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60. Pick a colour
by iKnow
60
PICK A COLOUR
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The human eye can spot hundreds of shades and depth of colour, but realistically we can only distinguish between a generous handful of them unless they’re placed right next to each other.
The idea Choose a distinctive colour for your brand.
In the 1980s, when tobacco advertising was still allowed, Silk Cut, a brand of low-tar cigarettes, was launched with teaser ads using photographs of ripped pieces of purple silk, but no words. Casual observers assumed that they were for Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate which was the best-known purple brand around, unless they looked closely at the health warning, which was smaller in those days.
It was a surprise when the cigarettes were launched; the pack never appeared on the consumer ads, just in the press trade. Silk Cut’s purple and white packaging certainly stood out on the shelves compared with the other cigarette brands of the time, which were in combinations of black, red, blue, white and gold. The imagery was questionable. At a time when people were becoming more aware of the damage that smoking does to health, photographs of silk with scalpel cuts, needles and what looked like surgical scissors were perhaps not the most reassuring images. All the same, it was said to be the most successful cigarette launch ever.
Silk cut purple turned out to be slightly more red than Cadbury’s purple but no one would know that unless they were trained designers or could see the two of them sitting next to each other on poster billboards. So while the Cadbury purple is still the strongest claim on the colour, Silk Cut took it into another market and made it their own. Among smokers if someone offers you a cigarette from a white and purple pack, no one’s going to say, “What’s that then?” Among non-smokers, it’ll probably want to make them buy chocolate.
In practice • Stick with the colour you have chosen. • Avoid colour swhich used by big organisations in your own market; even if they haven’t been able to trademark it, you will only help to build their brands not your own. • Use it conspicuously, but not to the point of obliterating your own message.
