When the Uber Eats or Foodpanda guy comes around with your order, you can see them from a mile away right? This is true even in the case that you can’t actually make out the writing on the delivery vehicle’s branding.
If you were enticed to participate in an activity to test just how observant you are of the branding material you interact with, as an extension of the brands which make your selection of favourites, how would you do? Would you be able to pick the logo out from a selection of very similar ones?
What if that logo was presented in black-and-white or greyscale? What if the brand’s so-called corporate colours were modified slightly, with the most dominant of those colours slightly lightened or darkened with a shade or two?
Would you still be able to associate some branding or packaging you interact with, with a particular brand, if the logo was omitted and there was no slogan included?
The truth is a lot more goes into branding than what the average consumer may think. Some budding entrepreneurs who find themselves on the other side of the fence are also oblivious to just how much is required to go into the creation of a brand, demonstrating this oversight by perhaps hastily commissioning a cheap, DIY logo online.
The colours are naturally very important, which is why in some instances a certain brand chooses to go with a solitary colour instead of a set of dominant colours. It’s about more than just how it looks, or something like it being the founder’s favourite colour. Colours have a deeper-running impact on the mood of the onlooker, which in the case of a brand would be the customer.
Consequently, you associate a certain feeling or emotion with a specific brand you interact with and that can be said to be the underlying true colours of your favourite brands. On more of the implied figurative meaning of the consideration of your favourite brands’ true colours; often the prominent branding colours mirror the brand’s underlying story, cause, vision, history, etc. For instance, if you were to choose the dominant colour or set of colours for a renewable energy brand, you’d be looking along the lines of light-green, perhaps against a clean, white background, wouldn’t you?
There’s nothing sinister to it, but there are some powerful visual psychology principles applied to all the branding we interact with. Food outlets such as Pizza Hut for instance, use the colour red for those of its properties which can stimulate an elevated heart-rate, which in turn can stimulate a bit of hunger… as subtle as those effects can be.
So when the marketing division of a brand sends off their briefs to the marketing materials printers, a lot more research and the application of visual psychology accompanies the seemingly simple instructions.
How well do you know your favourite brands’ though? Are you confident you’d be able to pick out their true colours, which is important as branding is associated with a certain level of quality you’ve come to expect from them? Test yourself with this fun quiz put together by Banner World: