This post completes my response to Q3, "Companies spend millions of dollars developing their brands and logos and the colors to go with them. Have you seen some examples of big and costly mistakes?", from AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund. Ms. Bjorklund interviewed me on NextStage's five year study of the best uses of colors, color imagery and color iconography in marketing. This study contained NextStage original research and research from others.
The posts in this arc provide content that didn't make it into the podcast, just as the podcast has content that isn't provided in this arc. You can hear the entire podcast at The Best Way to Use Color and Imagery to Improve Your Marketing. I'll be including a bibliography in the last post in this arc.
Companies need to remember that filling a niche is one thing, making something appealing in that niche is marketing. That’s where color comes in. High price cars will only show up in ads in royal and authoritative colors. I’m sure people have seen expensive cars on the road that are these bizarre, unnameable colors. The response is “Who thought that was a good color for that car?”But the funny thing is, chartreuse wouldn’t work on a BMW 7 series and it will work on a Toyota Matrix because of the differences in the target market.
I’ll offer a general rule of thumb; bright and shiny works for younger audiences in all things. It works for older audiences re-experiencing their youth. Somebody my age buying a Corvette or Lotus Elan wants to be seen. A royal or authoritative color ain’t gonna do it. Whatever you’re selling, cars or toothpaste, you need to remember that all colors make a statement. You need to know what that statement is to your audience. I wrote about this in Intelligent Website Design: Expand Your Market and it’s something NextStage really emphasizes; know your audience better than you know yourself.
Part of that knowledge involves color choice. Most people can’t tell you their partner’s favorite color yet if you just look at their wardrobe you’d know it in a second. Want to know your target demographic’s favorite colors? Go walk among them for half a day. The whole key is observation, ideally what’s called “participant observation” and precious few people are trained to do it properly. Doing it properly means getting yourself out of the way of what you’re observing. Unless you do that you’re only documenting your own prejudices, not what you need to document. NextStage teaches classes on documenting observations properly and putting prejudices aside.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- The AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund Interviews Joseph Carrabis on Color Use in Marketing arc
- The Best Way to Use Color and Imagery to Improve Your Marketing
- NextStage Trainings
- Tips for Your Next Website Redesign
- Usability Studies 101: Follow the Eye
- IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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