This month, in our Colours in Marketing series we are focusing on the colour orange. Orange is a very warm colour and will evoke interesting reactions from all who experience seeing it. Maybe it is the colour of childhood sunny holidays, on the beach with ice creams and sandcastles. For others it will bring distant memories of Christmas fruits, which are now available throughout the year, or of harvest festivals, and burgeoning baskets of fruit and vegetables.
As we are now in autumn, and the leaves are turning to beautiful tones of amber as well as yellows and reds, if there is one word that encapsulates this season, it is orange.
But there are many other aspects of orange, whether they be historical, sporting, advertising, or even controversial.
William of Orange, became King of England, Scotland and Ireland in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and he reinforced the ascendancy of Protestantism across his realm, especially after the Battle of the Boyne, when the Jacobite and Catholic forces of James II were defeated. The Orange Order in Northern Ireland celebrates this, overtly and colourfully each year.
On the other hand, the Jacobite toast to the ‘Little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat’, refers to King William III being thrown from his horse which stumbled on a mole’s burrow, and dying from his subsequent pneumonia!
Orange in sport? Well there is term used in The Netherlands – “Oranjegekte” meaning Orange Craze, for the phenomenon when at times of national sporting enterprise, the Dutch cover themselves from head to foot in orange baseball caps, T shirts, and trainers, and even decorate their houses and cars. Fortunately for them, their football team has had great exponents, such as Johan Cruyff, and they have had lots of reasons to dress up!
Who can not know about the ubiquitous ‘half-time oranges’, used in amateur football matches of all ages, to reinvigorate flagging players? However even this bastion of sporting tradition is threatened due to fears of tooth decay in children.
Perhaps the most surreal use of the colour orange in advertising will need to be researched on YouTube by younger readers. Check out ‘You know when you’ve been Tangoed’, and be amazed at the scenario where someone drinks from a can of orange Tango and is then slapped on both cheeks, by a half naked bald man, totally covered in orange dye. I think the idea behind this advert is to show how refreshing the soft drink is – it is like being smacked on the face!
It is interesting to note that after a child was injured in a playground re-enactment of the scene, the advert was pulled, to be replaced by a less violent iteration.
A less dramatic, but possibly much more impressive advertising campaign included the now famous line ‘The future is bright, the future is Orange’. The Orange mobile phone company no longer exists, but the phrase in this 1994 advert somehow caught the mood of how a simple piece of technology was about to evolve into something that would dominate our lives in way that few could foresee at the time.
So how can you use this colour in your own company promotion? Orange may be the flagship colour of you branding, across signage, leaflets, corporate clothing, even down to the humble letterhead.
I offer products in the whole rainbow of colours, including orange, and there will be quite a few different hues with each one. In the case of umbrellas, for example, there are many standard material colours for the panels of the brolly, and five options would be considered as variations of orange. I can offer many different pens, bottles, notebooks etc, all of which would have something close to your house colour.
But what happens when there isn’t a good match? What happens if you really must have the exact Pantone colour for your branded merchandise? Well there are two ways forward, the first being for clients who have the budget for Pantone matched umbrella panels, or pen barrel colours. The price will be a fair bit higher, but also the minimum quantity may be too high for most.
The second way is in my opinion, a simpler and cost-effective solution. It is easier to start off with a product which is as neutral in colour as possible – and then to print the correct colour. In this way, if there simply isn’t a water bottle of the correct orange (or green, or blue or mauve etc), then an all white bottle, printed the correct colour, might work.
There are often ways to work around a problem!
So, if you want to spread some happiness and joy with the colour orange in your promotions, please take advantage of the vast number of options I can offer. Why not take advantage of my experience of what will be the best use of your marketing budget.
Contact me today on 01295 259608 or sales@agproducts.co.uk to discuss your requirements. I look forward to hearing from you.
