Does your brand have a colour that sells?

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but we do. That’s because colours are essential. More important than you probably cared to think about.

I started this week entirely oblivious to the importance colour to cultures, branding, customer perception, preferences, moods, decision-making, behaviour and purchases.

But before we explore all of that we should cover the basics. First, let’s look at the primary colours.

Do you remember what they are? Here’s a prompt in case you forgot

Using these primary colours, we can mix and blend them together to create whatever colour we want and use them to bring about our desired result. Otherwise known as colour theory.

Right, that’s covered. Now, let’s get familiar with the 3 basic attributes that are: hue, saturation, and value.

Hue - Is a colour's name and its placement on the colour wheel. For example, there are many variations of Red such as crimson and scarlet but both of these (and more) reside in the red hue.

Saturation - This refers to the purity of a colour. When a colour is described as dull (less saturated) the colour has moved closer to being Grey. Increased saturation means the colour is more intense, think dull Red to violent Red.

Value - Every colour has value (isn't that sweet), in relation to art & design though, value looks at how close a colour is to being pure Black or White.

Okay, the foundations have been set. Let’s look at how colour affects us individually.

Colour to the individual

My friends and I were out today and had a lime green BMW M3 pass us. 2 of us liked the lime green and thought it was dope, my other friend didn’t. He said it was too much, too bright and he’d go for a different colour.

For the most part, we relate colours certain moods, brands, products and events but this may vary on an individual basis.

Famed Swiss psychologist Carl Jung theorised that our responses to colours stem from our “Collective Unconscious” and that through our evolution we have inherited memories from our ancestors and with these inherited genetics, upbringing, education and experiences we refine our relationship to colours.

Seeing different colours triggers unique hormonal responses that affect our mood and energy.

It has also been researched that younger people tend to gravitate towards brighter and more saturated colours. Whereas older people tend to gravitate more towards more subdued and less saturated colours.

So my friend not liking the BMW today may be because he’s more mature, he may hold a relationship to Lime Green that we don’t know about or he may just be tasteless.

(I’m gonna go with tasteless)

Colour to the culture

A picture speaks a thousand words and in the spirit of that the table below details the meaning of each colour to each culture and country.

Colours have unique relationships and meaning to all cultures but they also have various meanings to different demographics too such as age, race, sexuality, religion, income, family status and so on.

Market researchers have also determined that colour affects shopping habits too. Impulse shoppers respond best to Red, Orange, Black and Blue. Shoppers who plan and stick to budgets respond best to Pink, Teal, Blue and Navy. Traditionalists responded best to pastels - Pink, Rose, Blue.

It’s important to remember that timime moves on and cultural thinking and behaviours shift. For example, brides who have traditionally worn Red in China now prefer to wear White. In Thailand where White was the traditional colour of mourning, now people wear Black.

Colour to the brand

Your brand colours communicates your story - who you are/your why - and allows you to differentiate yourself from your competition.

It’s argued that when a product is culture-bound standardisation is inappropriate.

You can see examples of this with McDonalds products around the world. For example, we Brits don’t have the fortune of being able to order from the breakfast menu whenever we want unlike our neighbours across the Atlantic.

So what happens when a business introduces a product and it’s packaged without doing any research?

Well, you get situations like Samsonite in the early 90s. They released suitcases in Mexico that were purple and black. Both of which are associated with death and mourning and not a pleasant holiday…

Or you end up like Pepsi and lose your leading market share in Southeast Asia by changing your coolers and vending machine to light blue from deep regal blue.

It’s also important to watch the trends and keep up to date with behaviours, changes within cultures and their response to certain colours.

Colour trends change with time, today’s “oh la la” could be tomorrow’s “ick”. But don’t be too hasty to change; remember your brand colours should tie into your why and your story. Your colours are also tied into how your customers identify and highlight you amongst your competitors.

Research is still ongoing though. The conclusive result from research states moods are tied to colours, for example, warm and active colours are associated with Red and its shades. While cool, calm and passive colours are associated with Blue, Green and Violet.

Alas, that was all he wrote. Thank you for your time and thank you for reading my first newsletter! For next week’s issue, I’ll be sharing what I learned from Conversion Rate Optimisation and how you can use it for your personal projects, business and work.

Farewell, friend!

P.S if you need a hand with your copy and you can’t seem to get around your writer’s block perhaps this checklist can help