Brand and Butter
The straight-talking branding podcast for leaders who refuse to settle.
Brand and Butter delivers no-BS advice on how psychology, strategy, and design create brands that work. Host Tara Ladd, founder of Your One & Only brand design studio, breaks down the real influence and power of branding – how understanding behaviour and cultural shifts can transform how people see, think, and choose.
Sometimes funny, always honest, never dull. This is the podcast that cuts through industry jargon to talk about what actually makes brands stick.
Tara Ladd is the founder of Your One and Only, who design brands that breathe with culture through psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
How Strategic Colour Choices Live Rent-Free in Your Customers' Minds
In this episode, the discussion is on the relationship between colour psychology and branding. I'm emphasising that colour is not simply an aesthetic choice but a strategic tool that can influence consumer perception and behaviour. We dive right into the cultural and contextual nuances of colour, and highlight the importance of understanding audience psychology and memory encoding in effective brand design.
Visit https://youroneandonly.com.au/
Follow YO&O on IG https://www.instagram.com/youroneandonly_au/
Follow Tara on IG https://www.instagram.com/iamtaraladd/
Connect with Tara on https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarajoyladd/
Sign up for the Design Mind Theory Email – See how other Brands use psychology to nail their strategies.
you're listening to Brandon butter a straight-talking occasionally in your face. No BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of brand and design agency. You're One and Only hey. Hey, what is happening? We had a good episode last week and I thought I would. We had a good episode last week and I thought I would continue on with that. We spoke to memory and I guess brand recognition and memory architecture and how brands are now being remembered versus how they used to be traditionally, and I wanted to kind of bring that more into the design space, and so today I want to be talking about color psychology space, and so today I want to be talking about color psychology. It seems to be a hot topic online, but no one seems to be able to articulate it how it's meant to be articulated. So here's to hoping what I'm trying to get to with this is basically letting you understand how it's like a hidden language of strategic brand design, essentially. So I guess, if we talk about most people, they think that they have this sorted, when in actual fact they they have it backwards. So color everyone thinks picking brand colors is about what looks nice and what feels on a brand. Like you, you know what feels good on on branding, but, or whatever the ceo's wife likes or husband god call myself out there the issue is that color is one of the most powerful psychological weapons or tools that you can have in your brand pack and most businesses are using it like a I guess like a plastic spoon, if you think of it, and most businesses are using it like a, I guess like a plastic spoon, if you think of it that way, when it could be like a surgical knife and that sounds all lame and stuff, but like it's, like you know, when someone has the ability to do something amazing and they choose a lackluster approach. This is where I feel so many people are right now and I'm like just do something different and it always is something so simple, but it they make it so complex, and by they I mean the conversation that's going out makes everything feel so complex.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the real psychology behind color, because when we're like working through clients, you know, in the first stages, right. So we've got three stages dissect, dna design. So when we're in the dissect phase, one of the first things that we find is how badly most people have misunderstood color psychology. Puts glasses up higher on my face. So they'll say we chose blue because it's trustworthy, and then wonder why they're feeling invisible with a stack of other people that have chosen blue that also thought that blue felt trustworthy. You know it, I know it. It happens, right.
Speaker 1:But what's actually happening in your customer's brain when they see color? And, like I said last week, we're talking milliseconds here, 90 milliseconds to be exact. That's how fast color triggers a psychological response. So your customer's limbic system you know it's the ancient part of the brain. We talk about this in the brain lab, by the way. So if you want to know more about that, we've got that ready, locked and loaded. It's making instant connections or it's not connections associations before their rational mind even kicks in. Hello, subconscious. David Kahneman talks about this in uh, thinking fast and slow. So I guess I'm trying to figure out a way to frame it.
Speaker 1:But where it gets interesting, I guess, is that when most brands get it wrong, is that color psychology isn't universal, and I mentioned this last week. So it it's cultural, contextual and deeply personal. So when I'm mapping psychological audiences for our clients, we're not just looking at red means passion. We're looking at how red shows up in specific ways, like how does it look in their world, in their industry, in their cultural moment? Does it look in their world, in their industry, in their cultural moment? And so here's where I bring in the cultural intelligence gap. This is the level that I want to talk to and I've decided I'm going all in on it now. But this is the approach that we're taking with your one and only because it's so much deeper than just, hey, we do brands like we actually look at the nuance of, well, the brain and how we behave and yeah. So anyway, while everyone else is following color psychology rules from textbooks written in the bloody 90s, we're actually looking at what color means today and how that's evolving.
Speaker 1:Because take millennial pink, for instance this wasn't in any psychological textbook, was it? And it became a cultural shorthand or a shortcut for a whole generational mindset around softness and vulnerability and anti-corporate authenticity, and everyone did it. Remember Millennial Pink and Black. It was just everywhere. But the brands that are going to like nail this. They're the ones that know that color is part of cultural intelligence. Right, it's part of societal conversations. It's not just an emotional trigger. You gotta go red. Oh, I need to buy a burger because it's appetizing, even though every takeaway still has red. It's energetic and it captures your attention and there's obviously nuance in it, but there's that.
Speaker 1:But we have, like clients that we've worked with before. So our client pivot, they are in logistics or not logistics, they're in freight forwarding, I should say, and when they came to us, we were looking at the competitor space. Right, you know, listen when I say it's important to make sure that you can't just go and choose a color because you like it and it sits outside the box and you're trying to create a point of difference. Right, you do still have to fit to some conformity, unfortunately, because it's a sense of what people feel familiar with. It. Is that heuristic? Right, you think of green, you tie in environment, so you do still have to adhere to some of the rulings. You just need to push boundaries in a way that's strategic and done well.
Speaker 1:So what we did with Pivot was we still used the navy blue, we still brought in a tree green, which was very similar and in alignment to a lot of the other companies within that category, not because everyone else was doing it, but because that's what people know to look for and feel and assimilate, to associate. And what we then also did was we added accent colors. So we've got bright yellow, like canary yellow, fuchsia, pink and red, and these are colors that we use in unison. Pink and red and these are colors that we use in unison, you know, simultaneously with the primary colors, as that pop of difference, and they are outstanding, like they look so good. It creates that point of difference, but they still fit within that space of comfort, but they're challenging that box and this is how you can do it really well. And so this is what we would call strategic color application, and so the way that we, I guess, apply color psychology strategically. So we dissect, like that, what colors already exist in that space, so not to copy them, but to understand the psychological territory of the spaces that you know we're working with and make sure it isn't overcrowded and what's open to use, which is what we did with Pivot right. So we look at the customer journey.
Speaker 1:Different colors trigger different psychological states. You know what we call decision readiness. Blue might be building initial trust, but it doesn't necessarily motivate action. We know this with button colors online, high contrast, all those types of things where, as I just said, red creates urgency but it can trigger resistance if used wrong. And the key is knowing which psychological state you need to trigger at what moment. See, it's a lot more nuanced than you think.
Speaker 1:So here's where we look at the memory structure element, right? So this is where color becomes really powerful. It's called memory encoding. I've spoken about this before. The four parts really important and it's how our brains remember distinctive color combinations way better than pretty ones. So that's why brands like tiffany with their blue or hermes orange work so well. They're not just really pretty, they're neurologically memorable. Cabri purple is another one.
Speaker 1:And so when we're in the design phase, which is part three, dissect, dna design what we're actually looking at with clients is creating what we call color signatures, so unexpected color combinations that work with how memory actually functions. So it's not about following a color wheel rules. It's about I mean a point they still have to align and match, but it's about creating visual patterns that you know will stay memorable and stick in people's heads. And here we deliberately start with an analysis. In the dissect, we start with mapping and breaking down audits and figuring out what's working and assessing the market Really important thing, because you can't just choose strategic colors until you understand the landscape that you will be operating in, where most design. I see it all the time Most designers go oh, here you go, here's our process. We start with a mood board. I'm like whoa, slow down, champ, because you've missed a whole like we've done two massive stages before we've even gotten there. Now, given that, if the designer starts with the strategy, that's already been developed.
Speaker 1:But a strategy isn't mission, vision, values right, it's so much deeper than that. It's so much deeper than that it is. This is why brands spend big money on it. But this is the knowledge gap, right, it's the evolvement of traditional marketing, traditional branding, moving from logos, colors, fonts into what we know and feel of a brand. A brand can actually exist today and not sell anything. It's a memory, right, blockbuster, they're not even in business anymore, but the memory of that brand sits rent free in our head. It's memory encoding.
Speaker 1:So I had this conversation with a marketer a couple of years ago about you know he was saying like no, branding sits underneath marketing. And I'm like, well, yeah, but it's also kind of its own space. Now he's like no, because branding serves to sell something. And I was like not necessarily, because now we see personal brand. Personal is reputation, reputation is memory. It's not the same thing. What we're seeing now is brand almost creating its own category, like its own thing. So the way I say is business, brand marketing, all like work on the same playing field? There's a whole episode on that, by the way, if you want to go and read it. I'm not going to overcomplicate that here, but it really is just about understanding the nuance of the market, the evolution of change, like we're seeing social media now like completely changed the dynamic of how brands interact. So of course, we're going to see an involvement in the way that we need to be branding.
Speaker 1:And if you're not on top of that, I am someone that will stick in my space and just be all over it, research what's going on, because it's my job to be in front of the brand game. I'm not. I see so many people that create businesses and then they go and learn all these entrepreneurs go and learn all these like side things to grow their businesses, like sales and whatever you know finance and ads and all of these other spaces to be in, and then they actually miss the evolvement of their own industry because they're too busy trying to market their business and they've missed the, you know, the thing that made them special to begin with. So for me it's like making sure that I've got my fingers in a lot of the pies, which is really overwhelming, but at the same time, if I can be the best at what I do and I can talk to that really well, which is something that I've always aimed to do and also horizontally align. So have a look at side spaces that assist what you do. You kind of will be across it and so then you won't miss those moments in culture where things evolve or technology changes. You'll kind of be addressing it bit by bit so you don't go oh shit, all of a sudden my job doesn't exist, all my industry has just gone out on its head. You just adapt and evolve to fit within that space.
Speaker 1:And so we're looking at that space of understanding that beginning stage. It's not a mood board, it's so much deeper than that and it's assessing your. An audience sits at the very bloody center of it and everyone keeps saying I know my audience. And then I'm like, okay, going to ask you these questions. And then I then they sit there with this look on their face Like I don't know those, and I'm like that's because you actually don't know your audience. You know a demographic, you know maybe some interests, but like what, what?
Speaker 1:When I say this, this is a whole service I've built out because I know that there are so many things missing, especially in regards to the behavioral insight, behavioral analysis and, um, you know, positioning, mapping. The stuff that we've got now is really, really, really good, and even I'm impressed with. I ran my own stuff through my own process and I was like, oh shit, there's a space here. It was crazy. So it even works, you know, to reassess. So that's what we've been doing, at the same time as simultaneously repositioning your one, and only so that we're in that space, so that we can talk about it, which is why it's taken me so long to execute, because I just had to try and figure it all out myself and I feel like I'm in a space where I've spent two years, literally two years, building this out to be what it is now.
Speaker 1:And so here most designers jump to aesthetics, which is what I just said. We need to map out the cognitive territory first. What is in our brain, what is in the customer's brain, what is in our consumer's mindset, and how are they thinking? And if you don't know that, you're just guessing, you're assuming. And so that's why audience profiling and understanding the positioning is so damn important, because before you execute, you need to understand what you're actually. You're basically writing the brief in the first two stages for the execution of the design. And so here's where the knowledge gap is highlighted. The knowledge gap is massive.
Speaker 1:So most businesses think color choice is creative and it's a preference when it's strategic intelligence, right. So they're making million dollar brand decisions based on personal taste instead of a psychological insight. Not great, we're seeing evolve. We're seeing it evolve. We're watching this happen. Now, um, and it's it's really interesting to see the dynamics of it all. It's like evolutionary in terms of everything needs to be consistently moving. Now, nothing's static. It shouldn't be static, because we live in a fast-changing world. Therefore, we expect our brands to be evolving just as fast, and we're moving beyond a pretty palette.
Speaker 1:I put in adverted commas, and this is the reason why, and so businesses that understand that color is a psychological strategy, as our fonts, as our images, all of the elements that form part of the bigger puzzle is cultural intelligence, is part of memory, architecture, and those that own the next space or the next decade is oh, are I should say not, is I went to say something completely different then are the ones that will actually just jump ahead and you will be the trendsetter. And it doesn't have to be something massive, right, it doesn't have to be this oh, we've gone and completely invigorated, or it changed, and invigorated is probably not the right word, but like completely upheaved our whole industry. It doesn't actually have to be that at all. Sometimes it's just this tiny, tiny thing. So, for instance, dollar Shave Club were razors that just sent their razors in a subscription service because it's such a mundane purchase that people don't want to make, and they combined an easy delivery method also in our market advantage gap, by the way, if you want to go and download that for $67, four parts to that. That tells them the spaces that they and they just were like. You know what Great. We're going to sell our razors in a subscription service that people can buy without thinking about it because it's just another decision that takes off their plate. Boom Made a mozzarella out of it.
Speaker 1:I do this with my makeup. By the way, I use Elle Makeup. They do a quiz. They found out what color, like color skin, I was, the type of skin consistency, all these types of things that I get, and they nailed it both times, both winter and summer. So that just comes and I don't even think about it. I pre-bought it. It comes every three months. Amazing, someone that gets overwhelmed. I do not want to be thinking about that shit. So it's a really, really clever way to earn my money and I've been with them ever since. I don't even look at other makeup brands because of a decision that reduced my cognitive overwhelm.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, the product has to be good. If the product was shit I wouldn't buy it, but it's just an attribute, right? The product? It's all part of the marketing mix of you. Product placement, price, all of those things need to be in alignment. So before you think about it just being an aesthetic choice, make sure that you're understanding that it's being made strategically in order to attract and send the right messages out to your audience, especially considering today is so well. It's very nuanced. It's. It's very.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it for this week. If you like that one, slip in and let's have a chat. Otherwise, stay tuned because there's some really cool stuff coming out and if you haven't jump in the show notes, I'll drop the Market Advantage Gap link in there. It's really fun. It's a really cool. I built this out. I started off as like a really simple lead magnet and then it just evolved into this huge, massive framework and I was like this is awesome and that's what that is. So I had to charge for it because it was way more than a free thing. So anyway, if you're interested in it it's in there go and have a look. Otherwise, I will talk to you next week and have a great week. Did you like that episode? I hope so, because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at yourwannanonly underscore au on Instagram.
