S1 Ep10 Why colour drives behaviour

[Music] Teams argue about colour like it's personal. I like blue, I like green, can you make it pop? Your favourite colour doesn't matter if your audience doesn't respond to it. Colour changes what people feel, what they notice, what they trust, and what they do next. Welcome to ThinkShift, the podcast where neuroscience meets business. Today, we're unpacking why colour drives behaviour. What is a design trend as a decision signal? If you're building a brand or designing a website, you might want to stay tuned. [Music] Hey Quinn. Hey Leanne, how you going? Yeah, good. Good to see you this morning. Check out the hat. Check out the hat. Neurodesign merch. Yeah, that's right. Last episode I had on my t-shirt. You've got your hat. That's all coming to get us good. It looks really good. We didn't talk about our ThinkShift sign by hand. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. So you guys listening. I love the neon. Oh no, we love the neon. And those listening, you need to go over to the video so you can check this out. I'm in first of all. Yeah, check out the hat. That's awesome. Now taking orders. Yeah. That's right. I know we're thinking about possibly doing some merch down the track. When we go viral, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's in mid-autical. Yeah. Now that we have actually, we, at the time of recording this, I think we had close to around 30 subscribers. I am dying to get that to 50. So you're going to add a zero then. We'll get close to 1000. I know. Hopefully that will be soon. But we're going to try and get to 50. So you guys, if you, if you're listening, just hit subscribe so we can, and when we'll shout out to you guys as well for subscribing and joining the ThinkShift community. But check out the neon sign. Yeah. That's pretty cool. That is cool. That's good. Okay. So let's jump straight in. Let's talk about the signs behind color and behavior. Well, how appropriate, right? How appropriate it was with the colors of our, you know, our brand and ThinkShift. Yeah. The pink, the pink that pops. Not pink that pops. Okay. So color isn't about what you like. It's about what your audience feels, notices, and does next. So Liam, what does color do to the brain before we even read a word? So it acts as color acts as a psychological trigger. So we can actually come up with story by looking at a color or colors before we even read any text. So it creates, yeah, an emotional response, which is really important. And we start giving something context and started to, we start to make a decision before we start reading. And it's almost that we read the text to justify what we think the color has provided. What we felt emotionally. And what we felt emotionally. Yeah. Interesting. And how fast is that? Is that like a really quick, you know, when you land on a website and there's a color involved, like how fast are we interpreting? We're talking milliseconds. Yeah. And a lot of it is subconscious too. So we'll get these cubs subconscious feeling. So when we are, we're born and we have, you know, these subconscious and collective unconscious traits. There are certain colors, noises, like things that we see, noises, memories, patterns, that color creates. And evokes some kind of response. So even though color is just visual as far as we know, science shows that it actually creates and stimulates other senses as well. Certain colors create tastes, certain colors, evoke memories and feelings. So color is extremely important in the way that we process information. And from creating trust, safety, which is the brain's first, you know, the purpose is to create a safe environment for us. And we can quickly make a decision if we need to run for the heels. Yeah. Before we read anything. And that's really important. Emotional response. Okay. And just on the speed component, I'm going to mention a study here by Sat Yandra Singh back in 2006. And the year is really important because 20 years ago, they found, well, she found that we formed judgment around products within 90 seconds and up to 90% of its based on color alone. But 90 seconds, it'd be much quicker now, yeah. Like 2026, we're talking 10 seconds. Yeah, around 10 seconds. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of the average now. Just looking at, you know, studies around the brain response and the triggers and how, what the, you know, this response and the activity of the brain when we see color. We also have technology to be able to now that very different. I mean, 20 years ago, it is a long time and technology and especially in medicine science. You know, it develops at the rate of knots. So back then, there, you know, if I, if I rhyme, which is a functional MRI, which is a device that can actually, you can stimulate the brain and look at activity. The axis. That's right. MRIs did absolutely a functional MRI, not really. And it was in its infancy. Right. And if it was around, I'll have to check the facts. But we didn't have a way of understanding the brain and how it operated at the speed that it operated when it was stimulated by certain, certain things. We can actually see that now. And we actually use that technology to come up with, you know, information around, you know, behavioral science responses, emotional responses and triggers. So definitely we now know that there is some kind of response that we see within nanoseconds, let alone then down the track. When we form an opinion or form a, you know, sometimes I can some kind of context, which is within around 10 seconds. But we look at a website and within three seconds, we've made a decision and a lot of that contributes to seeing color. Color. But then we do a full understanding at around 10 seconds. Okay. So color becomes so important for business decisions in driving that, that emotion. So people attach color to identity and taste. Banners confuse their preference with audience response, which I think is a really key thing, right? Yeah. It can be so easy for you to get caught up in your own cool aid and your own self preference. But you've got to remember you are not your audience. But let's talk about that later. My next scientific base question is, what is the relationship between color and arousal? So we associate color with risk, with warnings, with danger. The particular colors I mean red is often used in that instance. We then associate other colors like calm, safety, security, kindness and care also actually around other colors. You know, blue is a very calming and a very sort of scientific and clinical hygienic color. Safe. Safe color, which is why we see a lot of medical and finance companies and brands using that as potentially a primary color in their, in their brand. So certain colors do evoke a neurochemical response, cortisol or oxytocin or dopamine depending on how we're stimulated. So we are aroused and they can be a positive arousal. It can also be a negative arousal, even though arousal is normally positive, but it's a negative response. So that gives us an ecosystem or context of what how we should behave, what should we do next. And that's why when people talk about corporate identity and they talk about branding, I don't believe, from a neuroscience perspective, that people take their colors as seriously as they should. Often it's a color like, I mean, if something like orange creates a response that you can't even look at it because it's something that even creates. I could pass trauma mode. Yeah, it's hard to pass trauma. You know, you're clearly feeling uncomfortable. You're not going to make your brand orange. You still, it still needs to be something that is suitable for you. However, it's not all about you. In fact, most of it is not about you. It is about your audience, your audience, behaviors and what they are expecting to see. The brain loves short cuts. We talk about that. What is the brain's expectation? Often with medical companies, we're expecting to see something coming and safe. If we saw a medical company and it does happen, there are those out there that are a yellow or red. There needs to be a good reason why. As soon as it's a bit more progressive, maybe. Maybe. That's interesting though. And I think this is where context is missed. We talk about context a lot actually in our previous episode on AI and context matters even more when it comes to color. If we look at red as a primary example, red being used can be a passion, energy, if used in terms of matchmaking, romance. If we look at the heart on our ThinkShift channel, the heart to like something is a red heart. It's red. If it was a blue heart, maybe that was a blue. So context really matters. And I think that's useful, particularly when deciding upon brand color sets is that what is the context? What is the market? What is the vertical that your business thrives in? Now let's look at colors that associate with that. And if you're going to make a conscious decision to go against those colors, just have a really good reason as to why. Like form part, form a story around that. It's to why suddenly your finance brand is, you know, red. And instead of just going with it and going, oh, I made it red because everyone else was blue. It's like, no, that's not good enough. It needs to be a real reason for it. Okay. So the key takeaways here is that color is in decoration. It's a behavioral, behavioral cue. And I can say that correctly. It shapes what people feel before they read a word. It helps signal trust, urgency, safety, energy risk, a whole bunch of emotions. Right. So the starting point should never be personal taste. It's your audience, the category and the desired action you want that audience to take. Ask what you're going to do. need people to feel, notice and do next. They're the primary color purposes. Before we continue, don't forget to like and subscribe to ThinkShift on all the social channels to be kept up to date for the next shift lands in your inbox. So let's move on to what color means in brand and marketing. So a color palette is not just a visual choice, as we just mentioned. It tells people what kind of business they're dealing with. When does do you think using a bold or unusual color help? So firstly, you need to be brave and you need courage to be able to do it. But when you've it creates distinct inhibits of salience. So for instance, we're talking about a medical company, a financial company that's generally blue. If something is, say, "Oh, or in, or it is red, why? There has to be a reason behind it." So it certainly is distinctiveness. I mean, even I'm thinking about my own brand for, you know, LEC. I mean, looking at what I do in neuro-versa- scientific based and even the same with you. There's a bright pink in there. But there's got to be a reason behind that. And it's also because it's a corporate identity for me. -Lines person. -And it lines with personality. And it lines with my archetype. And we're going to, we'll touch on archetypes here a little bit, but we are going to do an actual episode on that because that is something that I get asked a lot about. But it's, you need to own the color. If it's something that is bold or something that is unusual, there needs to be a reason and you need to own that. So what is it that you do differently that's characterizes a different color for your particular industry? -Yeah. I think I'm going to lead into this next one with talking about a color choice if it feels immature for a serious decision. That's a bad big no-no right. So trusty roads quite quickly when those colors are directly opposed to the decision they're being asked to make. So let's talk about that. When can color choice damage trust? What are your thoughts? -Color needs to align with your purpose and it needs to align with the context. And it also needs to be able to create readability. So is it something that is distracting? Is it something that is blurring the message? Is it mudding the waters? If it's not aligned with the business or not aligned with the person within the business or the corporate identity or the professional identity of the business, then he can actually backfire. And that's why when we talk about, it's not just about your favorite color and the preference. It's getting someone who is professionally trained potentially in color psychology in particular that can work with you for your corporate identity and your brand identity because color is the first thing people see. And we create a response. We create a decision. We make a decision and we build a behavior around that before we even read the text. And there has to be an alignment there. So what we're trying to evoke is a positive neurochemical response of oxytocin or dopamine that makes us feel safe and go, "Ah, this seems good. This is aligned. This is safe. Makes sense." And that's what we want to do. So it actually is really important from a brand perspective. And it's not just around branding. The entire profile and identity around that's really important to make sure you're choosing the right color for the right reason. You don't just pick a color out of a hat. Particularly I see when it affects readability for the user. What off in your C-yellow's and all sorts of bright colors that create a problem with visual contrast. Readability goes out the window. And there's a brand that does this really well though that has yellow in their palette. Now I'm just going to call them out. It's ComBank. CBA does a great job of using yellow in their coms. I'm a ComBank customer. I have their app on my phones. Probably one of the best bank user experiences I've seen. And the yellow is their primary brand color. But they limit the use of it in such a way that it doesn't damage the readability of the application. And it's one of the most effortless apps I have on my phone. So there is a way to use those. But it's a strong yellow right? It's a very strong. It's not a light pastel light. Yes, correct. Dipped to the yellow. And also in color psychology for those of you that are interested in what yellow is about, clarity is what yellow generally brings. Clarity, cleansing, sort of freedom that quite often yellow is used in those kinds of aspects and those kinds of businesses. So it's interesting with ComBank that they've used that color. And it is the ComBank yellow. It's actually a patent color now. I think it is the ComBank yellow. Correct me if I'm wrong. Large swathes of yellow, though can be nauseous. Yes, correct. Just interesting. So using too much yellow. I mean, you can remember ComBank is yellow, black and white. So let's just just know. And they can currently use with a very bold color that is stable. I mean, it might not even be black. It might be like a really dark gray. I'm not sure exactly, but it's stable. It's rigid. It's supportive. So it's always got that as the crux and as yeah, to then complement the yellow. And then there's some white in this world. That's the importance of primary and secondary tertiary color decisions and the breakdown and percentage of use within any application. Why that's so important. Yeah. ComBank's not going to go, it's 100% yellow and then use a little bit of black. No, that's right. I mean, think of, you know, you know, you're a design. I mean, you're a zone. We've got that coral. We've got a pink imagine if the whole thing was caught. It's not. It's now, it's a, it's a cool color, but it's a, it's a cool, yeah, cool to action. It's a lovely color, but it's an accent color. Yeah. You know, we've got that, that navy and that deep purple. Then we've got that accent color to uplift. And we've done that on purpose. That's right. It drives a decision. It makes it very easy for a user to know what to click. Because now they're looking for a patent. They're looking for coral because they know that's a quarter action. We haven't given them three or four different colors at any time and said, oh, click the blue one, click the black one, click the, you know, that's very clear what they need to do next because it's driving decisions. Right. All right. Let's move on to an outwire here in the color space. So it's over our mastercard. So mastercard uses red and orange interlocking circles to symbolize connection. It's like a vendigram, isn't it? It is, but they say, they say in their justification, their red signifies energy and passion. But if you look in history of financial brands, anything to do with finance, red is a big no-no. It was a means bankruptcy. Yep. You're in the red debt. Yeah, debt. So what do you think about mastercard using red in their brand market? Well, very interesting. I mean, we were talking about yesterday when we were doing research for this episode, we were looking for the outliers. And that's what we do, right? That's how we operate. And it was very interesting because it's got that the orange, the sort of that orange and the red with it, which is warning warning. And, but it stands out. It stands out. And the justification around, yeah, the passion and desire and maybe relationship with your money. Yes. And innovation. Yeah, innovation, which was the orange, was innovation. Yeah. So which is which is great. And that's what orange does mean. But yeah, interesting with with the red and they've intertwined it in like looking like a vendine brand. Must have been a really convincing pitch deck. I have to lose the design agency. And I take that to the board and being able to say this is what we think they're probably going, yeah, you've got bananas. But no, you know, and it's it we don't look at mastercard as, oh my god, I'm going to be in the money lending institution and it's credit card and a lot of people are in debt. And that's a shame. But that's not what this is about. This is about using the color and branding for purpose. And they are an outlier. But we remember it. We do remember it. We remember it. We lot more than what we do. Yeah, we think visa. What color is that? Yeah, orange. Orange. Orange. White. Yeah. Something like that. But to your point though, and I think if you're going to going to use a color set that goes against the grain, just have a really strong reason as to why. And I think you know talking to innovation and all those things that we just mentioned are great points. Because then you will stand out. But you just need to have really strong justification. Also a board that gets along and agrees to that point of view. I've got an example in my own client work. One of my clients said to me before I rebranded and they said, I said, what colors are you thinking about for your brand? And he said, I like most colors, I just hate pink. And I was like, interesting. Doesn't like pink. We're in talking about in the medical space here. And I was like, okay, let's just see. So I went back to him with a palette that I thought he might like. But I also went back to him one that was pink and heavy navy to complement the pink opposite of the color wheel, complimentary colors and whatnot. And he loved it. He'd love and suddenly he's pink everywhere. So it just goes to show context. Yeah. It just goes to show you that not all colors need to align to a preconceived idea. That's right. And go outside of that. If you've got a strong enough reason and a strong enough example of it in context to prove that is where mockups come in. So, Henry, right? Yeah. This one looks like he is. This one looks like he is on the outside of your Lamborghini. It's going to look like, you know, you show them in context and they go, wow, you showed me this. What's the rule here? It's not people. again that something else. When you show them the hard-eal state, you're showing them ideal state. What does it look like when I'm out there performing in market? You get them that in no doubt that's what happened in a master card and suddenly you can see yourself wearing the shoes. But also, and you know I work heavily with archetypes. So when I work in the branding psychology space, I will always use the young ones over Kao Jung, the archetypes. And another outlier too, because red warning warning and danger and risk. However, look at Lego. So Lego and McDonald's, so they as so red is often used in the what we call the creator space. So the archetypes, there were 12 archetypes that we categorized depending on certain businesses and outcomes and audience and target audience. And often as a creator, that is the name of this particular archetype is very bright and bold colors. And one of them is the pink of the bright pink. With me, my secondary archetype is a creator, which is why I mean Clint, you used all my colors in building my and designing my website. That's why it's got a significant presence because of the creator archetype that I am. But if you look at Lego, going back to the red, I mean Lego is red, McDonald's is red. That's because they are creator archetypes. So it's used in the right context. This is not around danger. This is around being fun and yummy food. Well, that's what McDonald's technically is around is fast food. Last but not least, they agree. There's one on McDonald's. There's a childhood, not there's a novelty around these particular brands where red has a presence and should have a presence, same with Lego. But there's a lot of other industries and other corporate identities that you are, you should stay away from that. So again, it is very context driven. And it's what is the image that you're trying to create by using a certain color? It's interesting around archetypes. I'm not going to go into this, but I'm going to challenge you on those in an upcoming episode. We're going to talk about archetypes because I think it's very interesting. There's a lot of talk about them and their relevancy now in market. Thank you. So it stays tuned. Yeah. So let's now talk about where color changes action. So color can influence what people notice, trust, avoid, click. And we kind of mentioned this before with our own website using coral as the quarter-action color. But only when it's used with intent. It has to be used with intent. Let's just talk about now how color influences action on websites and digital products. Right? As we mentioned before, it creates visual hierarchy. It tells people what's clickable and important. And it makes CTAs or called actions feel more obvious. There's a really good example of this that happened with Amazon. So they changed their quarter-action button to orange. And when they did, it saw, they saw an increase of conversion by 23% just by changing it to orange. Significant. Significant. CTAs need enough contrast to stand out. But also they need to be, and this is why we want to design systems. It's so important to have a primary, secondary, and tertiary quarter-action that we don't stray from. Those, those quarter-actions are always the same across the entire experience for a very good reason, right? And talking about the science behind it, what's your take on the why behind those so important? Again, it comes down to shortcuts. So if we are creating lots of quarter-actions, which often we create too many, right? There's too many of your quarter-actions. And then we put different colors on it. What do we want the user to do? So we work in patterns. The brain lives patterns, the brain lives shortcuts. So it often wants to be told what to do, what to click. So if we've got a particular quarter-action that's a certain color, we know that following that pattern, that that's what we're asking you to do. Ah, we've got to click here. Ah, we've got to click there. But if we start mudding the waters and creating complexity around our CTAs, by changing, it's not only just color, it can also be the action that you ask. Learn more. Click here. The language. The point. Yeah. So it's also the text. I mean, the color is the direction. Is that it gives immediate direction? I speak. Yeah. Yeah. It's right. So it will go, brain will look at the color and go, ah, that's what I need to do. The secondary action is reading it and what it is asking me to do. If they don't match, that actually causes way too much or conflict of information. Mental gymnastics. Mental gymnastics. Absolutely. Yeah. It just meant I like that. Mental gymnastics. That's a great way to do it. So what do we do? We do nothing. We do nothing. We do nothing because it's too hard. Yeah. And often people use color to stand out. Well, if we create more color and if we use more color, it's prettier. It's more attractive. It's salient. It sticks out using the isolation of where when something stands out more, we tend to gravitate towards it. You're actually not. Color needs to be used really strategically. Because we respond so quickly to color. So we actually want to keep it consistent. We want to make, you know, create these shortcuts, reduce the load. We don't want to do a cartwheel. We all want to do is put one foot in front of the other and we can easily follow that pattern by creating consistent color for an action that we are asking our consumers to do. It's that old adage if everything stands out. Nothing stands out. That's right. What did you call rainbow of colors? The rainbow colors. There's a room full of clowns and you're asking which clowns stands out. They're all clowns. They're all colors. So what do you do? You go, is there a bunch of clowns? I'm going to walk away. We're not going to gravitate towards anything. I think though the rainbow effect happened in an early website design back in early 2000s when that was often asked by many clients that I had when I was working for agency was, we had some more colors. We just need more colors because similar here, we want to stand out. But nowadays we don't see that. I think we've come around to the idea that less is bored and that some primary color focus used across the board is going to get you a better conversion. And also, we're way more diverse now to using overkill with color. But also we've also got the tools. We can see what happens to the brain in the response. When we are flooding the brain with different colors that we can't actually focus on anything. That's all right. And we can see the brain activity and that's what happens. So when we have a consistent color that is memorable, that is aligned, it's synchronous with a brand or with an identity, you know, it's easy to make a decision. It's much more comfortable for the consumer. They will go ahead and take action. So the colder action, the color is really important and it needs to be consistent with what you are asking someone to do. And context before matters so much. And I know we just mentioned that color to draw eye to the call of action is important. But equally, the message on that button is so important. As an example, you could you imagine, cancel button red, but you had proceed written on the button as a red. It's perceived. You'd be like, that looks like a mistake. Like, what's wrong? Like, why is it red? Like, it would be a real mental gymnastics. 100%. And also another thing is gray. Gray is an interesting color. Do you use gray much? It's just, it means disabled. It's unavailable. Yeah. It's clicked. Yes. Yeah, not available. None left. Sold out. Not working. So we're gray. It can often be a really lovely, you know, complimentary cut depending on the shade. Obviously. But it now we associate a behavior with gray. Yeah. Don't click this. Don't click this. Or it won't work even if you try to click it. Yeah. So and often I see buttons with that when I do some website orders, the behavior science audits, I will look at and they'll go, oh, and now because I think a default is when you create these, you know, forms is often gray. And it's like, no, you know, you need, it needs to be a color. There needs to be a color to evoke a trigger or a behavior for someone to make a decision to do something gray. They're going to go, I'm not going to waste my time. Can't touch that. Yes. That's gray. Yeah. That's right. Let's now move on to as a business, how to use color properly. What should businesses stop doing when choosing color? They need to stop choosing the color that they like. I'm not saying choose a color that you hate either. That you don't want that. But it's it's choose it for the purpose. So what is it that you want people to do? How do you want to be represented in your industry? How do you want to be seen by your peers and by your consumers? How does it reflect what you do within your business? That's what you should be concentrating on. Now, obviously you want to love the color and you want to feel proud of the color. Yeah. But it's important to represent what you're doing. Yeah. So if, if gray is your favorite color for some reason. Sorry for you. I apologize right now when are you using it? Where are you? If there are anyone's favorite color, that would be an interesting. That wouldn't have just. Yeah. And the other thing is to don't do whatever else does. So even though that needs to, it's not about, oh, your competitors are these. I mean, if you look at my competitor, I mean, no one's going to be pink and I was talking with a client on on Monday. I think I was telling you the story. And for you guys that know my, so we're not talking neuro design, he were talking Leonardo's consulting and obviously with the incept with Clint. But if you're going to Leonardo's consulting and there's this bright pink, pink and blue and a client on Monday, someone said, oh, look, Leonardo's branding is pink and blue. And someone actually said, it's turquoise or aqua blue. They even knew that it wasn't just a normal basic typical blue that you see every day. The [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, the hue of the office. And specifically, which is what it is. And I'm like, you know, you've made it when you're blind is starting to actually give you that had a great answer to the actual color. So, but also we don't, it's just look at our branding. It's not what everyone else does. Now, again, it needs to be sensible within the industry and what you're doing, but don't copy what your competitors do. You want to showcase yourself as doing something different. So does your branding. It's interesting. You mentioned their brand recall on your brand, which isn't one of the big brands. It's big, but it's not like McDonald's big. It's Ferrari Red is a thing. Everyone knows Tiffany Blue is a fan. But for someone to pick up that was your specific color, that's pretty good brand recall. I was very impressed. And it was no offense. It was actually a guy. There you go. It was a male. It wasn't even a female. So, yeah, you don't know, you've made it when you've got-- So you have the best color. I'm all your clients. Yeah, I'm all client-reclined. But it just goes to show how important-- I mean, at the moral of the story is, just go to show how important having that brand within your industry and people are recognizing you and your corporate identity and the color signifies what you do. For sure. So we've just said what they should stop doing. What should they do instead? Well, also another thing to stop doing is and Clint, you're probably a bit at explaining this than me. But using-- if you've got three colors within your palette, use them all the same. There should be something that is used more. So there should be a significant color than one that complements that and then a tertiary color that is the accent color that you use a little bit of. Generally, we just assign rules to the color. What's their job? So if you've got black, red, and gray in your color palette, what's job-- what job is black supposed to do? What job is red supposed to do? OK, let's define those. And if you give them a task, therefore, it's harder to break those rules when it comes to website. You're going through your site design and you've got head lines and you go, oh, OK, well, let's make a rule. All headlines are black. Great. Let's make a rule all call to action buttons and our red from the palette. Great. And so we now are using rules against everything. I think that's the best way to use your palette. Unfortunately, when brand agencies come up with palettes quite often, they're not fought through all the way down the line to online interface design, which is fine. They're just generally a starting point. And then it comes up to the job of the designer involved in creating the website experience to then expand on that palette or tweak the palette, and which is absolutely fine. And expected brand guidelines are guidelines. They're not written in stone and to never be changed. They are literally the starting point. And most clients that I work with would say, oh, well, yes, let's evolve it. Let's feel free to massage and get up moving in a position where now we can roll this out across everything. Because the last thing they wanted to be home strong by a guideline that was created very early on in the branding exercise. My pink got brighter as I've moved on. Did it? Yeah, actually, indeed. If you go back to-- As soon as you go back to some of the previous colors, that bright pink, which I call the Valentino pink, because that's what Valentino-- that fashion house, Valentino-- a couple of years ago, they could-- all the coutura suits and dresses was this particular hot pink. And it's a local call with Valentino pink. Not that I copied that. But my pink-- Influenced by? Yeah, maybe. But I do love that pink. But it was a lot softer and it got deeper and deeper and deeper. And then you came up with that Valentino pink. Yeah, brightened up a bit. Brightened it up, which now everyone knows is my pink. That's it. Yeah. And yellow, pink. Pink, yeah. OK, so I've got a question here around how many colors should a brand really use? That's a good question. And it's something that is often asked. And the answer is simple. Enough of flexibility, but not to confuse. So like I say, giving every color a job, if it's in the color wheel that you've got, and there's no other purpose for it, other than, oh, we might use it sometimes as a background color. Like, it's probably not a strong enough reason to use that color in your brand identity. So some brands have three, some have two, and then they have two secondary colors. All depends on the brand. It's so-- it can't be answered with a generic answer. It is-- it's very much bespoke to the brand. Would 10 colors be too much? Not for a clown school or a rainbow factory? Oh, I don't know. I can't. I don't know. For candy? I don't know, maybe. But again, even if it was for a candy brand, probably wouldn't use all those colors either. Because all those colors don't stand out, as we've just spoken about. That's right. Yeah. OK. Because I have seen palettes with like 10 or more colors. Oh, really? A little bit of each of these. Yeah, I'm like, I can't do that. I can't do that. I need to do something about that. Yeah. Too many colors can create noise and create confusion, and weaken recognition, in fact. You don't become known for anything. You think Tiffany would be known for Diffney Blue. If it had 12 colors in their palette, they just wouldn't be known for that. So yeah, less is more. There was an April Fool's joke a couple of years ago for nominal marketing. So the marketing team-- and it was only later that people realized it was April Fool's show. It was done so well that they thought that it was OK. And they changed everything to yellow. Right. And they said, we have now rebranded to Tiffany Yellow. And it was so well done. They showed the boxes that were now Tiffany Yellow. They showed, I think, on Fifth Avenue, the store with the colors of the yellow, obviously, it was phenomenal. And then the next day or two days later, it was only joking April Fool's. It was done so well. But also the credibility of the brand. Well, unless you're a Tiffany, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. It's interesting. Would they have lost sales? I reckon, yes. You think? Absolutely. That brief window. Absolutely. As opposed to the awareness and the sales they would have got from that renewed interest. 100%. They would have. Because it's like, well, what's the reasoning, dangerous activity? What's the reason behind it? Why did you think you do-- I mean, Tiffany can do whatever they want. But what, you know, their reputation? But why would you change? It starts bringing uncertainty into when you start-- Trust. Yes. So I'm certainly trust. Why was the blue not good enough? Everything is blue. Backfire. But the blue boxes. People keep their blue boxes. The Tiffany blue. The little restaurant in the cafe. When we're in New York, we went. It's the blue box cafe. So everything around that. So yes. Very interesting. And then everyone-- then they go, and he's joking back to the blue and everyone's like, oh, thank god for that. The relief. The relief. The relief, right? Let's talk about where businesses get color wrong in marketing materials. And you just kind of mentioned one there with Tiffany. Yeah. Overusing accent colors. Right. So just swaves of their primary colors. Like, oh, we're blue. So let's make everything blue. It just doesn't work that way. Making calls to action blend into the brand palette. So even though you've got a brand palette in one area, using a quarter action, that is part of the brand palette is not always the way to go. Not all that. Like I mentioned, black and red before making all your buttons red. Probably won't work for you because it looks like a cancel button or it looks dangerous. Or it looks like I shouldn't press that. It's red. So-- Interesting, though. I just thought about this. Just popped into my head now. The subscribe button. I don't know if it's for YouTube, I guess, because it's a branding of YouTube. Red. Red. Yeah. But because it goes with the branding, the identity of the business. You're so shaded. You're associated with-- That's it. Yeah. So what's not a danger, it's actually like, pick me, pick me, pick me, you know, subscribe. But often, yeah, like on YouTube, it's, you know, click the subscribe and it's actually red. Yeah. Don't forget to subscribe. You're on YouTube. But that's because, yeah, because it's associated with the brand. We see it used in marketing materials, or contrast with text as a big one, right? So quite often, brands will go, oh, look, we need it. All costs to get our brand colors in there. And then we'll just put text on top of that brand color. And then you suddenly know you can't read it. So you've now cost a sale and eligibility and readability just by the very fact you wanted to inject your brand color. That's a big one. Inconsistency is probably the largest one I see. And this is where it's really important to have a brand guardian or have a design on hand that can assist with making sure, and this happens after brands are created, visual identity in particular is created, brand guidelines are created, and it kind of stops there. The designers paid and off they go into the sunset. And suddenly now it's the business's problem to now roll that out across materials. And it falls over unless there is a brand guardian on the client side looking after that brand. All the designers re-engaged to say, you know, are we going to create some marketing materials? How should this work? Are we going to do a letterhead? A letterhead who doesn't let a head say more? Business cards even are not as common. But online ads, how they supposed to look, you know, all that power being put into the business with a new brand, it can really backfire. So inconsistency, we see a lot of that. So recommend the brand guardian. - Yep. - And the final one is using color to decorate rather than guide, right? So decoration is never a good idea when it comes to marketing and communications. It should always be guiding an action, whether it's drawing attention to a headline or whether it's creating a clear path to call to action. Other than that, it's pure decoration and needs to have a really good reason for being there on a piece of communication. And that's all I got to say on that. - It's great. (laughing) - Great. - All right. - Remember your brand guardian, I love that, of that. Here's the shift. Color isn't taste, decoration or committee preference. Color is a signal. It tells people what to feel, what to trust, what to notice, and what to do next. So the better question isn't, what color do we like? The better question is, what behavior do we need this color to support? One action further listener out there this week, open your website or most important sales asset. Look at the colors, ask what each one is doing. The color does not guide attention, create trust or support an action. It's probably just noise. That's ThinkShift. I'm Clint. I'm Leanne. One idea one shift in round about 30 minutes. If this episode has changed how you think, please send it to someone who makes decisions for a living. And follow ThinkShift on all the socials. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss what shift is coming up next week. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is a much-made media production.