Ed, I agree about UPS brown. The slogan, “What can brown do for you?” didn’t come along until years after UPS went into business and took control of brown. They became brown before they really had any slogan as I recall.

Thank you for reading and sharing your comments here. I hope you both felt I gave this topic justice considering volumes have been written on the subject. You both bring up some interesting points about this idea. Yet many marketers don’t really give the selection of color the deep consideration it deserves. It’s my view that color in brand strategy should never be subjective and arbitrary. I agree with Ed, most are more concerned with slogans.

Mind you once the differentiating color is chosen, then psychological and emotional touch-points are also entertained to be sure it doesn’t conflict with the brand’s character.

Color is so powerful, yet most brands spend more time on slogans for some reason. 🙂

You could not find anyone who agrees more with you on the importance of color in branding. Oh my goodness. Tomes can be written about this. You are right: it’s the first thing your eye sees. Color, then shape, then image, then text. That’s kinda how it works, but in milliseconds, of course. And color can totally alter mood and brain chemistry – those of us in love with and awe of its power hold this as a fundamental truth.

But the power of yellow is NOT leveraged by the Yellow Pages. How is that possible? How does the yellow of the pages allow anything to jump out? Yellow road signs, on the other hand, work so well because of the sky or the trees behind them. Yellow needs a darker partner.

Green does not mean tractor if you happen to be a Case customer. Then it’s red. And even if it did mean tractor, you’re confusing semantics with emotional appeal.

Color is complicated.

Interesting that you compare Apple to UPS. UPS uses brown as a functional differentiator, not an emotional one. For emotional impact, it personifies the word ‘brown’ when it asks, What can Brown do for you today?” Without those words, brown would just suck.

Apple started out using all the colors in the spectrum by choosing a rainbow-colored symbol. Was it strategic prescience, or did it just become strategically significant after Apple’s undisputed success? The first twenty years were pretty bumpy.

Such an interesting topic, but so little understood. And I mean by everyone, including myself.