The Importance of Color in Business
If you walk in to a McDonald’s restaurant, what colors will you see? Probably yellow and red. And when you think about McDonald’s, you will think about those two bright and cheerful colors. Every year large companies spend millions of dollars on advertising. They want you to buy their products and use their services, and they want you to remember their company name. Companies use color so that you will notice them and so that you will think about them when you see their colors. One research project showed that color helps people remember company names. Colors are very important to businesses. Blue is often used by computer companies. IBM, Microsolf and Dell all use the color blue to show that their companies are serious and dependable. Like the sky and the ocean, blue can be both peaceful and powerful. To show that their computers are for serious people, many companies used to make their computer black or gray. But Apple computer company decided that they wanted computers to be fun instead of serious. For that reason, they made their iMac computers in a variety of different colors in the late 1990s. Today, their iPods come in a variety of colors. BP uses green and yellow for its colors. It is the only large oil company to use green. Green is the color of nature. Yellow is the color of the sun. Both colors are bright and cheerful. BP hopes that people will think of it as a friendly company. In addition, green may make you think of the environment. BP wants people to think of it as a company that cares about the environment. United Parcel Service (UPS) is a big delivery company. Its company color is brown. When UPS started in the 1920s, brown was a good color for a safe, reliable company. From the beginning, UPS used brown trucks and brown uniforms. In today’s world brown may seem like a boring color choice for a company . But UPS decided to make it a positive symbol of its business. Their ads ask, ‘’What can brown do for you?’’ When people see the big brown UPS trucks, the compant hopes they will think of excellent, dependable service. All over the world, companies use color to establish their brand and to encourage people to buy their products. Companies believe that customers respond strongly to their colors. It isn’t sursing that company carefully consider the colors for their products and their advertising.