Importance of brand color in business

Your brand’s colors can tell more than you can envisage your business. The importance of brand color in business the psychology of colors can help your business establish trust and familiarity by stimulating the right emotions. It’s no surprise that the most popular brands in the world have a strong association with their logos. Their colors tend to reflect their branding, even when they don’t involve any text in them. This is due to the power of colors and their ability to increase brand recognition with the desired reactions that they may provoke.

What is branding?

Branding is simply the marketing practice of creating a unique name, identity, and image for a business- one that a customer cognitively equates with the business itself.

Persuading a customer to take any specific action depends on several elements, of course, but the color is one of the primary components of your brand.

Your brand is far more than just your color scheme and logo – it represents your core values, vision, and mission.

Colors are indeed powerful brand builders. This is why it’s easy to identify top brands from their logos – not necessarily because of the text or design elements, but because of distinctive colors and color combinations. After all, the brain processes visual information 60,000x faster than plain text.

Importance of Colors in Branding

Color theory can be used to communicate value, as well as to sell a product. When the Coca-Cola Company marked 125 years of offering great service, they used their classic, bold red to brand the campaign.

In this segment, we’ll explore some perks of using colors in branding. You know that branding signifies identity and values, hence the next step is measuring the effects of choosing the right colors for your business branding.

Color inclination by gender: A survey conducted by Philip Cohen, a sociologist from the University of Maryland, asked 2,000 men and women the simple question: “What is your favorite color?” The pure color most often given in response was “blue,” for both genders.

colors like and dislike for men and women

Samples of color psychology in conviction: Both warm and cool colors can be used to persuade readers and customers. However, you can find great examples from popular brands that have mastered the art of persuasion using colors all across the color wheel.

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Factors That Affect Color Perceptions

Not all colors are perceived the same way by the same people. Two of the biggest factors that affect the perceptions of color are culture and gender.

Cultural diversity can pose a challenge for brands looking to strengthen their international visibility and desirability. While some of the largest cultural divides of color perception have been softened, or even erased, through widespread adoption of the Internet, these varieties can still play a role in global brand identity. For example, green is considered nurturing and prosperous in the United States, evokes national pride in Ireland, and is often viewed as undesirable for packaging in France. On the other hand, blue is viewed worldwide as a positive and acceptable color.

best color for branding and marketing

Gender perceptions of colors are not restricted to “blue for boys and pink for girls.” Blue is a favorite among males and females. Well-known research by Joe Hallock, “Color Assignments”, found that among favorite colors by gender:

57% of men and 35% of women fancied Blue (the largest segment for both groups).

Purple was the second preference for women at 23%, and no men chose Purple as their favorite color—with 22% of men citing Purple as their least favorite.

Brown was the majority least favorite color for men with 27%, while women cited Orange most often with 33% least favorite.

14% of both men and women chose Green as their favorite color.

Another primary and notable difference for gender color preferences is that men are more receptive to bold colors, while women respond better to softer colors.

Formula for building a brand color scheme

There’s no one right way to pick your branding color scheme. When dealing with outlines like brand identity, it’s difficult and ill-advised to ascribe hard and fast rules. That said, the process can be daunting and complicated, so a little guidance is healthy. Here, we’re going to describe our process for building a color scheme that you can use more as a framework, and less as step-by-step directions.

Plan on choosing 3 colors: Your base, accent, and a neutral. Brand color schemes can have between 1-4 colors depending on the type (see below), but even monochrome schemes will require some variation in hues for different purposes.

Choose your base: Of all your brand’s personality traits, which one is most important? Your base color should reflect not only your brand personality’s most dominant trait but also appeal to the target audience you’re trying to reach. You’ll choose the remaining colors based on how well they match with this one.

Choose your accent: Your accent will be the color you use the most after your base color. This is a bit trickier than choosing your base color because there are more restrictions: aside from matching a brand personality trait, your accent color must also pair visually with your base color, not to mention appease your audience.

Choosing your neutral: Your neutral color will most likely be a background color, something chosen to avoid attention. Typically these are different hues of gray, but beige, whites and off-whites work, too. Black is also an option, but be careful; it tends to dominate any color scheme it’s a part of.

Conclusion: Consistency is vital to ensuring a brand has a coherent voice. By choosing a small palette of two to four colors and employing them throughout their marketing channels, brands strengthen their identities and memorability in the eye of the consumer.