The emotional effect created by color plays an important role in your credit union’s marketing messages and materials. Did you know that certain colors have different meanings and can trigger different emotions? Think about it. How often do you see “Alert!” messages in red? or “Save Money Now!” in green?
In this post, I have chosen 8 colors and will list a few (of the many!) meanings and emotions they evoke, as well as a few thoughts on how I like to use each color to grab the viewer’s attention.
RED catches our eye as it portrays attention and intensity. Say your credit union is experiencing a power outage or emergency closing due to weather. Posting an emergency alert to your social media pages or website in red is a sure-fire way to get the attention of the user.
To do this, many of our clients use the Announcement tool available in our Web Tool Suite. It easily allows them to post a message to their website and adjust the color to match the meaning of the message.
ORANGE promotes encouragement, happiness, energy, and excitement. I like to use this uplifting color when I am designing a sporty/outdoorsy concept that needs a fun and fresh vibe.
YELLOW shines with cheer and happiness. Like orange, it is such a bright and airy color that delivers an optimistic perception. Think of all of those happy face emojis! 😀
GREEN is a color of nature that depicts growth, renewal, health, as well as money and prosperity. Think about your next CD or IRA promotion. Those products are designed with your account holder’s financial growth in mind. What better color to promote this than green! It flawlessly represents the intended message of “growing your money”.
BLUE is versatile as it represents emotions ranging from traditional to calm to depressed. With winter setting in here in Illinois, we are starting to see a lot of blues in the ice and snow. We know what it is like to look out a window and think “it just looks so cold outside.” Those blues lend us to feel cold and the gloomy skies can be depressing, but you can use the blues to your advantage with creative marketing and design!
Do you have a loan promotion coming up? Visualize this: “Cure The Winter Blues” and use imagery of a 747 flying in blue skies over blue ocean water! If this imagery paired with your promotional rate doesn’t entice your account holders to apply for your loan, I don’t know what will!
PURPLE portrays royalty, luxury, spiritualism, and magic. It adds a touch of elegance to marketing materials that need to portray elegance, such as a formal annual meeting. It can also be used in a fun, whimsical approach when designing for a Kid’s Club.
BLACK often represents authority and sophistication. Similar to purple, it is a prime option when designing for a formal event. The two compliment each other well, by the way.
It also has a feeling of mystery tied to it. Have you ever received an email marketing message from your favorite big-box or department store and read something like this: “Reveal Your Savings Code!”? I have and they are typically black buttons that are designed to look like a scratch-off ticket. I always click them (when I know they are legit emails) because that mystery always lingers in my brain until I take action. It is that mysterious color that leaves your mind open to everything it could represent. This one click is an open door to looking around the website and seeing what they have to offer. And that leads to sales!
WHITE identifies as modern, clean, and light. When interviewing clients for their updated website design, we often hear that the goal of the new site is to be clean and easy to navigate. The “less is more” concept is effective when designing with a minimalist and modern approach in mind. White space gives the viewer an opportunity for the eye to rest while scrolling through a page that has a lot of content to read.
These are just a few of the many emotions and meanings that these colors represent. I hope you found this blog post to be a fun read and I’m glad you read this far. Orange you glad you did, too? 😆
