The importance of colors in marketing

Concept & Design

The importance of colors in marketing

Author: Kurt Schauer

Colors with a certain signaling effect have long been used in advertising to trigger a specific reaction in the viewer. When designing marketing materials, kaos werbeagentur therefore incorporates the entire color spectrum into its work – and also takes cultural differences into account.

To each company its color

It is no coincidence that the world’s most famous brands leave nothing to chance when it comes to colors: Coca-Cola and Ferrari, for example, have opted for red, as this color is universally considered a signal and is often used as a warning. Neither the soft drink nor the luxury vehicle is dangerous, but the signaling effect is naturally retained. In addition, there is calming Nivea blue and a hopeful green, which is used by the coffee shop chain Starbucks, for example. And would Deutsche Telekom really be the same company without the famous magenta?

In marketing, the right color branding strategy is therefore essential – but how do you find it?

Color Branding, or: Why it’s rarely simple

A quick search on the internet will reveal „helpful“ color wheels that supposedly explain the psychology of colors to you. For example, red evokes excitement, yellow stands for optimism, and blue perhaps for strength and trust. However, for various reasons, it would be wrong to blindly rely on these sources.

Color perception is, in most cases, a highly individual matter.

You might find shades of brown very soothing for your home decor, while another person generally finds brown less attractive. Marketing works analogously: you cannot promote a new product „on a whim“ in (for example) blue hues without knowing the target audience. It is imperative to precisely plan marketing efforts, including color choices, in advance.

Cultural differences should not be underestimated: white may represent cleanliness and innocence in our region – the ideal color for advertising a new detergent? Not necessarily in large parts of Asia, where white is the color of mourning. Especially with such a global medium as the internet, you must therefore consider how advertising for your company might be perceived in other countries if you operate internationally.

Consider customer expectations

Much more important than the colors themselves are often the expectations that the customer has of a product, and the related expectations regarding color choice. To make this somewhat theoretical construct more understandable, an example helps: if a customer of your company looks at an advertisement for outdoor clothing, they will most likely expect natural shades such as dark green, brown, or gray. These colors should therefore dominate the background image in classic banner advertising, for example, and also play a central role in video clips on YouTube & Co.

Conversely, you would not present advertising for children’s toys in „business colors“ like gray or black, but rather across the entire color spectrum from light blue to red, green, yellow, and orange. In other words: general statements like „green is the color of hope“ are too simplistic. You should always orient the color presentation to the actual product or service. Would you trust an advertisement for a loan that promises you low interest rates in bright pink with glitter? Probably not – but perhaps more so in typical „finance tones“ like green and blue.

Male or Female?

The gender of your target audience is also not insignificant: men and women have sometimes significantly different preferences regarding the colors they like to see in everyday life. For example, more than half of men consider blue their „favorite color,“ while only one-third of women share this view. Furthermore, men do not prefer purple at all, whereas for 23% of women, it is their absolute favorite color. This also shows that a hasty statement like „Purple is ugly, we won’t use it“ simply does not work for effective marketing.

Create Color Islands

Another trick related to choosing the right colors: Let’s assume you want to encourage your customers to sign up for your email newsletter. You design a website and highlight the benefits – yet, sign-ups aren’t really happening. A possible cause could be the color choice of the registration button: If the rest of the website is in light blue and the button itself is perhaps in dark blue, the signaling effect is simply too weak. The button blends in with its surroundings, and the user either doesn’t see it at all or perceives it as insignificant.

If you change its color to a bright red, the number of registrations will also increase. Not because red is a magical color, but because you have created an island effect. The contrast is so high that the eyes are automatically drawn to the button.

Concept & Design