Since this is Color Therapy Month what better time to highlight the impact of color on your branding efforts. With some companies, their logo color is etched into our psyche. McDonald’s has the golden arches, Coca-Cola is red, IBM is big blue, Starbucks is green and Clorox is white. Was color a purposeful decision or an afterthought? Consumers have different feelings about colors based on personal preferences, culture, sex and more. However, color therapy is a growing field and research suggests there are some common feelings associated with color and your marketing team might want to pay attention.
Red: power, energy and love or rage, anger and danger. It is a universal choice for romantic endeavors.
Orange: warmth, happiness, optimistic, confidence or ignorance, sluggishness. It’s a popular choice for laundry and cleaning supplies and is one of the main colors in the FedEx logo. In surveys about the color itself, it is one of the least favorite colors for both men and women.
Yellow: cheerful, bright, fun and creative or immature, cowardly. This might explain why McDonald’s is a fun destination.
Green: wealth, renewal and nature or envy and guilt. This would be a logical choice for landscapers and money managers and of course Starbucks.
Blue: peace, masculinity, loyalty, trust or cold and sad. This is the most beloved color by men and women everywhere and by Facebook.
Purple: royal, luxurious, holy, bravery or moody and impractical.
Black: strength, power or evil and death.
White: pure, modern, clean or cold and boring, all good descriptions of Clorox!
Each year, various entities release their color of the year including these three:
Benjamin Moore, simply white
The color white is transcendent, powerful and polarizing – it is either taken for granted or obsessed over. White is not just a design trend, it is a design essential.
Ellen O’Neill, Benjamin Moore Creative Director
Pantone Color of the Year, “a symbolic color selection; a color snapshot of what we see taking place in our culture that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude.”
Sherwin-Williams, alabaster
Alabaster represents a straightforward and necessary shift to mindfulness. It provides and oasis of calmness, spirituality and ‘less is more’ visual relief. Alabaster is neither stark not overly warm, but rather and understated and alluring white.
Jackie Jordan, Sherwin-Williams, Director of Color Marketing Leisa
What color is your brand?
Leisa Chester Weir
Orange Lover
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