What does your favorite color say about your personal brand?
Do people gravitate towards brands they personally identify with? Articles recently published in Fast Company and Entrepreneur examine the science behind why brands choose certain colors. Even if Facebook is blue only because The Zuck is red-green color blind, these articles examine several amazing reasons of how colors affect buying decisions.
First: A Quick Quiz
The Fast Company article includes a few exercises from YouTube designer Marc Hemeon. I’ve included them below along with one of my own. Can you identify the following brands based on the color palette? Don’t worry, answers will be provided at the end of the article.
How did you do? Because I know you scrolled right to the bottom for the answers! Now that you’re incredibly impressed with your brand knowledge, let’s take a look at why brands choose certain colors. Take a look at this remarkable infographic from analytics company KISSmetrics that examines how colors affect our purchasing decisions and brand identification.
I thought it might be fun to try an experiment on my fellow loti team members to discover our personal brands. Using the above chart as a guide, I asked the team which of those groups of traits they most identified with. Here’s what I found:
Considering the fact that many of us are gregarious, skilled communicators who work at an integrated marketing agency, several team members shared the same brand values, and hence, the same color!
I was surprised to learn a third of us chose “trust-dependable-strength,” not because we’re not all of those things, but because we all have intrinsically different personalities and backgrounds.
Ultimately it makes sense. The different traits we own and how we build our personal brand speaks through the work we do every day for our integrated marketing clients at lotus823.
Whether you’re building your personal brand or bringing a clients’ brand to bloom, it’s important to choose the right colors. Know the brand you are working with and develop your strategy to amplify the right message.
For example, both articles point out that black is associated with luxury. Black is sleek, elegant, sexy and precise. If you’re managing social media services for a luxury client, stay away from bright colors in your photo posts to get the right message across.
What’s your personal brand? Leave a comment below to let us know!
Answers to the quiz: 1) Facebook 2) Google 3) Flickr 4) LinkedIn 5) lotus823!