Own a Color in your Branding
In creating your logo and brand identity, never overlook the
importance of choosing the right color. When a customer looks at
a logo, his/her mind goes through a sequence of visual
perception. The brain first reads shape, then color, then
content. So theoretically, the color in your logo is more
recognized and potentially more powerful than the company name
or tagline.
In terms of branding, the ultimate goal for any business owner
should be to own a color, that is, to brand your company so that
whenever a person sees a particular hue, they think of your
company. Owning a color means facilitating recognition and
building brand equity.
This concept is nothing new. Tractor makers have been doing it
since the machines began dotting the landscape. The blue
tractors were Fords, orange were Kubota, Red were International,
green with yellow wheels were John Deer, and so on. The colors
made it easy to distinguish one brand of tractor from another in
an instant.
Companies today are attempting the same thing. Consider the
color brown. Almost without thinking, UPS comes to mind. Kurt
Kuehn, Senior Vice President of worldwide sales & marketing at
UPS, knows how important brown is to the company's identity.
After doing months of market research on people's perception
about them, Kuehn said in a speech in 2004, "We found that UPS
was strongly identified with the color brown...brown could be a
bridge to associate new attributes like agile, worldly, business
savvy and forward-thinking."
And their new campaign was born. "What Can Brown Do For You?"
When your color is strong enough to use it in your tagline, you
know you've got it made in the shade.
Owning a color takes time, and in reality, few businesses are
able to do it on a global scale. But small businesses can still
own a color within their market if owners choose the right one
for their logo and stick with it.