How to Discover the Right Color for Your Insurance Agency
Color is powerful when it comes to branding – think about companies, products, sports teams, and associations that use specific colors to reinforce their brand and create consistent memorability and recognition. Can you name the colors of these well-known brands?
- Coca-Cola
- Breast Cancer Awareness
- Hulu
- BMW
- Target
These brands understand the importance of communicating through color, and so does virtually every other successful organization. Color matters because it evokes emotion. To choose the tone for your insurance agency, first, you need to understand your authentic brand. Once you are clear about those attributes, you need to understand the personality of individual colors so you can select the one that best expresses that personality. Different colors exude different characteristics, so you need to pick a color that reinforces your most compelling personality characteristics.
Identify your insurance agency’s brand color
Take a look at six colors (three primaries and three secondaries) of the color wheel and identify the one that best expresses your brand, using the descriptions below. You may choose a color because it exudes the most crucial personality trait you’re seeking to convey, or because many of its characteristics align with your personality. It doesn’t matter which scenario works for you. What you must not do is choose more than one color. It’s hard to create memorability and instant recognition with two or more colors.
Red represents Power, potency, desire, love, energy, determination, action, passion, and courage.
Organizations that use red as their brand color include Coca Cola, Virgin, UBS, Lego, Mitsubishi, Adobe, Harvard, Netflix, Target, YouTube, Red Cross, and (RED).
Blue represents Intelligence, trust, loyalty, integrity, peace, authority, truth, confidence, reliability, and wisdom.
Organizations that use blue as their brand color include Citi, Ford, GE, GM, IBM, Intel, Pfizer, Maytag, LM, Marshall’s, ATT&T, Pillsbury, and Walmart.
Green represents growth, rebirth, nature, spring, peace, optimism, luck, environment, healing, youth and relaxation.
Organizations that use green as their brand color include Starbucks, TD Bank, Green Giant, The Body Shop, Whole Foods, John Deere, Lush, L.L. Bean, Fidelity, and Land Rover.
Orange represents energy, productivity, courage, potency, competition, determination, vitality, force, and strength.
Organizations that use orange as their brand color include Simply Orange, New York Knicks, ING Bank, Fanta, Nickelodeon, Gulf, Harley-Davidson, Boss Orange, Reese’s and The Home Depot.
Purple represents Dignity, wealth, ambition, luxury, spirituality, magic, mystery, inspiration, royalty, and competition.
Organizations that use purple as their brand color include Welch’s, Sofitel Hotels, New York University, Stop & Shop, Hallmark, FedEx, Los Angeles Lakers, Cadbury, and Yahoo!
Once you know your color, you need to make it visible to your online community (e.g., your website and social media pages – remember to keep the colors consistent!). Apply it to all of your external communications through different themes or font colors in your email marketing efforts.
It’s also important to use your brand color liberally in the real world too – in your office, screen saver, business tools like your phone cover, briefcase, and of course your wardrobe! One word of caution: when you’re communicating on behalf of your company, you must use their brand identity system, including their color. Use your brand color when you’re building your thought leadership, connecting with your network, and engaging in other individual actions that differentiate you.
