Confusion is Helpful? Who Knew?
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While product packaging often makes use of distinct colors, color names themselves are an important element - and something to include in your trademark filing considerations. But to do so, you’ve got to come up with something better than “gold”, “green” or even “berry”.
But think hard – because you won’t be alone. And a company like Crayola isn’t the only one developing outlandish and original names for their colors. True, Crayola progressively moved away from generic-sounding colors such as “Green Blue” and “Yellow” into shades named “Cerulean” and “Unmellow Yellow” and have even gone with an “environmental” flavor for their recent: “giving tree”, but they are not the only ones seeking special color names.
How many outfits are of a “lemon” rather than “yellow” hue or a “sunset” rather than “orange” color? And the cosmetics industry truly seems to be taken with unique color names. You’d be hard-pressed to find a regular name like “red” or “pink” in a makeup bag (OK you’d be hard-pressed to find me near a makeup bag, but I think that’s best for everyone.)
“There are only so many colors for makeup, only so many reds and pinks — a red is a red is a red — but some of the names make them stand out,” says Nina Sisselman, vice president of creative development for High Maintenance, the company with the beauty license for Playboy. “If you’re in Sephora, with hundreds of choices in front of you, the name, the package and the color makes a difference.”
Color names are getting sexier and sexier - and weirder and weirder. While you can imagine what a color like “”Boudoir rouge” looks like, it may take more brainpower to figure out how red something like “Gash“ is, are whether you’d really want that on your eyes…
But odd and, dare I say, even repulsive color names, achieve a marketing coup. A Wharton study found that:
“when consumers spend more time thinking about a product, they form more connections to it and end up liking it better. Trusting souls that they are, shoppers believe marketers are trying to tell them something important with a name, an assumption she traces to the way people fill in the gaps in confusing conversations.”
I recall a Seinfeld episode where Elaine shows Jerry her nails which are painted “Toxic Waste Green” and remarks, “revulsion has now become a valid form of attraction”. I worry…
