- Joe Tradii

In its Oct. 17 issue, this magazine reported that Hertz rental cars was going to make an all-out effort in 2010 to put the yellow in the driver’s seat—to “own” the color yellow, as it were. Well, they’d better get in line. I hate to break it to the good folks at Hertz, but McDonald’s owns yellow too (the trademark yellow arches made their debut back in 1953, in fact). Power tool manufacturer DeWalt is yet another yellow owner. Its signature canary yellow shows up in everything from the company’s nameplate to the grips on its drills. While we’re at it, I should point out that Stanley Tools also stakes a considerable claim to yellow. Stanley recently announced that it was purchasing Black and Decker, but from a strictly Pantone perspective, DeWalt would seem a better fit.

This branding predilection to possess a color is nothing new. Famous stock-car driver Richard Petty chose a livery of “Petty Blue” for his car years ago. Petty Blue is not to be confused with Tiffany Blue, No. 1837 on the Pantone scale, which corresponds to the year of Tiffany’s founding and is integral to the trademarked “little blue box.” Moving up the rainbow, John Deere is recognizable for its dark green, and Target has claimed red. Perhaps UPS is the most straightforward, building a whole campaign around their couleur du guerre: “What can brown do for you?” I don’t know; give me a minute.

There are only so many color mountaintops to occupy before you start creeping too close together in the old Crayola box and the subtle changes in hue become lost on consumers. What’s the next battleground once the meaningful color territories are all taken? Maybe Sony can own burnt umber. Where does it all end?

With today’s advances in olfactory technology, perhaps smell is the next frontier. Just think of the possibilities. Apple, for example, could own the aroma of fresh-baked bread. Perhaps Spike TV can own a manly mix of saltwater, stale beer and desperation. In all seriousness, let’s stop overreaching. Yes, it’s good to have a color associated with your product; that’s Brand Management 101. My concern is the superficiality of the strategy.

Claims to a specific color are very hard to defend—not that that hasn’t stopped various brands from trying (though the central issue here is not just color, but a competitor using that same color on a similar product). Back in 1993, building-supply brand Dap sued Color Tile Manufacturing for selling tile mastic in a red three-gallon bucket that looked much like the red bucket in which Dap sold its tile mastic. A federal court ruled in favor of Dap, but other brands lost similar suits—including Life Savers, when it sued the Curtiss Candy Co. for using a striped package to sell its hard candies. Courts have found that some colors are “industry standards” for certain products—ice-blue for frozen desserts, for instance. Point being: Color, for the most part, belongs to everyone—and no one.

This is why I have a piece of advice for brands out to “own” a hue of their choosing: You’d do well to own an attribute instead. Branding, after all, is all about establishing an emotional connection that should go deeper than the surface.

Nonetheless, I see more and more brands using things like color as a crutch rather than putting the emphasis on strategic positioning and establishing a clear, consistent brand personality. To be sure, building a genuine identity with consumers takes a lot more work than choosing a color—but the payoff is better: a solid bond with your market. A savvy brand will use a chosen color to underline a promise, not in place of one.

The same, by the way, is true of “engagement” efforts. Some of them seem to be chosen simply because they could be chosen, rather than employed as a way to reinforce a brand’s position. For example, the new Skittles homepage—which permits you to “Holla at the Rainbow” via a pay phone and swiftly transports you to the social-media realm where you can read every passing reference to Skittles in the electronic ether—doesn’t really say anything about the brand. To me, this looks like engagement for the sake of engagement, which makes no more sense than owning a color rather than owning a genuine brand identity.

Before emphasizing color, marketers should ensure they are clear on their target audience’s needs, keeping in mind the principle of focus. They should also make sure there’s a solid framework in place for the brand that encompasses what I call the Three Ps: promise, personality and position. Finally, the marketers should make sure that all efforts support the brand position—tone, messaging, and (yes, finally, if you want) color. In other words, let’s not put design before strategy.

I’m not questioning the usefulness of color, which in fact is quite useful (it’s often written in marketing tomes that 80 percent of visual information is related via color). The question is not whether or not to emphasize color, but what level of emphasis it deserves. Before running out and laying claim to a color, maybe brands should take a good look at why they want that color. Even better, take a lesson from the United Colors of Benetton, which has herded hundreds of hues under its brand umbrella while still retaining one of the most recognizable names in the marketing universe. At least they won’t be wasting any time trying to “own” yellow.


Joe Tradii is the senior manager of brand strategy at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. You can reach him at jtradii@hotmail.com.