In creating your logo and brand identity, never overlook the importance of choosing the right colour. When a customer looks at a logo, his/her mind goes through a sequence of visual perception. The brain first reads shape, then colour, then content. So theoretically, the colour in your logo is more recognized and potentially more powerful than the company name or tagline.

In terms of branding, the ultimate goal for any business owner should be to own a colour, that is, to brand your company so that whenever a person sees a particular hue, they think of your company. Owning a colour means facilitating recognition and building brand equity.

This concept is nothing new. Car makers have been doing it since vehicles began mass marketing. Silver cars were associated with Mercedes, Black for BMW and Red were Ferrari.

Companies today are attempting the same thing. Consider the colour brown. Almost without thinking, UPS comes to mind. Kurt Kuehn, Senior Vice President of worldwide sales & marketing at UPS, knows how important brown is to the company’s identity.

After doing months of market research on people’s perception about them, Kuehn said in a speech in 2004, “We found that UPS was strongly identified with the colour brown…brown could be a bridge to associate new attributes like agile, worldly, business savvy and forward-thinking.”

And their new campaign was born. “What Can Brown Do For You?”

When your colour is strong enough to use it in your tagline, you know you’ve got it made in the shade.

Owning a colour takes time, and in reality, few businesses are able to do it on a global scale. But small businesses can still own a colour within their market if owners choose the right one for their logo and stick with it.