WHAT´S YOUR COLOR?
Color your Communication: Have you every thought about the importance of color for communication? If not you definitely should have a look into Lewis Bond´s video "Color in Storytelling". Bond explains why you should care about the hue, saturation and value of each color in your next marketing story. Have a look.
PR-Experts and marketing manager definitely have to learn the grammar of good stories, visual stories. And "color" is a key element. You don´t think so? Here are some proof points:
Color helps the audience to immerge into a story: Well, for a color brand like Dulux it seems easy to tell stories with the power of colors. But is it really that easy? With "Colourless Future" Dulux presents its brand as a visionary storyteller with the courage to compete against Hollywood. Dulux´s Science Fiction story fascinates its audience with the cruel vision of a world where White is the only dominating color. All other colors are banned and have to go "underground". Is this a future we are looking for? See this great story: "Colorless Future."
Color evokes emotions: To promote its new product Japanese cosmetic brand Lux hacked Google Maps with an App that helps its consumers to paint any street or location on Google Maps in Pink - in a beautiful cherry blossoms bloom pink. So Japanese, right? And which color is better than this to evoke the emotion of calmness and pleasure - like Lux perfumes.
Colors that support key messages: It´s not by coincidence that the color of the award winning campaign "Tree concert Berlin" is green. Berlin is a green city. But everyday it loses 2000 trees which are affected by the polution of the city. To safe these trees the NGO "Friends of the Earth Germany" with the help of BBDO and Ketchum Pleon came up with a donation program. Have a look into the case study and see yourself who color supports the idea and the key message.
Color is a beast: "It´s save to say that color is a very complex beast." - says graphic artist Mark D. West in his book "Stories that Move Mountains". He explains how meaningful color in different cultures are and how sensitive Visual Storytellers have to be using specific colors. But it´s not only the cultural context - Eastern or Western - which make colors complicated. It´s the usage, meaning and association of the color itself - in any culture.
Just take Red ... Red stands for blood, danger and anger (Have you seen the character "Anger" in Pixars latest movie "Inside Out"? He is so red!). But Red also stands for fire, warmth, passion and love. That´s why Visual Storytelling can´t be done just with a simole checklist of color codes. Every story has its unique context and its individual code. Marketing- and PR-experts have to dive deep into the tool box of Visual Storytelling with all its colors and learn how to use them. So: What´s the color of your next story?
