The Psychology of Branding and What it Says About Your Business

What do humans instinctually look for in a brand? Similar to people, a brand may appeal to some and not others. In other words, you need to get into the mind of your target market. Branding is referred to as the ‘personality’ of your business. So what qualities do people look for in the personality of a brand?

The Five Main Dimensions to a Brand’s Personality:

Sincerity – honest and genuine
Excitement – daring tactics, imaginative ads, and up-to-date technologies
Competence – an image of reliability and efficiency
Sophistication – communicated through glamorous events and charming ambassadors
Ruggedness – an image of toughness and masculinity

How Do You Pair Colours to Your Brand’s Personality?

The simple answer is to study colour psychology. Yes, that is a thing! If you are just at the beginning of your branding adventure, you need to know the basics about colours and the feelings they can invoke in consumers.

RED

When brands use colours like red, it grabs attention. In psychology, red is associated with excitement, passion, danger, energy, and action. Red is often used by brands on their call to action buttons online. In colour psychology, red is considered the most powerful colour, provoking the strongest emotions. Red is also used to trigger the emotion for danger, so use it carefully.

ORANGE

The colour orange symbolises creativity, adventure, joy, achievement, and balance in colour psychology. Orange is really about fun and happiness, so using it in your branding makes it an eye-catcher. Although not as powerful as red, orange is also used for call to action buttons.

YELLOW

The psychology of yellow is associated with our response to sunshine. Yellow evokes feelings of cheerfulness, positivity, optimism, and summertime. Some brands choose to use a cheerful yellow colour as the background or border for their website design. A slight touch of yellow can help your customers associate your brand with something positive.

PINK

The psychology of pink often revolves around femininity, youth, love, and playfulness. Popular for brands that generally have a female audience, although not always, pink is often used in the product packaging or highlighting logos and key messages.

GREEN

In colour psychology, green is deeply connected to nature and money associated with growth, fertility, health, and generosity. Green is often chosen as a background colour for fitness and health brands, natural product brands, or even agriculture.

BLUE

Blue’s colour association is to the sea and the sky. Some of the feelings Blue can invoke are stability, harmony, peace, calm, and trust. There are some very famous brands using blue that are associated with strength, confidence, and trust. Logos like social media platforms Facebook and Twitter have made the use of blue all the more famous.

PURPLE

In psychology, purple is a royal colour connected to power, nobility, luxury, wisdom, and spirituality. So you can see why the overuse of purple can be perceived as arrogant. Hints of purple are usually preferred when used in branding. However, some brands like Yahoo have used the colour purple very successfully.

WHITE

White has unique meanings within cultures all over the world. When branding, you will need to keep in mind your target market before deciding how to use white. In some parts of the world, white represents innocence, goodness, cleanliness, and humility. In other parts of the world, white has the complete opposite meaning. White can be perceived as cold and sterile, so its use needs real thought. Ecommerce websites use a lot of white for readability and help product details appear clearly.

BLACK

The colour black symbolises power, elegance, sophistication, and mystery in psychology. The use of the colour black is most common in retail. When using black in your branding palette, you must be careful not to evoke negative feelings of sadness and anger.

Now you have the basic psychological meaning of colours. An excellent place to start when branding your business is to consider your brand’s personality and try to apply it to the colour meanings. Ask yourself what you want your brand to be about and what you want your customers to feel. Don’t forget you will need good printing services to see what everything looks like when it is printed!