Meaning of colors and brands



What color is a Tiffany box? Robin's egg blue. All Tiffany boxes are blue. If Tiffany had used other colors on their boxes, they would have missed a great opportunity to reinforce the brand name with a distinct color.

A brand should use colors that contrast with the colors of competing brands.

Another way to make your brand stand out is with color. But color is not an easy attribute to use. There are thousands of words to choose from to create a unique name, but not many colors.

Basically, there are 6 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). It is better to choose just one color from the 6 primary colors than to choose an intermediate color or a mixed color. But which color to choose?

Remember that all colors do not have the same effect on the human eye. Colors on the red end of the spectrum are focused slightly in front of the retina. So when you look at red, it appears to move in front of your eyes.

Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are focused slightly behind the retina. Therefore blue appears to move away from you.

For these physical reasons, red is an energetic and stimulating color. Red is the color that catches your eye, which is why 45% of the world's national flags are red. (Blue is the second most prominent color. Blue is found in about 20% of the world's national flags.)

Blue is the opposite color of red. Blue creates a feeling of peace and quiet. The color of leisure and slowness.

In the world of branding, red is the color of retail personality, attracting attention. Blue is the color of corporate personality, creating stability.

For example: Coca-Cola logo is red, IBM logo is blue.

The other colors are intermediate. Orange is closer to red than blue. Green is closer to blue than red.

Yellow is a neutral color. But because it lies in the middle of the spectrum that your eye can detect, yellow is also the brightest color. That’s why yellow is used in “attention” signs like yellow traffic lights, yellow paint, and yellow signs.

Over the years certain colors have taken on certain characteristics.

  • Pure white (eg white wedding dress)
  • Luxurious black (eg Johnnie Walker Black Label)
  • Blue is leading, leadership
  • Purple is regal and aristocratic.
  • Green is the color of environment and health.

When choosing a color for a brand or a logo, managers often focus on the mood they want to establish rather than the unique identity they want to create. And when mood is considered important, other factors are overlooked.

Company leaders have a choice to make. Generally, the best color to choose is the one that best represents the category. John Deere is the leading brand of tractors. Is it any surprise that John Deere uses green—the color of grass and fields—as its brand color?

A tractor company in Brazil asked us to come up with a brand name and color. We chose Maxion as the brand name because it seemed to convey “power,” a key characteristic of tractors. But what color should this brand new tractor be?

Is blue good for tractors? No, but creating a unique identity is more important than getting the color right.

Hertz, the first car rental brand, chose yellow. So Avis, a second-place brand in the industry, chose red. National used green.

It is often argued that you should choose a color that is the opposite of what your biggest competitors have chosen. When you ignore the rules of color, you will do just that.

The color of cola is brown and red. So for over 100 years, the appropriate color that Coca-Cola has chosen for its brand is red.

Blue Pepsi and Red Coca

Pepsi-Cola had a terrible choice of colors. They chose red and blue as their brand colors. The red symbolized the color of the cola, and the blue was to differentiate it from the Coca-Cola brand color. Pepsi has been battling a less than ideal reaction to Coca-Cola’s color strategy for years.

Be honest. Doesn’t the world seem to be flooded with red Coca-Cola symbols in your mind? And isn’t it hard to create so many Pepsi-Cola symbols? Pepsi is there, but the lack of a unique color that sets it apart has left Pepsi drowning in a sea of red Coca-Cola.

Pepsi has been lightening up a bit lately, if not by eyes then by colors. They are doing what they should have done 50 years ago. Make their brand colors contrast with their competitors.

Pepsi chose a unique blue color. A new Pepsi was born, Pepsi Blue (Pepsi Blue was once a craze in Vietnam but quickly disappeared because few people thought it was possible to drink that unnatural blue color). Pepsi even went so far as to paint a Concorde supersonic plane blue to carry the blue message to bottling plants around the world.

Do the opposite, Kodak yellow is Fuji green

Yellow (as in the Golden Arches) is also a very distinctive color for McDonald's, even though its actual logo is mostly red. But what color is Burger King? i

Burger King made a mistake by choosing the color of their hamburgers instead of choosing a color that contrasts with the colors of their big competitors. Burger King combined the yellow of the hamburger bun with the orange-red of the meat. A neat logo, but a terrible choice of color.

Budweiser is red, so what color should Miller choose?

One of the problems Miller ran into was that they launched so many product lines that they destroyed their brand identity. To differentiate their product lines, Miller used a coordinated color scheme. They lost the opportunity to differentiate themselves from Budweiser, their biggest competitor.

Think of the unmistakable color of Tiffany jewelry boxes. By standardizing on a single color and using it consistently over the years, you can create a strong visual presence in a confusing world. Every brand and store uses green and red (the two colors of Christmas) to decorate during the Christmas season, from M&M's to Macy's. Tiffany & Co., however, sticks with blue, and they're even more notable as a gift under the tree.

Wives hug their husbands as soon as they see the blue box of robin eggs. They don't even need to open it to know what wonderful things are inside.

While a single color is always the best strategy for a brand, sometimes you can go all out. Federal Express (FedEx), the leading overnight delivery company, wanted its packages to stand out on the recipient's desk. So they combined two shocking colors: orange and burgundy.

When a FedEx package arrives, everyone sees a FedEx package arriving. It's like an orange and purple bathing suit in a sea of corporate blue.

Using the same color over and over again can help your brand stick in people’s minds. Look at Caterpillar yellow, United Parcel Service (UPS) brown, Coca-Cola red, and IBM blue. What great blue did for IBM, a great color can do for your brand.