What’s in a colour?

Here at The Marketing Mix we’re always investigating the ways consumers respond to brands and their subsequent purchasing decisions. Most recently we’ve been looking at how colour affects the emotional responses of customers to brand logos. Our graphic design team have created a fun motion graphics video that explains all about colour that you can watch on YouTube.

We’re living in an online world where brands are getting closer to customers than ever before. Brands make appearances in our Twitter, Facebook and now, our Instagram feeds every day. Branding is more important to businesses than ever before because brands are appearing right next to pictures of our family/friends and integrating themselves amongst all the hobbies, interests and celebrities we follow.

So when connecting on a deeper level with customers, how important is colour to new and established brands? We know different colours have traditional connotations but it’s not quite as simple as all that is it? For example, red can be aggressive/angry or represent love. When we create a new brand’s logos or do a complete re-brand here at TMM we go into careful detail with the client about the target market, the brand message and the product being sold. We also look at competitors in the market and what sorts of colour schemes they’re currently using.

A well-researched blog post on the psychology of colour in advertising makes a point everyone here at The Marketing Mix agrees with. It’s not about just picking a colour for your brand that symbolises the mood or feeling you wish to conjure up in the minds of your customers. Far more important is picking a colour that consumers will find appropriate to your product. This doesn’t just mean picking the same colours as your competitors (if anything being different can help you stand out!) but picking a colour scheme that your customers will associate with what you’re selling.

A real example of this is The Marketing Mix’s own re-brand some years ago which saw us drop our red/black colour scheme and opt for green/blue. Back when the company was established in the late 90s, colour printing was far more expensive than today. This meant many print-marketing companies like ourselves opted for black as their second colour. The change to blue/green was part affordability and partly to stand out from our competitors.

Our colour combination choice of green and blue was made with our company image top of mind. We chose green because as a marketing company it’s our job to grow your business and create more wealth. Growth and wealth are associated with green and fit in with both the service we are selling and the emotions behind it. Blue is associated with security, trust and success, which is something we wanted to instil in the minds of our customers – that you can trust us to create successful marketing campaigns.

To find out more about the feelings associated with colours and the brands who use them, check our new video. And if a re-brand is on your mind, our team is here to consult with you about which colours will work best for you. After all, we’ve already done it ourselves!