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Get
a Clueless
about colors for your fall marketing campaign? Shades affect sales more than
you think. |
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It's time
to kick off fall marketing programs, which means you're wrestling with design
decisions. But are you considering which colors your marketing tools will wear
this season? Selecting the best shades isn't as simple as black and white. But
making the right color choices can have a strong impact on sales.
Say It With Color
Color has a subtle, yet
immediate and powerful, effect. Each time customers ares
exposed to your marketing materials--anything from business cards to
direct-mail campaigns--they tend to make instantaneous decisions about your
company and the products or services it offers, often based largely on their
emotional reactions to colors.
Basic colors have universal
meaning in our culture. We all know red is the color of passion and love. Blue,
cited by most Americans as their favorite color, connotes respectability and
tranquility. Both men and women like purple, an androgynous color most often associated
with royalty. Green, the color of money, also represents nature and the
environment. Yellow is linked to feelings of happiness, while orange, a hot
color, conveys energy and emotional stimulation.
But basic color is just the
beginning of the story. What's most critical when it comes to selecting the
right look for your marketing materials is shade, the value of the color
range. Take green, for instance. Chartreuse conveys a
trendy image. Choose apple green, and you make a modern, artistic statement,
while the deeper shade of hunter green appeals to a more conservative audience.
Each color value sends a slightly different message.
Often, the first materials
your customers see are your stationery, business cards and company brochure.
"Many companies use color as a way of identifying themselves," says
Jay de Sibour, president of the Color Marketing
Group, an association of independent professionals. De Sibour
suggests selecting and sticking with a color for your company identity that
represents the nature of your business. Eventually, it will become associated
with you--much as "IBM blue" and "UPS brown" are
immediately recognized today.
What's Hot
for Fall
While your company color
symbolizes what you're all about, the colors for your point-of-sale, direct
mail, presentations and other marketing tools must be selected based on an
understanding of your target audience and what will appeal to them. "If
you're targeting the Latin market, for example," says de Sibour, "you can use brighter shades of red, yellow
and orange."
You should also choose
shades of color that reflect what you are marketing. For example, a caterer who
wants to prepare a direct-mail campaign would use richer, more saturated shades
to market anniversary parties and weddings, and switch to brighter hues for
packages featuring children's birthday parties.
Every season, some colors
drop out of favor and new ones replace them. This fall, Americans' desire for
tradition, family, nostalgia and spiritualism will spur a move toward colors we
feel safe with, says de Sibour.
The most popular colors
with women this fall will be turquoise and a teal called "mallard."
Younger men will prefer "madder red," a deep orange-red, and older
men will find a combination of deep navy and indigo most appealing, according
to Margaret Walch, director of the Color Association
of the
There's a wide range of
tastes even within a targeted market, and Walch says
geography also plays a key role. Once you've selected the colors for your
marketing materials, she suggests trying them out on five members of the target
group to see how they react. That should be enough feedback to let you know if
you're on the right track.
To learn more about
choosing colors, visit www.colorassociation.com
and www.colormarketing.org.
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