When you’re starting a business or rebranding your current company, an overriding factor to consider is the message you want your business to communicate to your customers. The answer to that question becomes your BRAND.
Once you know the message and values you want your brand to communicate and represent, then you pick a color that matches that brand message.
TIP: A good way to know what message you want to give is by knowing what type of consumer (target market) you want to reach.
ASK YOURSELF the following questions:
1) What are their needs and pain points? (aside from good prices, it could be reliability or family friendly or trustworthiness or fast service, etc).
2) What your competitors are not offering to their customers that you can? This is called ISP (Unique Selling Proposition—Sales people call it Value Proposition).
3) How can your products and services help meet those needs and desires?
The psychology of color is the study of color shades as a keen determinant of human behavior. For years people have studied how color influences human perceptions that are not obvious, such as the taste of food or the trustworthiness of your brand. Many marketers know that color is an important part of marketing because color can be used to influence and persuade consumers’ emotions and perceptions of products and services.
The chart below is the type of color guide used by us, marketers, to work on logos, websites, and many other iterations of brand messages.
Let’s take a quick look at how major brands utilize the psychology of colors to convey the right message.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s uses Red and yellow. The Red color stimulates appetite, urgency, huger and it attracts attention, and yellow stimulates the feeling of happiness and friendliness. The combination of red and yellow color cause a psychological effect of speed and quickness.
Fast food giants are not a place where you seat and get comfortable for long meals. With these colors, McDonald’s archives to bring customers in and despatches them out fast creating a fast return on their investment, which it’s perfect for their potential market. The red and yellow combination is seen not only with McDonald’s but with every other fast food giants.
Apple
Apple uses shades of gray which represent balance, calm and control. Other brands that also use gray to convey the feeling of calm and balance are Honda, the New York Times, Nike, Puma, among others (see color chart below).
Facebook
Facebook uses one of my favorite colors. Blue is the color of trust, strength, and dependability. In fact, many of you might have already heard people saying to use a blue shirt when attending a job interview or a sales pitch, in that blue transmits that trust needed for the other person to trust and approve of you or your ideas. Likewise, Facebook was a great color for an entrepreneur technology company that no one knew of back when it was founded in 2004.
Many corporations like Dell, HP, AT&T, IBM, American Express, WordPress, and Twitter use the color blue quite often in their branding communications to gain consumers’ trust. Brand marketers’ goal is to gain consumer trust because that turns regular consumers into loyal consumers, hence the reason why we choose our website name Blue Media Consulting. I know we are not Twitter, but we strive for success.
Google
I know what you might be thinking, “wait a minute, if most technology companies choose black and white and gray, why Google and Windows have chosen multi-colors for their brand?” Should we call them greedy because they want it all? Just kidding, the message multicolored rainbow brands try to convey is diversity– more than any other emotion each independent color represents. It takes a bold move to chose a multicolor logo as part of your brand, but done well it transmits a positive message of openness and inclusion.
Below you can see a chart of the Color Emotional Guide brand marketers use and observe with greater detail what message each of these brands are trying to communicate.
Download the Color Emotional Guide [ pdf ]
Personal Brand
Colors are also very important for personal brands to convey certain messages.
Ana Linares from Spain uses blues, greys, and blacks to convey new, modern, and independence
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfoqT2_nrf5/?taken-by=bannanitas
Kim Kardatian, for example, uses skin color, pale pinks and whites on her latest post to represent creativity and modern, while at the same time using colors that are currently in fashion.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfjArVllkEl/?taken-by=kimkardashian
Professional Marketers quite often find themselves with a bit of dilemma, they would like to promote marketing related stuff, but more than often marketers have discovered that it is better to pick a personal theme such as health, food, fashion, travel or simply lifestyle.
Famous Moz marketer Rand Fish doe just that. He does not promote marketing, but lifestyle and travel with warm colors.
Plase, tell us what your business color is, and what brand you have chosen –or plan to choose –for your brand. We will like to hear about your products and services, and would freely provide advice for you.
QUESTION: If you were a brand, what color would you choose?
Good Luck!
One thought on “How Do You Pick The Perfect Color For Your Brand?”
I would use PURPLE AND WHITE. Color for wise, creative, calm and balance