Truly Deeply/Madly

Colour affects us phys­i­o­log­i­cally
and psy­cho­log­i­cally, con­sciously
and sub­con­sciously. Colour is used
to shape and define our lives, our habits, our val­ues and our feel­ings. The colours we choose to wear and
to dec­o­rate our homes give oth­ers per­sonal insight into our emo­tions
and how we wish to project our­selves
to the world. Colour is a silent lan­guage that we all react to based-on our learned responses. Our learned asso­ci­a­tions are crit­i­cal con­tribut­ing fac­tors in the way we per­ceive and attach mean­ings to colours.

Cul­tural Aware­ness
Colour is sub­jec­tive. Although we may not all see the same colour, within our own cul­tural group the emo­tional response is sur­pris­ingly com­mon. Colour is a pow­er­ful and impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool tied to reli­gious, cul­tural, polit­i­cal, and social influ­ences. While there are com­mon­al­i­ties in the mean­ings of colours around the world, they may also dif­fer greatly between cul­tures. It is impor­tant to be aware that dif­fer­ent cul­tures attach mean­ing to colour in dif­fer­ent ways. The cul­tural bias for colour sym­bol­ism can be very pow­er­ful. In China they use white dur­ing funer­als as they asso­ciate white with win­ter time in which nature is dead; where-as in West­ern cul­tures black is used.

Colour and Brand Design
As a result of the way colour asso­ci­a­tions are wired into the way we see and under­stand the world, colour is an inte­gral part of brand strat­egy com­mu­ni­ca­tion. A brand’s colour com­mu­ni­cates a vari­ety of mes­sages that directly impact the con­sumer by con­nect­ing asso­ci­ated mean­ings (often sub­con­sciously)
to the brand. As well as sim­ply cap­tur­ing an audience’s atten­tion, colour can stim­u­late emo­tional responses, affect an individual’s per­cep­tion, form atti­tudes and improve learn­ing and per­sua­sive­ness. As a visual brand prop­erty, colour is highly influ­en­tual at every touch­point from brand­mark, sig­nage, pack­ag­ing and even the prod­uct itself.

As more and more brands expand glob­ally the use of colour in brand­ing has taken on new impor­tance. When migrat­ing a brand into any new mar­ket, it’s impor­tant to con­sider the cul­tural ram­i­fi­ca­tion of your brand’s colour palette and make informed brand deci­sions to ensure that you’re send­ing rel­e­vant brand mes­sages to your new cus­tomers. Before launch­ing a global brand, espe­cially one on-line, it’s essen­tial to con­sider colour mean­ings through­out the world.

The Impor­tance of Colour in Global Brand­ing
Brands that fail to take cul­tural val­ues into con­sid­er­a­tion before enter­ing the global mar­ket can invite dis­as­ter. When a Japan­ese brand unsuc­cess­ful tried to sell black scoot­ers in India they dis­cov­ered the colour black is con­sid­ered inaus­pi­cious, not a pos­i­tive virtue for their prod­uct. Moth­ers across India were telling their sons they couldn’t buy a scooter because they asso­ci­ated black with death. As soon as the brand intro­duced a new range of coloured scoot­ers sales picked-up (Surya Vanka, Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois).

In another case a Cana­dian air­line brand changed the colours of its fleet, unaware that their new brand colour com­bi­na­tion was asso­ci­ated with bad luck in cer­tain South Asian cul­tures. They ended up switched back to their orig­i­nal colours — a costly exer­cise and diver­sion for the business.

A US chew­ing gum brand found their prod­uct wasn’t sell­ing very well in China. After chang­ing their pack­ag­ing from green to pink, sym­bol­iz­ing good luck in China, sales rose.

In Thai­land pur­ple is the colour of mourn­ing, yet the Thai Air­ways chose it as their pri­mary brand colour. At first glance this seems like a mis­take for the domes­tic mar­ket, but as the Thai Air­ways busi­ness is heav­ily weighted to the inter­na­tional mar­ket, their brand will take on the west­ern mean­ing of pur­ple and their brand will be asso­ci­ated with roy­alty, lux­ury, wealth and comfort.

The Cur­rent Global Brand Colour Land­scape
Colour shapes the way we think in an imme­di­ate and emo­tional way. In a soci­ety faced with infor­ma­tion over­load, colour com­mu­ni­cates in a sim­ply and effec­tively. Colour has tremen­dous cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance and ignor­ing them could mean your brand offends an entire coun­try. It is impor­tant that you do your research and know your con­sumer. What­ever colour you ulti­mately choose to rep­re­sent your brand, make sure they accu­rately con­vey your brand message.

Today many peo­ple around the world have access to infor­ma­tion they never had before. This glob­al­iza­tion means that cus­toms, tra­di­tions and ideas are becom­ing increas­ingly uni­ver­sal. Colours and sym­bols are more widely accepted cross-culturally, espe­cially by younger con­sumers. For instance, in China, where wed­ding dresses were tra­di­tion­ally red rather than white as they are in west­ern cul­tures, today, Chi­nese brides pre­dom­i­nantly wear tra­di­tional white west­ern style wed­ding dresses with red jack­ets. From a brand per­spec­tive, we are watch­ing the world of colour evolve and revolutionize.

Brands cur­rently find them­selves in ‘colour no-mans land’. No-longer do the tra­di­tional mean­ings of cul­ture strictly and broadly apply to colours in dif­fer­ent mar­kets, and we have-not, and prob­a­bly will never will reach the point where we see a glob­ally stan­dard­ized set of colour asso­ci­a­tions. In-lieu of a clear set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples, brands must care­fully con­sider the way they lever­age their visual lan­guage iconog­ra­phy — espe­cially their use of colour to ensure they are com­mu­ni­cat­ing the right mes­sages
to the right peo­ple where-ever they are in the world.

If you’d like to talk to some peo­ple who spend way too much of their life eat­ing, sleep­ing, think­ing about the role of colour in brands give us a call.

Cas­san­dra Gill
Direc­tor of Design.

Tags: Brand, Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand differentiation, Colour, Colour and Emotions, Colour Psychology, Colour Symbolism, Colour Wheel, Corporate Image, Culture, global-branding, Graphic Design Melbourne, Havaianas, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Thai Airways

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Corporate Image, Creative, Graphic Design Melbourne, Thinking, Visual Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.