The Full Spectrum

customer perception

Images courtesy of Valspar.

snapshot

The Full Spectrum Valspar boosts customer perception and brand awareness by helping people see color for the first time

By Christine Birkner | senior staff writer

 cbirkner@ama.org Goal In a commodity category such as paint, customers typically focus more on the color or texture of the product rather than the brand that they’re using.

Earlier this year, Minneapolis-based Valspar Corp. sought to bring its paint products and brand name top of mind with consumers. “We were striving for a distinct personality that would resonate with homeowners and get them to choose Valspar,” says Joel Wasserman, director of brand integration at Valspar.

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Three hundred million people around the world are color-blind, or unable to distinguish colors, in particular red and green, so Valspar’s creative agency, Chicago-based FCB Chicago, saw a cause marketing opportunity that could help set the brand apart.

Action Color blindness can hamper both the color-blind person’s vision and his interactions with friends and loved ones, says Myra Mazzei, chief creative

officer at FCB Chicago, which made it an intriguing issue for Valspar to address.

“It’s funny how much color blindness affects people who are friends with or who live with the color-blind person,” she says. “There’s always a little bit of a barrier. You’re missing the human connection of sharing a sunset together, or being able to comment on red flowers or green trees.”

In March 2015, Valspar launched the “Color For All” campaign, partnering with Berkeley, Calif.-based EnChroma, a manufacturer of color-blindnesscorrecting glasses, to provide free glasses to color-blind people. To promote the effort, FCB found eight consumers in Los Angeles who were color-blind and shot a four-minute documentary, “Color for the Color Blind,” chronicling their stories of dealing with color blindness.

The video ends with the participants putting on EnChroma glasses and

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CUSTOMER PERCEPTION

seeing color for the first time via a multicolored art installation, a sunset and a child’s crayon drawings.

“They knew it was going to be a project about color blindness, but they weren’t told about the glasses,” Mazzei says. “They got to sit together for two days and talk about their experiences, whether it was funny things like a guy accidentally wearing pink pants, or deeper things, like a guy who wasn’t able to follow his dream of becoming a pilot.”

Valspar posted the video on its website, YouTube channel, and Facebook and Twitter pages, and on a microsite, ValsparColorForAll. com. Viewers were encouraged to share their stories of dealing with color blindness by commenting on the website or on social media using the hashtag #ColorForAll. Valspar gave free EnChroma glasses to 150 people who shared their stories.

“We made selections based on the depth of the stories. We wanted to give them to a range of people,” Mazzei says.

“A lot of people wrote in who were friends or family of people with color blindness. One was a sweet high school girl who wrote in about her teacher. He would always be a little self-deprecating about it, or make jokes about it, so we awarded him a pair for her to surprise him with. We received thousands of stories, and people were talking to each other in the comments section. There was a lot of bonding going on. There were a lot of great connections made, even digitally.”

Adds Wasserman: “It was nice to form a community where people could share their challenges and how they work around them. We’re so deeply rooted in color, so it made all the sense in the world.” results From March through May 2015, the campaign garnered 841 million social media impressions, and the video received 4.8 million views on YouTube.

Wasserman wouldn’t reveal the campaign budget and the company says

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Participants saw color for the first time via a multicolored art installation, thanks to Valspar’s partnership with EnChroma.

that the campaign was intended as a corporate social responsibility initiative rather than as a promotional effort— and by that measure, Wasserman considers the campaign to have been a success. “In addition to messages like: ‘I’m always going to choose this brand. This is a brand I believe in,’ it helped define our personality and break through in our category,” he says. “It also made a difference internally at Valspar. People said they were proud to work for a company like this. And our direct customers, Lowe’s and Ace Hardware, when they saw this program, they wanted to get behind it, so they started posting [the video], as well.”

Victor Pineiro, vice president of social media at New York-based digital creative agency Big Spaceship, who has worked with clients including Google and Samsung on digital and cause marketing campaigns, says that the effort should help Valspar stand out. “The fact that they were able to ‘cure’ color blindness for people is hugely interesting and very emotional. That makes this piece of content viral, but also it’s … giving them more awareness and getting people to view them in an interesting light. …

Consumers are likely to switch brands to one that’s associated with a cause, so it’s great that Valspar found a cause that actually makes sense for the brand.

If this was McDonald’s curing color blindness, there’s no connection there.

This extends their core equity with something that makes sense for the brand.”

That was the goal, Wasserman says.

“It helped us relate to our customers on a different level, on a more emotional level. Sometimes you need to do work like this that’s very emotional and moving to get that brand recognition.” m

COMPANY

Valspar Corp.

HEADQUARTERS

Minneapolis CREATIVE PARTNER

FCB Chicago CAMPAIGN TIMELINE

March-May 2015 RESULTS

841 million social media impressions; 4.8 million video views on YouTube

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