour-naming experiment uses a clever design that allows each participant to perform a small part of the experiment; but when lots of people take part – from all parts of the world and using different languages – some interesting and valuable data is collected. I won’t say any more about the work here because it is not complete yet; but I urge you to go and take part in the experiment. It only takes a minute or less to do it. And there is a debriefing document that you can read about the results obtained so far. Please visit http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Nathan_Moroney/mlcn.html.

Meanwhile a study by Skirinko (at the University of Virginia) and colleagues at Rice University reveals that the colour names that companies such for their products can have a big effect on sales. Consumer reactions are more positive to fancy names such as mocha as opposed to simple and generic names such as brown. The explanation for this is based on categorical perception; people use categories and a name such a mocha maps to a more positive cataegory than the simpler brown. So it is perhaps not jsut the colour of a product that affects sales; sales may also be affected by the langauage used to describe the colours of products.

The work by Skirinko et al. was published in Psychology and Marketing in 2006.

pink stinks?

PinkStinks (http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/) is a campaign and social enterprise that challenges the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls’ lives. The campaign has been running for 18 months and activists argue that while a wide variety of boys’ toys are available, those for girls are often predominantly pink. They argue that body image obsession is starting younger and younger, and that the seeds are sown during the pink stage, as young girls are taught the boundaries within which they will grow up, as well as narrow and damaging messages about what it is to be a girl.

It’s interesting that the notion of pink for girls and blue for boys has not always been so. A recent article on the BBC web site claims that in 1918 the Ladies’ Home Journal included the statement: “There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” For more see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8401742.stm.