Another way to make a brand distinctive is with color. But color is not an easy attribute to work with. There are thousands of words to choose from in order to create a unique name, but only a handful of colors.
There are five basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, and blue) plus the neutral colors (black, white, and gray). It’s best to stick to one of these five primary colors rather than an intermediate or mixed color. But which color?
Keep in mind that all colors are not created equal in the eye of the beholder. Colors on the red end of the spectrum are focused slightly behind the retinas in your eyes. Therefore, a red color appears to move toward your eyes while you’re looking at it.
Colors on the blue end of the spectrum, on the other hand, are focused slightly in front of the retinas in your eyes. A blue color appears to move away from you.
Because of these physical reasons, red is the color of energy and excitement. Red is an in-your-face color. Which is why red is the dominant color in 45 percent of all national flags. (Blue is a distinct second. Blue dominates in less than 20 percent of all flags.)
Blue is the opposite of red. Blue is peaceful and tranquil. Blue is a laid-back color.
In the world of brands, red is a retail color used to attract attention. Blue is a corporate color used to communicate stability. For example, Coca-Cola red and IBM blue.
The other primary colors are in between. Orange is more like red than blue. Green is more like blue than red.
Yellow is the neutral color. But because it is in the middle of the range of wavelengths your eyes can detect, yellow is also the brightest color. (Its brightness is the reason yellow is often used to communicate “caution,” as in yellow lights, yellow lines, yellow signs, etc.)
Over the years, some colors have become identified with various attributes, occasions, and movements.
When selecting a color for a brand or a logo, managers usually focus on the mood they want to establish rather than the unique identity they want to create. And while mood or tone can be important, other factors should override a choice based on mood alone.
Leaders have first choice. Normally the best color to select is the one that is most symbolic of the category. John Deere is the leading brand of farm tractor. Does it surprise you that John Deere picked green, the color of grass, trees, and agriculture, as the brand’s signature color?
For a tractor company in Brazil, we were asked to develop a brand name and color. We picked the name Maxion as the brand name because it seemed to communicate “power,” a key attribute in a farm tractor. But what color should this new tractor brand use?
John Deere used green. The second brand in the market used red. So the color choice was obvious. Maxion became a blue tractor and a blue brand.
Is blue a good color for a farm tractor? No, but it’s more important to create a separate brand identity than it is to use the right symbolic color.
Hertz, the first car-rental brand, picked yellow. So Avis, the second brand, picked red. National went with green. (For years, National gave out S&H Green Stamps to car-rental customers, a marketing move that helped associate the National name with the color green.)
There is a powerful logic for selecting a color that is the opposite of your major competitors. When you ignore this law of color, you do so at your own risk.
Cola is a reddish-brown liquid, so the logical color for a cola brand is red. Which is one reason why Coca-Cola has been using red for more than a hundred years.
Pepsi-Cola made a poor choice. It picked red and blue as the brand’s colors. Red to symbolize cola and blue to differentiate the brand from Coca-Cola. For years Pepsi has struggled with a less-than-ideal response to Coke’s color strategy.
Be honest. In your mind’s eye, doesn’t the world seem to be awash in Coca-Cola signs? And isn’t it hard to picture many Pepsi-Cola signs? Pepsi is out there, but the lack of a unique differentiating color tends to make Pepsi invisible in a sea of Coca-Cola red.
Recently Pepsi-Cola has seen the light, or rather the color. It is doing what it should have done more than fifty years ago. Make the brand’s color the opposite of its major competitor’s color.
Pepsi-Cola is going blue. Pepsi even went to the expense of painting a Concorde supersonic jet blue to carry the color message to bottlers around the world.
Be the opposite. Kodak is yellow, so Fuji is green.
Yellow (as in the Golden Arches) is also the color most identified with McDonald’s, although the actual logotype is mostly red. But what color is Burger King?
Burger King made the mistake of symbolizing the colors of a hamburger rather than picking a color to contrast with the leader. Burger King combined the yellow of a hamburger bun with the orange-red of the meat. A neat logotype, but a lousy color choice.
Budweiser is red, so what color should Miller be?
One of the many problems with the massive line extensions marketed by Miller is that they destroy the brand’s color identity. To differentiate the Miller line extensions from each other, the brand uses an array of color combinations. In the process Miller misses an opportunity to differentiate its core brand from Budweiser, its key competitor.
Think of the unmistakable color of a Tiffany box. By standardizing on a single color and using it consistently over the years, you can build a powerful visual presence in a clutter-filled world. At Christmastime, every brand and retail store uses green and red to celebrate the holiday, from M&M’s to Macy’s. Yet Tiffany & Co. sticks to blue, and becomes even more noticeable under the tree as a result.
Women hug their husbands as soon as they see the robin’s-egg blue box—without opening it they know it will be wonderful.
You have probably seen many more Miller cans than Tiffany boxes, but we would bet that you know the hue of a Tiffany box and that you’re not quite sure about Miller.
While a single color is almost always the best color strategy for a brand, sometimes you can make a case for multiple colors. Federal Express, the first overnight-package-delivery company, wanted its packages to stand out on the recipient’s desk. So it combined the two most shocking colors it could find: orange and purple.
When a FedEx package arrives, everybody can see that a FedEx package has arrived. It’s like an orange-and-purple suit in a sea of corporate blue.
Color consistency over the long term can help a brand burn its way into the mind. Look at what yellow has done for Caterpillar, brown for United Parcel Service, red for Coca-Cola, the green jacket for the Masters golf tournament, and blue for IBM.
What blue did for Big Blue, a unique color can do for your big brand.