Understanding Brand Color Personality: How Colors Influence Consumer Perception

July 24, 2024

Understanding Brand Color Personality: How Colors Influence Consumer Perception — Creating a powerful and impressive brand identity is not a simple undertaking. One of the crucial components that is frequently overlooked yet has a significant impact is the brand’s color scheme. 

Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, color has the capacity to influence perception, emotion, and even purchasing decisions by customers. 

This article will go over the concept of “brand color personality” in detail, as well as how you can strategically use color to develop a deeper and more emotional engagement with the audience. So, let’s start by discussing how particular colors reflect your brand’s personality and influence your target audience’s perception of your business.

Introduction of Brand Color Personality

What is Brand Color Personality?

Brand color personality is the process of combining color psychology with strategic branding to produce a strong and consistent brand identity. Color has the ability to affect client’s perceptions, emotions, and even purchase decisions. Understanding and intelligently applying colors allows your business to effectively and successfully express the brand’s value, personality, and message. 

color personality

The Importance of Understanding Brand Color Personality

Color is one of the first visual components that the audience sees when interacting with a brand. Proper color selection is critical for increasing brand awareness, creating customer loyalty, and influencing purchase decisions. 

According to CCI Color, the institute for Color Research, consumers can appraise a thing in less than 90 seconds after seeing it, and nearly 90% of the evaluation score is based just on the color. 

Color Psychology and Customer Emotion 

Color psychology is the study of how colors influence human’s behavior, emotions, and perceptions. They have the power to elicit a strong emotional response, and we can apply it strategically for branding to influence consumers. Let’s dissect, one by one, the points from this chapter:

Color Evokes Emotion

How does a color evoke emotion? For the majority of individuals, certain colors elicit strong emotional responses. Every color has a distinct emotional nuance that varies according to the situation and society in which it is perceived. Here are some examples:

  • Red: People associate red with vigor, bravery, and passion. This color boosts heart rate and excitement. That is why red is frequently utilized to draw attention and elicit emotional responses from the audience. 
  • Blue: Blue reflects peace, trust, and safety. It is calming and is frequently used in branding to convey professionalism and customer trust.  
  • Yellow: This color commonly represents brightness and enthusiasm. Yellow can evoke feelings of optimism, joy, and warmth. 
  • Green: People often associate green with balance, growth, and stability. Many companies use this color to represent nature and sustainability in their branding. 
  • Purple: It represents elegance, prosperity, and creativity. This color is commonly utilized by brands that wish to create a sense of exclusivity among their target demographic.

The Examples of Color Association in Branding

In branding, the proper color choice can be very strategic in building a brand identity and creating engagement with the target audience. Below are some of the brands that use color associations in their branding:

  • McDonald’s: The use of red and yellow in their branding draws attention and creates a joyful outlook. Furthermore, according to color psychology, yellow is a color that can evoke and stimulate our appetite better than any of the other colors. 
  • Facebook: The branding color scheme for Facebook is blue. Blue represents confidence and security in storing a variety of personal information, as well as being the color of technology. 
  • Starbucks: It is popular for its green color scheme. Starbucks aims to demonstrate its commitment to freshness, sustainability, and the preservation of the environment through its branding color. 
  • Cadbury: Purple becomes their dominant branding color to represent wealth as well as their premium quality.

The Strategy of Color Selection

The right color choice in branding takes into account not only visual attractiveness but also how the color communicates with the audience and expresses the brand’s values. Here are some essential principles for selecting color for your branding:

Factors that Influence Color Selection

The Target Market

Each demographic has their own color preference. Understanding your target audience is the first crucial step. Firstly, determine the age. Vibrant and bold colors will appeal to younger audiences, while gentle and classic colors will appeal to older ones. 

Secondly, pay attention to their gender. Some research shows a difference in color preference for males and females. Pink will be automatically associated with femininity and therefore appeal to female audiences, just like blue does to male ones. However, color trends are ever-changing, so you also need to stay up-to-date with the latest happenings. 

Lastly, consider the culture. Depending on the culture, color has a distinct meaning. Red is the color of mourning in South Africa that commemorates the apartheid era and the bloodshed occurred during that time. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, people typically wear black to show their mourning, as it represents the absence of light and color and, in turn, the absence of life. 

The Values of the Brand

Color must convey the personality and core values of the brand. Blue conveys trust and expertise. This color is frequently chosen by brands that seek to highlight reliability and safety, such as technology or financial organizations. 

On the other hand, brands often use the color red to convey bravery and vitality. It signifies fervent enthusiasm and spirit. Green can also be used by brands that seek to emphasize environmental sustainability and health. 

The Context of Industry

Each industry has its own unique color conversion. In general, industry is organized into three categories: technology, food and beverage, and health and beauty. 

  • Tech industry: the color blue is commonly associated with reliability and stability in the technology industry. 
  • Food and beverage industry: warm-toned colors such as red, orange, and yellow are commonly used in the food and beverage sector to boost appetites.
  • The health and beauty industry is likely to use clean and natural colors such as white and green.

The Importance of Color Consistency

Visual Consistency

Using consistent brand colors across all branding materials will assist the brand in developing an established and memorable identity. This covers all visual aspects, including:

  • Logo: The primary visual identity element must use consistent color to convey the brand’s values and messages.
  • Website: Your website must employ colors that represent your brand’s main color in order to convey its identity.
  • Packaging: A brand that uses consistent color in its packaging will have a higher value since it will be easier to recognize and recall.

User Experience

Color consistency contributes to a sense of trust and familiarity. When a customer sees similar colors across several platforms and items from a company, they are more likely to trust and connect with the brand. 

Brand Sustainability

Employing consistent colors also helps to build brand equity in the long term. It is crucial because customers will easily recognize and remember a brand if its color is consistent throughout the years. 

The Application in Many Platforms

It is important to ensure that the colors chosen can be replicated with high accuracy in many platforms. For example, in digital media, colors in the display screen may be different from the print media, so, it is important to test and adjust it to ensure consistency. 

You need to give special treatment, especially when using the color brand on print media. Always remember to use the CMYK color mode. It is vital to ensure that the final product closely resembles its digital image.

A Case Study of Famous Brands 

Some globally recognized brands have used colors to develop a strong identity and incredible brand recognition. Here is a look at how Apple, Nike, and FedEx employ colors in their branding efforts.

Apple’s clean and elegant white 

Main color: white (with black and gray accents)

Strategy and the effects:

  • Simplicity and Purity: Apple utilizes white to symbolize simplicity, purity, and elegance. This promotes Apple’s reputation as a company that values utilitarian and clean design.
  • Focus on Product: The color white in Apple’s branding radiates a neutral sense for its background, allowing the products to be  innovative and catch people’s attention.  
  • Consistency on Product: From packaging to retail stores, Apple keeps its consistency in using the color white, helping it create a cohesive and memorable brand experience.

Nike’s strong and professional black

Main color: black (with white accent)

Strategy and the effects:

  • Strength and Confidence: Nike’s color black represents strength, confidence, and professionalism. This aligns with the brand’s mission of inspiring athletes to reach their full potential. 
  • Modern and Classy Image: The color black conveys modernity and class, maintaining the brand’s position in the competitive sports apparel and tool market.
  • Flexibility: The color black also provides a sense of visual flexibility, making it great for mixing and matching with vibrant colors for various product campaigns while retaining a consistent brand identity.

FedEx’s dynamic purple and orange

color personality

Main colors: Purple and orange

Strategy and the effects:

  • Speed and Reliability: Orange represents passion and speed, while purple gives a sense of reliability and premium quality. 
  • Consistency: FedEx’s usage of the colors purple and orange in its logo, vehicles, and employee uniforms contributes to the company’s strong and recognizable brand identity.

 

Colors in branding is not only for aesthetic purposes. According to color psychology and customer perception, you can use color as a branding strategy to elicit emotions, develop a brand identity, and increase brand awareness in competitive marketplaces.

Understanding how color works and how people react to specific colors allows a brand to achieve a huge competitive advantage. A brand can establish a strong emotional connection and long-term loyalty by taking into account numerous elements, including the target market, the company’s values, and the industry context, as well as ensuring consistency across all platforms.

To summarize what we’ve discussed so far, keep in mind that color is a powerful branding tool. With the right strategy, color can be a powerful tool in developing and sustaining a strong and memorable brand identity. 

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