Color Consistency in Branding

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1 January 5, 2009 Analysis Color Consistency in Branding Authors Adam Peck Matt Swain Bryan Yeager Published by Business Development Strategies Consulting Service Abstract Brand identity is as much about color as it is about design. This document provides some real-world examples of the importance of color in a company s design standard, offers a discussion on color consistency, and considers the advantages of using the Pantone Matching System and Web-to-print solutions to maintain brand identity InfoTrends, Inc. For More Information If you would like to order extra copies of this report, receive permission to use any part of the report, or be informed of upcoming market updates, reports, and related projects, please us at info@infotrends.com. Headquarters: Europe: Asia: 97 Libbey Industrial Parkway 3 rd Floor, Sceptre House Hiroo Office Building Suite Castle Street Hiroo, Shibuya-ku Weymouth, MA Luton, Bedfordshire Tokyo United States United Kingdom, LU1 3AJ Japan info@infotrends.com euro.info@infotrends.com info@infotrends.co.jp

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 2 Maintaining a Consistent Brand Identity... 2 Color Memory and Delta E... 3 Pantone: The Key to Brand Color Identity... 4 Maintaining Brand Consistency with Web-to-Print... 5 Conclusion... 6 Introduction Brand identity is as much about color as it is about design. To provide an example, what if a rogue McDonald s franchise owner chose to use the color aqua in place of its standard, golden yellow, Pantone 123? Aqua arches? Ronald McDonald with an aqua vest over his red-and-white striped shirt? You can imagine how this would sufficiently confuse a consumer who has only ever seen the golden arches as, well golden. Maintaining a Consistent Brand Identity What if the brand contains multiple varieties? M&M s started with its original milk chocolate offering, but then broadened its scope to include almond, peanut butter, dark chocolate, peanut, and dark chocolate peanut. To manage each of these varieties, the marketing team at M&M s chose to use a subtle differentiator color. When we walk down the candy aisle, we don t need to read the brown packaging to know that we are reaching for a bag of milk chocolate M&M s, simply because that color has been consistently representative of milk chocolate M&M s for as long as we can remember. M&M s maintains a consistent brand identity, while changing the packaging color for each variety. While the colors are different for each variety, they are nonetheless related. Colors are defined by three main color attributes, namely hue, lightness, and chroma. Hue is the attribute of a color that gives it its basic name, such as red, yellow, purple, orange, and so on. Of course, each of these terms is quite subjective and varies from person to person. On a more technical level, hue is the dominant wavelength of a color on the visual spectrum. Lightness is the relative brightness of a color and ranges from dark to light. We measure lightness relative to an absolute white reference. Chroma (or saturation) is the purity of a color, or how far a color departs from neutral gray. When choosing a color scheme for different varieties of packaging ( like the M&M s example described above), choosing colors with a different hue, but consistent lightness and chroma, results in a corresponding color scheme that promotes color branding consistency InfoTrends, Inc.

3 Marketers must be conscious of color consistency within a brand, as it helps to build brand awareness. That said, it is equally important to be conscious of consistency across the different varieties of a brand, which requires that all colors maintain a similar lightness and chroma. Color Memory and Delta E In a course on Color Vision at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Professor Mark Fairchild explained that the human brain is notoriously poor at committing specific colors to memory hence the need for the sophisticated taxonomies that specify color. To use the McDonald s example again, refer to the colors below and see if you can pinpoint which color is McDonalds yellow. The brain can remember the parent groups of a color, also known as the hue. In this case, the hue would be yellow. For the McDonald s brand, the company specifies the color of its golden arches as HEX #FCC917, RGB 252,201,23, or Pantone 123. In the color grid above, the upper-right-hand patch is McDonalds yellow. Did you get it right? Shown separately on McDonald s arches, it is likely that any one of these colors would be acceptable to the average consumer. This is because the human brain relates the McDonald s arches with the hue yellow, and all of the colors in the grid above meet that expectation. We provide this example not to promote inconsistency, but to establish a baseline for what is good enough for the average consumer. When service providers are printing brochures or other collateral, they are checking for color consistency. They either do this by visual analysis (as has been the historical method of matching), or they rely on color measurement tools to assist them. Using an instrument called a Colorimeter, the printer receives color by numbers information, including a number called Delta E. Delta signifies change in and the E stands for Empfindung, the German word for sensation. Delta E, therefore, is a measurement of the change in visual sensation relative to color. A Delta E score of 3.0 for one color may indicate a Just Noticeable Difference (JND). Even so, a marketer may be content with a Delta E of 7.0, as the human brain would only recognize the slight inconsistency if the two colors were placed side-by-side. Marketers need to establish the good enough boundary for their brand colors. Print service providers should develop Delta E guidelines to maintain a measurable approach to color consistency InfoTrends, Inc.

4 Pantone: The Key to Brand Color Identity While popular brands have iconic logos, there is one key aspect to the design of those logos that helps people make a distinct connection with that brand color. When you think about McDonalds branding, you don t just think about the arches you think about the golden arches. Just think about how ubiquitous and identifiable those golden arches are across the world. McDonalds logo appears on placemats, cups, French fry holders, bags, clothing, billboards, bus wraps, and many other places. So how do those arches stay that certain tinge of gold when presented in all of those different mediums? The answer is contained in just a few numbers and letters: Pantone 123. The Pantone Matching System (commonly referred to as PMS) contains over 1,000 standardized spot colors, or colors that are reproduced without the traditional halftone screening process used in printing. These PMS colors are referenced by number (such as Pantone 123), and can be formulated with base pigments that are combined together according to Pantone s color formula guide. A standardized spot color system is an interesting concept, but why not use the traditional printing process that mixes cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks to create printed colors? Pantone colors use special base pigments that often cannot be replicated by the inks that are used in the traditional printing process. By providing a formula to repeatedly create the same specific spot colors for different printing inks (offset, flexography, inkjet), Pantone colors can be consistently reproduced independent of the printing process being used. The matching system is ideal for brand color identity. The Pantone system is widely adopted not only in the graphic arts industry, but also in the fashion/textiles industry. Colors can also be matched for plastics and paint. By covering many different markets that deal with color, Pantone can provide brand color consistency across many different applications, including those aforementioned placemats, clothing, and billboards. Design applications like Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and QuarkXPress have built Pantone colors into their color palettes. In 2007, Pantone introduced the Pantone Goe (pronounced go ) System as a replacement to the Pantone Matching System. The new system has over 1,000 new colors, but it requires fewer base pigments to produce colors, effectively doing more with less. Because so many companies have designed their brands using the original PMS color set, however, it remains to be seen how the Goe System will be adopted into existing brands InfoTrends, Inc.

5 Maintaining Brand Consistency with Web-to-Print One of the leading international brand consultancy firms, Interbrand, conducts an annual study that is focused on the current and future trends in brand management. The 2007 Brand Marketers Report details the results from this study. The study surveyed nearly 300 brand leaders, and there were some interesting results regarding brand consistency: 1. Brand practitioners believe that consistency is the most important aspect of successful branding, followed by understanding the customer/target and message/communication effectiveness. 2. Strict adherence to brand standards creates brands with customer impact, but few companies have been able to secure consistent compliance across their organizations. 3. The benefits of centralized brand management include efficiency of effort, efficiency of scale, and tighter controls. In addition, 67% of marketers believe that consistency in branding is becoming even more important (DDB Worldwide Communications Group. 2007). Marketers rely on brand consistency to portray reliability and value, ultimately maintaining long-term brand success. As Interbrand s report pointed out, however, maintaining consistency across an organization is a significant challenge. Logos and color schemes are used on every piece of corporate collateral, from business cards and direct mail to catalogs and billing statements. When it comes to direct marketing, organizations are using an average of 3.7 channels to reach out to their customers (Source: Trans Meets Promo Is It More than Marketing Hype?, InfoTrends, 2008). Managing such a wide variety of marketing collateral across multiple channels can quickly become overwhelming for the average marketing executive, but don t despair! Centralized brand management solutions, like Web-to-print, can take the pain out of brand management by controlling brand consistency and increasing efficiencies and controls. Web-to-print storefronts are branded with a corporate identity and pre-populated with templates for every type of marketing collateral, including business cards, stationery, direct mail, signage, and promotional items. Templates enable marketers to lock down their brands by maintaining control over key elements like logos, fonts, and color schemes. At the same time, users across the organization can login to the storefront, select a template, and customize the piece using an online form. The marketer decides which elements are fixed and which ones can be customized. Web-to-print enables employees to request all types of marketing collateral in an on-demand environment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The user can view immediate pricing and a real-time proof of their order. Additionally, automated approval workflows and budget controls can be established to manage the process. Marketers now have the ability to control their brand while enabling more efficient operations. Web-to-print automates the flow of information by integrating collateral management with on-demand print ordering, resulting in a more streamlined operation InfoTrends, Inc.

6 Conclusion Brand consistency is becoming increasingly important as marketers strive to maintain long-term brand success. Colors are defined using hue, lightness, and chroma; compared using Delta E; and standardized with the Pantone color systems. Additionally, Web-to-print solutions allows marketers to lock down their brands, empower their organizations, and streamline their marketing operations. This material is prepared specifically for clients of InfoTrends, Inc. The opinions expressed represent our interpretation and analysis of information generally available to the public or released by responsible individuals in the subject companies. We believe that the sources of information on which our material is based are reliable and we have applied our best professional judgment to the data obtained InfoTrends, Inc.