The Importance of Color in Branding

This will be part of a series on col­or, brand­ing and reflect­ing it not just through­out col­lat­er­al but with­in the total com­pa­ny cul­ture, writ­ten by NCD’s Mar­ket­ing Con­sul­tant Rochelle Joseph.

The Importance of Color in Branding

We’re wired to be affect­ed by col­or. Stud­ies show that col­ors nat­u­ral­ly affect our bio­chem­istry, for exam­ple: blues and greens are calm­ing, and are gen­er­al­ly appeal­ing, hence, those are the col­ors most often used in hos­pi­tals.  We also respond to col­or because cer­tain mean­ings have been learned and ingrained — green go, yel­low cau­tion. Either way, at a deep lev­el, we react.

While you gain fur­ther impact by adding sym­bols, type­face and a tag line, col­or con­veys a mes­sage with­out the need for words or sound. This should be a key con­sid­er­a­tion if your com­pa­ny deals inter­na­tion­al­ly, or if at least a por­tion of your mar­ket speaks anoth­er language.

The brain reg­is­ters col­or first, fol­lowed by a logo shape or sym­bol, then num­bers then words. A study done by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Loy­ola, Mary­land states that col­or increas­es brand recog­ni­tion by up to 80%! If you need any more con­vinc­ing, there is plen­ty of research out there, like this arti­cle on colorcom.com, which bul­let points sev­er­al stud­ies and stats.

So col­or is a key foun­da­tion­al com­po­nent that should be care­ful­ly cho­sen. You want to start with a col­or, then decide if you will add anoth­er one or two – and which ones  — to com­mu­ni­cate the mes­sage, inten­tion, val­ues and vibe of your com­pa­ny from your logo through all your col­lat­er­al, mar­ket­ing and any packaging.

If you study successful logos, you can easily see their foundational and accent colors, along with their symbols.

What is the col­or that comes to mind when I sim­ply say COKE? Red, right?  You may already be see­ing their sym­bol in your minds’ eye, the wave-like rib­bon… and quick­ly the font used for Coke may materialize.

Once a brand is estab­lished, oth­er com­po­nents can be devel­oped for new prod­ucts or to keep up with the times. There are points at which Coke com­mer­cials attached vary­ing tag lines and songs to their brand.  Remem­ber the wild­ly suc­cess­ful cam­paign using: “I’d like to teach the world to sing…” tagged with It’s the Real Thing? You com­plete­ly con­nect­ed that with Coke.

Yet they suf­fered no brand loss as they switched out theme songs and came up with new tag lines (Things Go Bet­ter with Coke, Makes Oth­er Colas Seem Flat, The Pause for Refresh­ment) or spokes­peo­ple, since the 1920’s , when San­ta lib­er­al­ly enjoyed the dark nec­tar. They went from sig­na­ture glass bot­tles to flip top cans to screw top plas­tic, added cans of vary­ing sol­id col­ors, intro­duced new fonts, and even changed the recipe for the drink itself! Regard­less, what one thing remained unchanged in its 128 year history?

The col­or red!

Because col­ors sym­bol­ize things to us, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, and bring a reac­tion both psy­cho­log­i­cal and vis­cer­al, Nicte Cre­ative Design is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong in the area of col­or use. We can help you under­stand what is con­veyed by dif­fer­ent col­ors, and will take you through the process of estab­lish­ing col­or stan­dards then devel­op­ing them along with you as your com­pa­ny, prod­ucts and ser­vices grow.