Sharing your brand color guide publicly:
worst or best practice?

Brands are proud of their brand logo and their brand colors. They spend a lot of time and money to get that perfect logo. And a lot of time is spent on creating a brand guide. But then what? Do you share it publicly with the rest of the world? Or do you keep it close, only to those you think might need it? Let’s compare these options!

CONTENTS: One step ahead of counterfeiters! | Complete control is an illusion | If you don’t… | Why is this important? 

“There is no Pantone color for Coca-Cola red, but when you see it, you will recognize it”, that’s a famous quote from Coca-Cola. (here’s an archived version of that quote) It’s their second secret formula, that Coca-Cola red. But keeping that color a secret has a downside: over the years, I’ve seen very different variations of Coca-Cola red…  Check out this article.

One step ahead of counterfeiters!
The main reason brands, like Coca-Cola, want to keep their brand color specification secret is to be one step ahead of counterfeiters. The reasoning is that consumers will recognize the ‘right’ red immediately, and counterfeiters will not be able to find the color definition of that right red.

Wrong, twice. Identifying a brand color is as easy as controlling the reproduction in print: use a spectrophotometer. Even if the original you want to measure is something round, there are special spectrophotometers to measure curved objects.

And identifying that ‘right’ red? Check the results of this test, where people were shown six variations of red and were asked to identify the right Coca-Cola red. The most popular one was NOT the ‘right’ one…

Complete control is an illusion
And then there is the illusion of complete control. As a brand owner, you may interact with the designers and printers where you order products. But that’s only a portion of occasions where your brand logo and colors are used. How many times is it also used in printed advertising where you are not the person ordering the ad? From high-quality glossy magazines, over newspapers, to the leaflet from a local event that a local distributor of your brand sponsors?

While the advertising in national magazines and newspapers might be in control of advertising agencies you work with directly, a lot of print will be designed and ordered without your knowledge. And that’s where making your logo, your brand color guide public, becomes essential: if you don’t publish it, you can get all kinds of wrong reproductions of your logo, your brand color.

If you don’t…
What happens if you don’t publish your brand color guide? People will look online and end up with websites claiming to have the codes of your precious brand color. Did you ever check these? Well, I did. Here are a few famous brand colors: Coca-Cola red, IKEA yellow, and blue. These are the first results when I search for ‘Coca-Cola red RGB’ and ‘IKEA brand colors RGB’.

Coca-Cola red

IKEA Yellow

IKEA Blue

And when you look at the images in the search results, that looks like this for IKEA… Not really consistent, isn’t it?

What do you think? Would you, as a brand owner be happy with this?

Why is this important?
If your brand color reproduction is essential to you, having different color codes online is something you definitely want to avoid. And that’s why you need to publish your brand color guide so that the correct color codes will be the first hit when someone looks for them. Your brand color guide will be the place to go when someone is looking for your brand color definition.

To make your brand color guide rock-solid and foolproof, check out Project BBCG – A Better Brand Color Guide!