Using Colors To Give Personality To Your Brand Or Company

The colors used by a company, to identify itself to the public, can manipulate how people associate characteristics with their products and services.

 People generate a quick image of others they just met in a matter of seconds. They also do it when they run into an unknown brand or company. The logo of a brand or company is usually seen as a representation of the company. Unconsciously, based on its primary color people assign certain characteristics to the product and company. The reason why it is important that companies are aware of how to use the psychological effect of colors.

How do colors impact customers?

Satyendra Singh says in his book "Impact of color on marketing"¨ that customers generally make an initial judgment on a product within 90 seconds of interaction with that product, and about 62%-90% of that judgment is based on color. Lauren Labrecque and George Milne have found out that customers perceive a company's personality through the colors it uses in its logo and packaging. If the perceived personality matches the products sold by the company, the greater will be the purchase intent. Moreover, different studies have shown a relationship between the perceived effectiveness of a drug and its color. For example, the efficacy of placebo pills depends on their colors, with "hot-colored" pills working better as stimulants and "cool-colored" pills working better as depressants. Therefore, colors create customer expectations, and companies must learn to fulfill them.

How companies can use the psychology of colors

Packaging: Hannele Kauppinen-Räisänen notes in her research paper: "Exploring consumers' product-specific color meanings" that consumers use color to identify known brands or search for alternatives. Therefore, new companies and products can use distinctive colors to attract attention to the brand. Likewise, they can emphasize the similarity of their products to those of the competition or market leader, by using resembling colors.

The store: Companies should consider the colors used in their window displays and store interiors. Colors influence the type of customers the store will attract and their buying behavior. Warm colors encourage spontaneous purchases, while cool colors are a better fit for purchases where a lot of planning and customer deliberation occurs. Moreover, the color blue which is the top choice of Americans (35%), has proven to be more favorable to increasing the purchase intent of customers than warmer colors like orange.

Related post: How to Attract Customers

Target audience: Companies can use colors to change their corporate image and brand personality, in order to target a specific niche. This strategy has been used by companies like Victoria's Secret. It should be taken into consideration that color preferences are cultural and differentiate between sex and age. It has been proven that the same color produces different emotions across cultures. Furthermore, it should be noted that, unlike men, women prefer warm colors. In addition, People change their color preferences between childhood and adulthood.

Company Logos: They can portray meaning just through the use of color, and this is a lesson that several large companies have learned. Different colors are perceived to mean different things. This infographic from Logo Company illustrates this point: