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Fusion Radar: December 11, 2013

December 10th, 2013 - by marissa - Salt Lake City, Utah

Color 101 at Agency Fusion

Instead of our usual fare of cool links and useful software, this week Agency Fusion focused on the topic of color: how it affects us, its influence on branding, and how we can utilize it.

It turns out that the human eye can see up to 10 million different variations of the standard rainbow of colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). Some might look at this fact and start sifting through a million different shades, looking for one unique color that will represent their brand and make it stand out from its competitors. However, think of how many influential brands actually use the same colors.

Target, Coke, Netflix, Virgin Mobile, and YouTube all share roughly the same shade of red; yet each brand has a distinct identity. Dell, HP, and IBM – which are all in more or less the same consumer category – have similar blues in their logos. Even purple has its share of competition, with Nexium, Yahoo, Ally, and Craigslist clustered together.

Because of this, some brands get very possessive of their branding colors; there are dozens of brands that have slapped a copyright on their own particular RGB combo. Tiffany blue, T-Mobile magenta, and John Deere green are all officially defined and owned by those companies.

However, in our experience, while colors can have a powerful effect on brand identity, it’s more important to focus on consumer experience. Brand colors can change, but it’s much harder to change a brand’s reputation. After all, while J.C. Penney has changed its logo (including colors) a handful of times in the last few years, its reputation hasn’t recovered, and its sales are still sluggish. On the other hand, it wasn’t so long ago that Apple was using a wide spectrum of colors in their branding; and public awareness and opinion of Apple has steadily improved, due to their customer service and quality products.