Psychology and business may be very different, but one thing they have in common is people. These two different worlds collide in the area of marketing in which people are viewed as the consumer they want to please. In marketing, companies attempt to attract bigger audiences for which they can sell their products. Here, many components of creating a business have to be taken into consideration for example, the business' brand which includes how colors are implemented into one’s company. Color is one of the strongest non-verbal forms that designers use to convey a message to their audience. Therefore, to choose the best colors for your business, one has to think about what the company is about and what it is trying to communicate. For this, one should ask themselves, what color will send the right message? Which one sets the appropriate tone? What color associations should be taken into consideration to further the business aesthetic?
Colors play a giant role in building people's perception of a brand; within 90 seconds, customers make a subconscious judgment about an environment or product. In these assessments, 62 to 90% of their judgment is based on color alone. When asking consumers why they chose a particular product, 84% of their answers said that color was the primary reason which shows how impactful color can be in sales. In the business world, the most popular colors are blue, black, and red; this is due to many reasons, but now one can learn about what emotion or thought these colors are trying to convey and why large companies want to use these colors for their brand.
Red is one of the most impactful colors in the color wheel; it portrays action, passion, attention, and power. Because of this, red is a very popular color for an exciting powerful vibe that can be seen through different companies like CNN, Netflix, or Target. Similar colors to red, like yellow and orange, have a very different emotion to them. Orange gives us a light-hearted youthful creative feeling while yellow gives a joyful, happy, and curious sentiment.
On the other side of the color wheel, we have the cool tones with blue being the most popular color; blue gives a calming, confident, and trustworthy appearance which gives peace of mind to its buyers in companies like HP, Lowes, Intel, and Nasa. Alongside the cool tones, one can see green in logos such as Animal Planet, Tropicana, Animal Life, Android, and Herbalife who are trying to portray healing, tranquility, freshness, and eco-friendliness.
Purple and pink set a very specific mindset when it comes to branding; purple expresses boldness, nobility, sophistication, and spiritualness. Meanwhile, pink portrays innocence, gentleness, and femininity which can be seen through companies like Barbie, Dunkin Donuts, Air BNB, etc.
Other companies attempt to use a whole different set of colors like neutral ones which include black, gray, and white; if these colors are used correctly or combined with other colors in the right manner, they can be used to create the perfect look for a company.
Black is a very overpowering color that stands for elegance, power, and stability while white stands for purity, virtue, security, and cleanliness. Even though they are their own colors, when combined to a gray, it gives a very corporate, somber, and practical vibe which few companies go for, but one that many utilize in their favor.
Even though categorizing color may seem simple, there are many more factors to take into consideration. Outside influences and the target audience also have a big role in choosing the right colors for a company. After deciding who this is intended to target, one also has to think about the culture that the individuals are surrounded by. Color may represent different things in different places; this changes how it is perceived, for example, while white in the western world can be a joyful, pure, and clean color, in India and China, it is associated with mourning.
Through this, one can see the importance of color in a company and the effect it has on the buyer. By using different mixes of colors and tone, one can create a whole message that a company wants to transmit through a product or service; one does not only think about the economic side of the business but the marketing and psychological side as well.
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