The Value of Branding Colours to Businesses

Shalom Solomon 11th August, 2021

Everything is more beautiful with colours (although, I am more of a monochrome lover myself).

It is rumored, that facebookâ€™s official brand colours are blue, black, white and gray because facebookâ€™s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg cannot see red and green colours.

I did not know that there was anything like selective colour blindness, but there you have it.

Asides, facebook, so many other businesses especially financial institutions use blue as a dominant brand colour like first bank, Polaris bank, keystone bank, fidelity bank and others.

This is because blue as a colour denotes stability, trust, loyalty, confidence and intelligence which are values that businesses like financial institutions such as banks would like to convey as their core values.

In this post, we will discuss the importance and pivotal difference brand colours add to businessesâ€¦ But, before we go into that, what are brand colours?

What are brand colours?

Brand colours are a range of colours usually between at least three to at most ten colours, used to represent a company or business.

Research has proven, that the sense of sight is the most powerful of all five senses. As such, people are mostly influenced by what they see. In lieu of this, businesses need brand colours to be able to effectively communicate their identity and also attract their target market.

Are brand colours important?

I had a dialogue of recent where I was told that companies use any colours they want to for their marketing campaigns and as such, brand colours were inconsequential.

This statement is not totally accurate. You see, what makes an entity identifiable are specific characteristics that are associated to it.

For instance, we all know that yellow is MTNâ€™s official colours. So whenever we see yellow relating to a telecommunication company, we can guess its MTN and weâ€™d most likely be right.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

So, what are the specific importance of brand colours?

Brand colours are crucial and very important to businesses; asides the fact that they constitute an integral part of a businessâ€™ visual identity, they also perform other functions, which we would discuss in detail below:

1. Branding:

A businessâ€™ brand is its identity, it is what it wants to be perceived as by competitors, its target market and the business world. Branding is a delicate process where one wrong step can lead to the misinterpretation of the message your business stands for. Branding colours along with other elements such as the brand name and brand logo help to present a unique image that goes a long way in forging your brandâ€™s identity.

2. Marketing:

For marketing, the consistent use of your brand colours will make it easier for your target market to remember your products. For marketing campaigns, it is important that you pass the right message to your target audience, because the first impression your business makes is most often, the visual representation of your company. People have made impulse buys sometimes based on what they see. So, it is important that you check all boxes and ensure your brand colours support your marketing and branding purposes.

3. Consistency:

Consistency supports the building of your brandâ€™s presence in the market and in the minds of your target market. Consistency is also important for brand awareness. For instance, coca-cola is known for its red brand color and can be easily recognized and identified among other soft drinks.

4. Visibility:

In order to be visible, a business needs to have characteristics and values that set it aside from others. These characteristics can only be developed and recognized when they are used consistently on all that concern the business, both marketing, branding and business documents. The consistent use of brand colours will support visibility and ensure the development of a unique image for the business.