COLOR-BLIND CUSTOMERS OF TODAY
Think of Blue and what comes to mind is a blue ocean. A blue sky? Sometimes Big Blue, which is IBM. It is true that IBM did acquire a secondary meaning and a legendary position of being recognized as such. After all it was an army in blue suits pushing forward the towering blue mainframe computers. It was only yesterday.
Those
days, to be identified by a specific color or even called by that name
was a great Corporate Image coup. Today, it seems that corporate
identity firms have clearly run out of unique and powerful names are
now trying using specific colors as a calling device to name and also
to identify a corporation. Corporate Identity, by a unique color, that
is.
"Plug Orange Every Day", there is no demand to eat the
fruit or drink the juice. Simply, dial a number. ORANGE is one of the
largest telephone players in Europe, which recently painted an entire
town of England, in Orange, to make their point. It seems they are all
happy and having an Orangy day. Now they are planning to go global with
this success but the name could run into serious trademark and
languages problems, as did PriceWaterhouseCooper when it became MONDAY.
.despite the shock and luckily was picked up by BIG BLUE, IBM. At a
basement bargain price.
The colors of the rainbow are not so pretty in the sky.
"What
Can BROWN Do For You Today". BROWN is a new calling device for UPS, the
United Parcel Service, which employs 350,000 brown clad personnel,
running around in brown trucks. Despite a $45 million campaign BROWN is
still struggling to provide a meaningful message to the use of this
peculiar name. BROWN makes me happy?
Recently, Pepsi
introduced a blue colored soft drink in a Pepsi bottle called
PepsiBlue. Maybe as a counter attack to Coke s Vanilla, a dark colored
coke with vanilla flavor. Unfortunately to some, PepsiBlue looks more
like Windex or 2000 Flushes.
Marketing of blue fluids has
often been associated with sanitation products, even when it comes to
mouthwashes, like Clorox and Listerine in Blue, etc. Where is the BLUE
Ketchup these days, now that Heinz s GREEN ketchup is in the kitchen.
Yellow
is considered for the soft at heart and the timid, but then there are
the useful YELLOW PAGES. Also YELLOW FREIGHT, a gigantic freight
company of strong men on the super highways. Call YELLOW, they must be
so mellow.
Green thoughts are often for money, grass and
vegetables. GHOSTBUSTERS anyone? THE GREEN PARTY is for the
environment, successfully flushed with money, while H&R Block
claiming to a green block in their image as their exclusive color.
The
customer, at large, is somewhat color-blind to these branding tactics.
It s already recovering from the awkward, dumb, and at times, obscene
names from the wild branding era of the last dot.com bubble.
PurpleFrog; PurbleDog; PurpleRhino; all the way to BlueFrog, BlueDog;
BlueRhino, etc. etc. These poor animals were subjected to verbal abuse
and named in just about every color of the rainbow. Perhaps, this will
end the so-called Verbal Branding and Name Identity via Color Branding
and possibly avert a strike at the local zoo.
Naming of a
corporation is a very serious business and can no longer be left to a
color pallet. The customer cannot be motivated to a branding surge by
coming across a specific color. Imagine, every time you come in contact
with the color brown, wouldn t you prefer to think of a chocolate bar,
rather than calling UPS or hugging one of their delivery guys on the
road.
If naming corporations by color is really that
important, then perhaps a lot of corporations should simply be called
RED; red in embarrassment, blushing or simply for bleeding too much red
ink.
Colors are most important for packaging and design,
unfortunately they are few and part of our daily life. Therefore, it s
dumb to imagine that a single color exclusively identifies a specific
corporation. Ad agencies are only hurting themselves with this kind of
advice.
Stop, the Corporate ID and Logo shops to peddle such
crafts. Look for professionally executed naming methodologies and
search for master-naming architects there is no shortage of unique
powerful global names, what is short is the naming expertise.
About the Author
Naseem Javed is a syndicated columnist, author of Naming for Power,
founder of ABC Namebank International, world-renowned lecturer and an
expert on corporate naming issues.