Brands Adopt the Pantone Color of the Year for 2011
December 10, 2010
Each year, Pantone names a new color of the year. In 2010, turquoise won the honor. The 2011 Pantone color of the year has been announced and it’s honeysuckle. It’s a reddish-pink color designated as PMS 18-2120.
The Pantone color of the year is typically associated with the fashion and home categories, but it’s not unusual to see it spread to brand and products from a variety of lines of business.
Brands that have already adopted the Pantone Honeysuckle color include:
- iPhone: Check out the MyPantone iPhone app
- Visa: The Pantone VISA Platinum Rewards Card is now available in Honeysuckle
- Tommy Hilfiger: A Tommy Hilfiger Honeysuckle tennis skirt has been added to the designer’s clothing line.
- Dessy: Honeysuckle has been added to the bridal wear brand’s list of 200 Pantone Wedding Colors available for bride’s maid and flower girl dresses.
Some products using the Honeysuckle color are shown in the image below:
There is even a Pantone Paint line with a new Honeysuckle shade and a Pantone Hotel, complete with a Pantone Bar, in Brussels, which promises an experience that allows you to “travel to a colorific world.”
The reddish-pink Honeysuckle color is intended to evoke an uplifting feeling and deliver a boost of confidence in navigating life’s challenges. The bright color is intended to be alluring, eye-catching, and attract people to it as a hummingbird is attracted to the reddish-pink flowers of a real honeysuckle. As the Pantone website explains, Honeysuckle could be very effective in package design, “for products that speak to something active or festive, or are suggestive of sweet tastes and scents. It’s an especially good shade for delicious food or drink packaging.”
Color trends are something that brand managers need to be aware of, and the Pantone trend reports for the fashion and home industries are something to keep an eye on as the trends in clothing often spread to other categories as well. Color trends can provide broad insight into the emotions that are expected to affect consumers in the short term. The psychology of color marketing and color branding exist for a reason. Listen to the trends and predictions and look for creative ways to integrate them effectively into your own branding initiatives.
Honda’s Naughty or Nice Facebook App Tracks Behavior with a Fun Hook
December 9, 2010
I have to hand it to Honda for coming up with a Facebook app that can be perceived by consumers as fun, entertaining, and humorous, but could be working hard behind the scenes to tell Honda’s marketing team so much more than whether a user has been naughty or nice this year.
To use the Honday Naughty or Nice Facebook app shown below, you have to “like” the Honda page on Facebook. Then you can click the start button on the app, which will scan your Facebook updates for naughty or nice keyword flags, how often you “like” things, and how many Facebook invitations you accepted throughout 2010. The result tells you whether you’ve been naughty or nice this year.
For users, the app could be humorous and could have a viral effect if groups of people start comparing results. However, Honda benefits in multiple ways. First, if the app is popular, Honda benefits from positive word-of-mouth marketing and brand buzz. More importantly, Honda get access to a year’s worth of Facebook updates as well as “like” and invitation acceptance behavior history.
The app tab on Honda’s Facebook page doesn’t disclose upfront how much (if any) information Honda will collect, store, and/or use as it crawls through user’s Facebook histories, but if the company is going through the trouble to search for naughty and nice flags, then it would make sense to look for additional keywords or behaviors that can help the company develop future targeted marketing campaigns.
What do you think of this type of Facebook app? Too invasive? Very clever? Leave a comment and share your opinion. One thing is for certain, this type of app is likely to get more popular and marketers will probably have to get even more clever to motivate people to allow access to their social media profile histories. In other words, will a promise of being labeled naughty or nice be enough to move people to action and open the doors to their social media profiles a year from now? What do you think?
Green Advertising : Top Five Traps To Avoid 2/2
December 8, 2010
This is Part 2 of the Green Advertising : Feeling The Pressure post a few weeks ago. Apologies if you’ve been on tenterhooks waiting for it!
The concept of Greenwashing has been around, it seems, for ages. The trouble is, with the public, NGOs and various other bodies keeping a sharp look out, a company can easily fall into the greenwash trap without meaning to.
This is especially true on websites where content tends to be scrutinised much less before publication than, say, broadcast advertisements or print op-ed pieces.
Here then are top five traps to avoid on your websites and in all advertising in general. Read more
Ad Spending Forecasts Highlight China and the Internet
December 7, 2010
This week, ZenithOptimedia released its “Adspend Forecast Update” for December 2010 and one type of advertising and one region of the world drew attention as the focus of opportunity for the future. In other words, companies are shifting budgets and investing more money into the large-scale opportunity of China and the lost-cost and wide-reach of the Internet.
According to the report summary, the key findings are:
- After the surprisingly strong 4.9% recovery this year, we predict annual growth of between 4.6% and 5.2% for the next three years.
- Global ad expenditure to exceed the 2008 peak in 2012.
- Developing markets to continue to grow much faster than developed markets: developing markets will account for 35.9% of ad expenditure in 2013, up from 31.5% in 2010
- Ad expenditure in newspapers and magazines to fall by 2% between 2010 and 2013. Technology to help television, cinema and outdoor grow ahead of the market, while internet advertising grows three times faster than the market as a whole.
- Display advertising now the fastest-growing internet category, driven by online video and social media.
You can get a clear picture of how the shift in media investments are expected to go in the chart below:
Most media investments are expected to decrease or stay fairly even through 2013 with one exception — Internet which is expected to experience a 39.8% increase in adspend between 2009 and 2010. The next closest medium with a predicted increase is television with a 6.9% change. Clearly, we’re going to experience several years of companies and brands vying for attention and trying to learn how to best leverage the Internet to build brands and make sales.
When it comes to regional investments, the Asia Pacific region is forecasted to see major media advertising expenditures increase by 31.0% between 2009 and 2013. That’s not as high as the increases expected in Latin America (43.3%), Central Europe (39.8%) or Africa and the Middle East (32.2%), but considering that China accounts for 20% of the world’s population, the return on those advertising investments in the Asia Pacific region could be exponentially better than in any other area of the world.
Given the economic downturn that spread across much of the world in recent years, emerging markets have gained traction in terms of prioritization for advertising investments. The ZenithOptimedia forecast certainly supports the assumption that the trend will continue well into the future.
Where are you investing your advertising budget in terms of media and geographical region over the next several years? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
A Rabbit Warren of Brazilian Banking CSR
December 6, 2010
Management & Excellence is what I can only describe as an intriguing and unique company. Their website describes them as:
a research and rating company in the areas of ethics, sustainability, corporate governance, transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) specialized in Latin America, Spain and the oil industry worldwide
The company recently released the results of their 2010 “Most Sustainable Latin Bank” survey (PDF). And the winner is (for the SIXTH year running!) Itaú-Unibanco.
This is no surprise. Itaú-Unibanco is the largest Brazilian bank and one of the top 500 companies in the world, maintaining a presence not just in Latin American but also the US, Japan, Hong Kong, the UK and the UAE. It’s no Merrill Lynch, but neither is it a small town squib.
But how can you examine its exceptional sustainability record online? Only through digging, it would appear. Read more
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