Esther
Good morning, and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Esther.
Melanie
And I'm Melanie.
Esther
And today we're talking about branding. Why you chose your brand colors? How important is branding? And should you ever rebrand?
Melanie
And it's essential that you have some sort of brand in mind when you first start creating your business, it gives the first insight, the first look, the first impression of your business. So we can't massively talk about branding is not an area that we're both massively knowledgeable in. But we can talk about our specific journey into branding and how we pick the colors and what kind of research we conducted. So Esther why don't you start us off?
Esther
Yeah, OK, so our brand for IPA group, my Business outside of Monday Morning Marketing, of course, is predominantly red, it has red and black and white and grey, so those are very, very bold colors. They're very strong colors. They do represent strength. They represent authority, they represent knowledge. And all those things are what we portray in our business at IPA group. What about you, Melanie?
Melanie
Well. I don't display red at all. It's interesting that Monday marketing, the Monday morning marketing podcast is read as well, wasn't it?
Esther
It is, but it also has yellow in it, which is youthful and friendly and positive vibes. So that's you know, that's where that comes in.
Melanie
Useful, huh?
Esther
Absolutely.
Melanie
Right, ok, well, mine for stomp.ia is sort of control and secure and self-sufficient and determination. I mean, these are the words are given to some of these marketing colors in Venice and is just interpreted as being loyal and safe as well. That's why a lot of brands like Twitter and Facebook and even like Intel, they're all blue and that's what they're trying to imbue and they're trying to put the color and the brand across, and you're trying to imbue something completely different with your red.
Esther
Yeah, absolutely. And just when you were saying there about some of the brands that use different colors when British Petroleum had that big accident that they called in the Gulf, they changed their branding colors to green, which is to portray health and vitality and environmentally friendly, so a lot of people were very skeptical of their rebranding and their change of color, but that's what they wanted to portray after that major incident.
Melanie
Yeah, it is quite interesting, actually, I'm currently looking at colors, mean brands. It's something I found on Google. And it's quite interesting when you see what brands they're trying to evoke. I mean, not Capri's, for instance, apparently, the purple means deep creativity, original, individual, fantasy, and I've got to say, I can feel all of that every time I have a bar of chocolate.
Esther
So they did their job. Right. And this is where it's important to remember that colors do provoke emotions. And, Melanie, we were just talking before we came on the air that your favorite color isn't actually blue. What is your favorite color?
Melanie
My absolute favorite color. And I'm not joking here is green is my favorite color since I was a small child and is where it is. I look good in green, I feel good in green. I love being out in the country here. I don't know. It's just something that's always been quite personal to me, it's quite an earthy color for me, I feel relaxed and it depends on the type of green as well as a light green, obviously not as much.
Esther
Yeah, there are 40 shades of green after all. And we are on the Emerald Isle, so we know every single shade of green. So why did you not go with green then if it's your favorite color?
Melanie
When I was looking at the mental imaging that it gives people. It wasn't how I wanted to portray my business. It felt a little mindful, if you like, and I mean the words here for green says, balanced, growth, restore, sanctuary, equilibrium and safety, and they were great things to be that social media training didn't scream any of those to me, wealth or gross was about the only one.
Esther
Yeah, but their social media is safe in your hands. And that's an important thing to remember that your brand is not a reflection on your personality and on you as an individual or your exact preferences. Your brand should speak to your audience and not just to you. So when you're going with colors, think about what it is that that you want to portray through your brand. So some of the other ones here are like your YellowPages and your Post-it notes. It's fun. It's optimistic, it's logical. It's attentive. Those things, you know, I love Post-it notes, they're fun for me so that all comes across as something that's very, you know, they've chosen their colors well, and Melanie has just shown me so many different colors of Post-it note she has will take a picture of that and send it.
Melanie
And it's not just that. Colors bring a feeling the picture paints a thousand words absolutely correct, isn't it?
Esther
Yeah, absolutely.
Melanie
And one thing I was speaking about just before we went live as well, was with a graphic designer here in my office and he was saying colors are great, but pictures with the colors are even better, and he said the less complex the imagery is, the better the message and the resonance of the colors reach the audience. So if you've got 10 colors in your logo, it kind of messes up the message, you know, stick to two or three and try and make the logo as least complicated as possible to get your message across.
Esther
Yeah, absolutely. And with saying that, you know, you can see that in some of the images around the world as well, you know, Coca-Cola, it's just the name, there's no other colors with it, there's just the red on a white background, and that's another thing, you know, red, white and black go really well together, just look at Santa, but it's not something that you should put when you're putting your brand together. If you're putting, like ourselves red and black, don't put the red on top of the black because it's really hard to see, and things like that, whenever you're getting your logo designed or you're looking for a logo, then imagine what it's going to look like in your Facebook profile, on your Facebook header and the different sizes that you're going to need it for what it looked like blown up on a big pop up banner, do you have it in the right resolution that you can stretch it and that it won't look all pixilated? All of these things are also very important.
Melanie
You have to get different types of files, don't you? I've actually got a rectangular logo and a square one for the different profiles. So I've got a square one that I would use for my company page on LinkedIn and certain pages on my website, but my rectangular one goes obviously my Facebook banner on my Roll-Up banner, and that's something to bear in mind, if you've got a long, thin actual logo, it's not going to look so good on the smaller like Instagram, for instance.
Esther
Absolutely. And that is important to look at with your graphic designer when you're building your logo, and it should be something that they also offer you is the square and the long logo, or if you're just going for square, that's totally fine as well. I mean, you don't have to have both, but if you will have just a long one, it will be cut off in a lot of the profiles. Now, Melanie, have you ever rebranded? or have you ever thought about rebranding?
Melanie
Kind of when I first started, I was called Stop Marketing and PR, and so I had to change my branding in that way, if you like my name. But that was not the colors, though, but I had to change my messaging and we will do another podcast on that and I'll explain why I pivoted, but I suppose I could have done I could have because I changed the name I could have changed the logo.
Esther
Yeah, yeah, we did the same. We changed our name and part of our logo disappeared because before we were IPA Solutions in the UK and in Mexico, so we had IPA Solutions UK, IPA Solutions Mex, so they had to distinguish the two, they had flags of the countries, but we wanted to provide an umbrella group over IPA, which is why we rebranded as IPA group, and we lost the flags because it just wasn't portraying who we were anymore, it wasn't part of what we wanted to go forward was, OK.
Melanie
So you reproof two solutions?
Esther
Yeah. Lots of solutions and lots of solutions in two different countries. So that's one of the reasons why we rebranded, we kept the same colors, but we changed the lettering above all else, so it is important to look at whether you should rebrand if you have, like Melanie says, if you have pivoted or if you have changed direction completely or if you have stopped doing one thing, don't use the same logo for the next thing that you're doing, either, because I only confuse people.
Melanie
And there's absolutely no harm in looking at where your message is today. You don't have to change your entire story or your entire mission, but you can just refresh the face sometimes. That's all you need.
Esther
Absolutely. Thank you very much for joining us today. That's been great as always. If you have any comments, we'd like to hear from you on our social media or on our website. Get in touch and let us know what you think.
Melanie
Take care.