Imprint feature
Who knows? Green thoughts are often reserved for money, grass and vegetables, but sometimes, for the Green Party, which is for the environment (and flush with green money). H&R Block, the tax preparing giant, is now clinging to a green block as its image and its exclusive colour. Perhaps it wants to be recognized as a Green Bloch [sic]. Henry Bloch correctly picked the name of his company as H&R Block to avoid spelling and pronunciation problems. When he appeared as a spokesperson with his correct name, it caused confusion, and to correct the whole thing, he simply changed his own name to Block. Well done, the consumer thanks you for this easy spelling of Block, Mr. Bloch. The use of colour as a name or to identify a corporation is far too stretched. The customer, at large, is somewhat colour blind to these branding tactics. Customers are already recovering from the awkward, dumb and, at times, obscene names from the wild branding era of the last dot.com bubble: PurpleFrog, PurpleCow, PurpleDog, PurpleRhino, all the way to BlueFrog, BlueCow, BlueDog, BlueRhino, etc. These poor animals were subjected to much verbal abuse and named in just about every colour of the rainbow, almost creating possible strikes at the local zoo.
Every time you see green, do you really think of money, the IRS or just grass? A specific coluor cannot motivate the customer to alter his perception of a branding connection. Every time you come in contact with the colour brown, wouldn’t you prefer to think of a chocolate bar, rather than calling UPS or hugging one of their delivery guys on the road? Every time you see green, do you really think of money, the IRS or just grass? Name-Driven Economy If naming corporations by colour is really that important, then perhaps a lot of corporations should simply be called Red, red in embarrassment, blushing or simply for bleeding too much red ink, or pink, if cleared by the SEC, and rosey, if on the rebound. Logos and big colour schemes are things of the past, but they are still used more and more for packaging designs. In today’s e-commerce age, where everyone is forced to type and to remember names with perfectly correct spellings, companies with big branding campaigns only hurt themselves with their old fashioned, painted, colourful advice. They must all reconverge and regroup and re-align their thinking to cope with today’s name driven economy. For now, it is best to leave the pretty colours of the rainbow in the sky.
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