Colour is a very effective form of non-verbal communication. When establishing your brand, understanding the subconscious impact of colours is essential to obtaining a positive response from your audience.

Identifying your primary and secondary color palettes is a key element in building your brand. These carefully chosen colours will be partnered in graphics and images to positively reinforce your branded communications.

When selecting colours for your pallette, choose a:

• Light colour for backgrounds
• Darker colour for text
• Neutral hue
• Colour that “pops”

You may also want to include shades and tints, if you intend to use them often.

Below, you will discover the meaning of some of the most common colours; as well as, the subconscious message they can convey to your audience.

Red in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour red is #FF0000.

Red stimulates. It captures attention, energizes, and inspires action. For example, the colour red is often used in restaurants to stimulate the appetite, and increase cravings for food.

Caution; use the colour red sparingly. Too much can cause a person to become irritated, agitated, and angry.

TIP: Although it is often used to express love – as on Valentine’s Day, the colour red relates more to sexuality and lust than love. Love is expressed with the colour pink.

• Positive connotations: energy, passion, action, ambition and determination.
• Negative connotations: revenge, anger.

Popular Variations of Red

Maroon (hex code #800000) – controlled and thoughtful action.

Burgundy (hex code #900020) – sophisticated, serious, controlled power, determined, ambition, dignified action.

Crimson (hex code #‎990000) – a determination to succeed, sensuality.

Scarlet (hex code #FF2400) – enthusiasm, joie de vie (a love of life).

Orange in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour orange is #FFA500.

The color orange is both physically and mentally stimulating. It combines the physical energy and stimulation of red with the cheerfulness of yellow.

From a psychological perspective, orange is optimistic, uplifting, and rejuvenating. Because of this, the colour orange offers emotional strength and aids in the assimilation of new ideas.

Although more subtle than red, the colour orange also increases the appetite and promotes social interaction.

TIP: Sportsmen and adventure-seekers relate well to orange.

• Positive connotations: vitality, social, communication, enthusiastic, cheerful, optimism.
• Negative connotations: Pessimism, inexpensive, and superficial.

Popular Variations of Orange

Peach (hex code #FFE5B4) – encourages communication and conversation. The colour peach inspires good manners and puts people at ease. It has all the attributes of orange but is regarded to be a much softer, gentler and more cautious variation.

Golden Orange (hex code #EBA53D) – encourages vitality and self-control.

Amber (hex code #FFBF00) – inspires confidence and self esteem. Be cautious, some see it exudes arrogance.

Burnt Orange (hex code #CC5500) – emits a negative vibration that conveys tension, aggressive self-assertion, and pride.

Dark Orange (hex code #FF8C00) – indicates overconfidence and over-ambition. It is the color of the opportunist, selfishness.

Yellow in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour yellow is #FFFF00.

The colour yellow relates well to the expression and integration of new ideas and thoughts.

Yellow is non-emotional. A person’s reaction to it comes from the head rather than the heart. The colour yellow appeals to the left side or logical side of the brain. Because this side stimulates mental agility, inquisitiveness, and perception, yellow assists in acquiring knowledge (i.e. focusing, studying, and the recall of information).

Regarded as a “fast moving” colour, too much of the colour yellow can produce anxiety and cause a person to feel agitated.

• Positive connotations: academic, intellectual, wisdom, logic, optimistic, cheerful, enthusiasm, creativity, fun.
• Negative connotations: impatience, criticism, and cowardice.

Popular Variations of Yellow

Light Yellow (hex code #FFFFE0) – This color helps to clear the mind, making it open and alert.

Lemon Yellow (hex code #FFF44F) – self-reliance, order.

Citrine Yellow (hex code #E4D00A) – superficial, fickle, deceitful, irresponsible.

Golden Yellow (hex code #FFDF00) – independence, curiosity. It is widely believed that those who choose golden yellow are sensitive to criticism.

Cream (hex code #FFFDD0) – encourages new ideas. May indicate a lack of confidence and a need for reassurance.

Dark Yellow (hex code #9B870C) – depression, melancholy, lack of love, low self-worth, cynical.

Green in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour green is #00FF00.

Green is an emotionally positive color that inspires hope and generosity. It is the colour of rebirth, renewal, and growth.

Being a combination of yellow and blue, green encompasses the mental clarity and optimism of yellow with the emotional calm and insight of blue. From a psychological perspective, the color green creates harmony between a person’s heart and their emotions.

• Positive connotations: prosperity, abundance, harmony, endurance, persistence, growth, charitable, helpful, self-reliance.
• Negative connotations: possessiveness, judgmental, over-cautious.

Popular Variations of Green

Pale green (hex code #98FB98) – new growth, youthfulness. Be cautious, pale green can convey immaturity and inexperience.

Emerald green (hex code #287233) – inspiring, uplifting, abundance, wealth, well-being.

Jade green (hex code #00A86B) – trust, confidentiality, tact, diplomacy, generosity, wisdom, understanding.

Lime green (hex code #32CD32) – youthfulness, playfulness.

Dark green (hex code #006400) – greed, selfishness.

Aqua (hex code #00FFFF) – calming

Olive green (hex code #BAB86C) – self-discipline, poise. Be cautious, olive green can also convey deceit and treachery,

Yellow green (hex code #9ACD32) – cowardice, conflict, fear.

Grass green (hex code #7CFC00) – self-confidence, security, natural, healthy.

Blue in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour blue is #0000FF.

Blue is the most universally liked colour of all. From a psychological perspective, blue a safe and non-threatening colour that is reliable, responsible. conservative, and predictable. Many people see this colour as being sincere, reserved and quiet, trustworthy, responsible, honest, and loyal.

Blue is the color of the Holy Spirit, as well as religious devotion and study.

TIP: The paler the blue the more freedom a person feels.

• Positive connotations: trustworthy, loyalty, integrity, and calm
• Negative connotations: aloof and frigid.

Popular Variations of Blue

Pale Blue (hex code #AFEEEE) – creativity, freedom

Sky Blue (hex code #87CEEB) – Regarded as one of the calmest colors, sky blue is a non-threatening colour. This colour inspires selflessness and fidelity.

Azure Blue (hex code #007FFF) – contentment, determination, ambition, purpose.

Dark Blue (hex code #00008B) – is a masculine colour, conveying conservatism and responsibility. It is a non-emotional colour that is used to represent knowledge, power, and integrity, particularly in the corporate world.

Brown in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour brown is #964b00.

Brown implies common sense, and is widely regarded as an honest, genuine and sincere colour. Because it exudes responsibility, stability, structure, and support, the colour brown relates well to those who are hardworking, industrious, and reliable.

The colour brown is often associated with wholesome, natural, and organic product; as well as, anything related to the outdoors, agriculture, and farming.

Although brown is regarded as a frugal color – not associated with frivolity, excess or waste in any kind, it values quality above all else. Because of this, brown can be sophisticated or elegant, depending on the colours associated with it.

• Positive connotations: friendly, serious, wholesome, natural, security, protection, comfort, strength, quality.
• Negative connotations: dull, boring, frugal, predictable.

Popular Variations of Brown

Light Brown (hex code #B5651D) – friendly and approachable, sincere, honest, and genuine.

Dark Brown (hex code #654321) – strong. Be cautious, some people say dark brown is sad and depressive.

Tan (hex code #D2B48C) – ageless, timeless, straightforward, uncomplicated, and natural.

Ivory (hex code #FFFFF0) – calming, encouraging, reserved, sophistication.

Beige (hex code #F5F5DC) – practical, reliable, conservative, constant, unchanging, and loyal.

Pink in Brand Colours

The hex code for the colour pink is #FFC0CB.

Pink displays the passion and power of red, softened with the purity, openness, and innocence of white. The colour pink represents compassion, nurturing and unconditional love. Showing tenderness and kindness, pink is widely regarded as a calming colour, and is also equated with nurturing.

In psychology, pink is a sign of hope.

Combining pink with other darker colors such as dark blue, dark green, black, or gray, adds strength and sophistication to pink.

Caution; a constant and exclusive use of pink can give the appearance of being immature, silly, and girlish.

• Positive connotations: unconditional love and nurturing.
• Negative connotations: immature, silly.

Popular Variations of Pink

Blush (hex code #DE5D83) – this very pale pink has sensual and sexual connotations. Because the colour blush lacks passion and energy, it is regarded as non-threatening.

Rose Pink (hex code #FF66CC) – This variation of pink is regarded as the colour of universal love and unity. It is mature, feminine, and intuitive.

Salmon Pink (hex code #FF9999) – There is a touch of orange in salmon pink.

Orchid (hex code #DA70D6) – This is an unusual lavender-pink colour that conveys individualism and nonconformity.

Fuchsia (hex code #FF00FF) – A blend of deep pink and blue, fuchsia inspires confidence, assurance, and maturity.

Hot Pink (hex code #FF69B4) – The hot pink colour inspires a more passionate, playful and sensual love. It exudes warmth and happiness.

Purple in Brand Colours

Purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. With this powerful combination of both warm and cool properties, the colour purple has a variety of effects on the mind and body; including uplifting the spirit, calming the mind and nerves, increasing nurturing tendencies and sensitivity, and encouraging imagination and creativity.

Although often associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition, the colour purple also represents creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, and independence; as well as, feminine energy and delicacy.

Purple is a feminine, graceful, elegant colour that has long been associated with refined, wealthy women. In the bible (Acts 16:14), “And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira.” Lydia typifies a successful business woman in a prosperous city.

Because the color purple rarely occurs in nature, it is often seen as having sacred meaning. For example, lavender, orchid, lilac, and violet flowers are considered to be delicate and precious.

Quick facts about the colour purple:

• Purple is considered a cool color in landscape design. Its appearance has a calming effect in a garden.
• Purple plants visually recede in a garden, helping to make a small space feel larger.
• Purple’s complimentary color in the garden is yellow.

Black in Brand Colours

The hex code for black is #FFFFFF.

Although the color black is often seen as a color of elegance, sophistication, and confidence, because of the power it exudes black can be regarded as intimidating, unfriendly, and unapproachable.

• Positive connotations: strong, formal, sophisticated, elegant, seductive
• Negative connotations: hidden, secretive, intimidating, unfriendly, unapproachable.

Influential Images

Images are an influential communicator. Within the graphics you use for marketing, your brand colours play an important role in communicating a subconscious message to the audience.

Because of their powerful influence over a consumer’s perception, be certain to select colours for your brand that are consistent with your company’s core values. Doing so ensures that your imagery delivers a positive, impactful message that aligns with your business goals.

Let’s discuss your choice of brand colours in a FREE 30 MINUTE STRATEGY SESSION. Complete the form below to contact me.

As a small business in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace, the only way you will stay ahead of your competition is to differentiate yourself through branding. The first step in establishing your brand is to determine how your business is performing in the mind of your customers and employees. To accomplish this, it is necessary to perform a brand audit.

A brand audit provides a detailed examination of your brand’s current position in the market. It makes comparisons to your competitors, and reviews the effectiveness of your brand. When the audit is complete, it will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your brand, as well as identify opportunities for improvement.

An effective brand audit will clearly define internal and external branding, as well as the company’s communication systems and infrastructure. It is important to get to know your brand inside and out. Doing so ensures your brand is in alignment internally and externally. What you say/do internally, should be the same thing you say/do externally.

Below are the fundamental elements of a brand audit that must be explored.

Brand Audit: Internal Branding

Internal branding encourages employees to become more customer and business focused. Companies whose workforce understands how the company operates, and how they generate revenue, consistently deliver better performance. If executed properly, internal branding allows employees to transition from being “informed,” to “understanding,” to “committed.” This approach encourages staff members to independently adjust their behavior to support the company’s goals.

Effective internal branding offers huge benefits. Committed employees provide stronger performance and deliver higher customer satisfaction. In addition, internal branding increases brand equity, customer focus, and shareholder value.

Brand Positioning

It is very important that you have a positioning statement. Your brand’s positioning – sometimes referred to as a brand strategy, is the process of placing something specific and desirable about your brand, into the mind of consumers. It is constantly promoting the benefit you want consumers to recall, when they think of your brand. It should be one or two sentence that articulates your brand’s exclusive value to consumers.

Your brand positioning statement should clearly communicate what makes your product or service better than any other in the marketplace.

Brand Values

Brand values are the starting point for everything. They are the foundation of a business. These values should be seen throughout your organization and be reflected in how you market your business and handle your customers. People connect to a value’s underlying, deeper purpose. If you do not align your values with those of your target consumer, they will not buy your product or service.

Examples of brand values are dependability, quality, efficiency, and accountability.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Communicating the unique selling proposition (USP), also known as brand promise or brand essence, is a key element of branding your business. To effectively convey your unique selling proposition you must be able to articulate the value your product brings to the market. Your proposition must give consumers a reason to choose you over your competition. That is the question you need to address, when formulating your unique selling proposition.

Without differentiation, your product/service risks being seen as a commodity and easily replaced by the consumer. In this event, the value potential drops significantly. This emphasizes the importance of identifying a unique selling point that addresses current and future competition.

If you’re not a brand, you’re a commodity.

– Philip Kotler

In the book Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves, the author shares three ingredients a unique selling proposition must include to be regarded as something more than simply creative branding:

1. Each marketing message must say to the consumer: “buy this product, for this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition must be one the competition cannot or does not offer.
3. The proposition must be strong enough to move the masses, i.e., attract new customers.

Having a unique selling point, even one that excludes some prospective customers, is a competitive advantage that allows you to avoid trying to please everyone.

Brand Voice

An effective brand voice is the result of purposeful, consistent expression through carefully chosen words and prose styles. When communicating with your audience you must be consistent with the voice and vocabulary you are using. It is not what you say, but how you say it.

There is a strong link between familiarity and trust. Because something familiar requires little effort to process mentally, consumers are more likely to feel at ease around it. A consistent, distinctive, and recognizable tone of communications and writing style breeds familiarity and trust with an audience, and lends authenticity to your brand.

Brand Culture

The culture within your company should be representative of your brand.

A company’s brand culture promotes an environment where employees “live” the brand’s values. Adhering to these corporate values, employees solve problems and make decisions internally, which deliver a consistently branded customer experience externally.

Everything the company does, including the business decisions it makes, must be consistently demonstrated within the brand’s culture. This builds a strong sense of identification between front-line employees and the brand’s customers.

If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.

– Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks

Product/Service Positioning

The goal of product positioning is to determine how to communicate your products’ attributes in a way that conveys the differentiating, value-added aspects of your product or service, to your target audience.

Product positioning refers to consumers’ perceptions of a product’s attributes, uses, quality, and advantages and disadvantages relative to competing brands.

– Louis E. Boone and David L. Kurtz, Contemporary Marketing

Effective product positioning ensures that your marketing messages will be received by targeted consumers and compel them to take action.

Brand Audit: External Branding

Using external sources to communicate your brand message is an important part of branding your business. External branding combines all marketing activities used to influence the mind-set and purchasing behavior of customers, as well as to entice prospective customers to use your company’s product or service.

Corporate Identity

A business makes itself distinct through the image that it presents to the world, primarily through its corporate identity on business cards, letterheads, brochures, etc. This physical expression of the company’s brand is an extension of the brand culture that is already expressed through the brand’s communication style and behavior.

A corporate identity is a set of multi-sensory elements that are employed to communicate a visual statement about a brand to consumers. Generally speaking, this includes a company’s name, logo, slogan, buildings, décor, uniforms, and company colors, which are commonly assembled within a set of brand guidelines. These detailed guidelines include approved color palettes, typefaces, page layouts, etc., and will govern how the corporate identity is applied in advertising and public relations campaigns.

Brand Collateral

Brand Collateral is the collection of media you use to promote your brand. Designed to support your brand’s core values and personality, it plays an important role in supporting the sales and marketing of your product or service.

Your business’ brand collateral includes printed items like business cards, brochures, direct mail, letterhead, envelopes and fliers. It also includes your company’s digital assets like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter profile pictures, websites, landing pages, mobile apps, and videos.

Social Media

Social data can help provide an overview of your brand and provide valuable insight. The demographic information available through social media allows you to better understand who your audience is. In doing so, you will be able to create content that really appeals to your fans, friends, and followers.

In addition, using your social media assets to perform a sentiment analysis allows you to gain an overview of the wider public opinion around your brand. Nurturing and monitoring online interactions will allow your company to collect the honest, straightforward opinion of the consumer audience.

Website

Branding must be consistent across all media types. This also applies to web design. When website visitors come into contact with your brand, the web page they visit must awaken the associations and experiences they 1) previously had with your brand, or 2) have seen in traditional or digital advertising.

To ensure your website projects a uniform image, keep colors, visuals and typography consistent throughout your website.

Branding helps people differentiate between competition and quickly judge quality.

– @DesignDepot

Brand Advertising

Brand advertising is the process that you use to keep the public aware of your brand, so they continue to buy your products or services. Generating this brand awareness will improve the consumer’s ability to recall or recognize your brand from a brand element, like a logo, jingle, or slogan.

When advertising your brand you must deliver a clear message about your brand’s identity; more specifically, the character and personality of your brand. This is important because, good brand advertising builds brand credibility; it inspires trust.

Brand advertising also works to establish your brand as a leader in its industry. This positioning allows you to out-compete other brands.

Making Changes To Your Branding

If, based on your brand audit, you decide to make changes to your brand, you’ll need to put together a full action plan for rolling out the changes. This must include an extended timeline and clear delegation of responsibilities, both inside and outside your company.

When a brand identity changes, it’s confusing to consumers. So, everywhere the name of your company appears, your branding should be immediately identifiable. The fonts, colors, and logo should always be consistent.

Let’s spend 30 minutes making YOUR BUSINESS BETTER. Use the form below to contact me for a FREE marketing strategy session.