How Culture Affects the Meaning of Color

The same col­ors can tele­graph dif­fer­ent mes­sages depend­ing on the back­ground or cul­ture of your viewer. 

Aware­ness of how cul­ture affects the mean­ing of col­or when cre­at­ing cam­paigns and branding/rebranding will give you an edge.  This is the third in our series on Col­or Psy­chol­o­gy, cre­at­ed to help you strate­gi­cal­ly choose and use col­or based on its three often unrec­og­nized superpowers!

How Culture Affects the meaning of color

What is Culture?

Cul­ture is defined by the beliefs, val­ues, arts, and cus­toms of a peo­ple or coun­try.  It’s what makes a nation, region, social group or even a com­pa­ny unique. Because the inter­net now con­nects us all to far flung places and peo­ple very dif­fer­ent from our­selves, mar­keters have to take into account that what they put out there has the poten­tial to be seen by a world­wide audi­ence. And that is a mixed blessing.

Some say glob­al con­nec­tion has begun to blur our dif­fer­ences. But while it may affect cul­tur­al periph­ery (like fash­ion or slang use), her­itage, reli­gious mean­ings, tra­di­tions and the think­ing that comes from them go back cen­turies. Don’t under­es­ti­mate them! They can be deeply ingrained and are behind people’s per­cep­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of color.

Culture Affects the Meaning of Color 

While it’s fan­tas­tic to be able to cast such a wide net when mar­ket­ing, it’s wise to explore those under­ly­ing mes­sages that may be com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the col­ors you choose. How much it affects your tar­get audi­ence depends on what and where you are marketing. 

So whether you reach out to inter­na­tion­al audi­ences, a spe­cif­ic coun­try or a cul­tur­al group with­in your own area, under­stand­ing what those col­ors may cul­tur­al­ly sym­bol­ize to them can make the vital dif­fer­ence in reap­ing the response you are work­ing toward!

Research Your Market’s Culture

It is clear it’s worth doing your research on how cul­ture affects the mean­ing of col­or in your tar­get mar­ket.  How will col­or help to reach them, and bet­ter, inspire suc­cess­ful calls to action? 

Since cul­tur­al con­text is a more com­plex aspect of col­or use, con­sult­ing with a col­or expert can make the all dif­fer­ence in your mar­ket­ing suc­cess. Here’s what we suggest:

1. Check out our LinkedIn Learn­ing course on Col­or and Cul­tur­al Con­nec­tions. 
2.  If you don’t have the time to ful­ly research cul­tur­al influ­ences, or want to take a deep­er dive Nicte Cre­ative Design can help! CONTACT US  now to talk about how our strat­e­gy ses­sions work for you. 

We hope read­ing our series over the last three months brings home just how impor­tant strate­gic col­or use is to your mar­ket­ing effort. Along with your com­pa­ny val­ues, hon­ing your col­or choic­es and use based on the feel­ings and mean­ings they can evoke lays the foun­da­tion for every­thing you com­mu­ni­cate… and that deter­mines how effec­tive­ly you impacts your customer!

Ben­e­fit from the entire 3 part series on Col­or Psy­chol­o­gy by read­ing our first two posts from Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary.