Seeing (and Printing) Green, Take Two

Uh oh. I realized this morning that this post didn’t post, but was instead sitting around taking up space in my drafts folder. My fault? Probably. So many buttons, so little time. To everyone that stopped by on Friday to catch up on the ins and outs of the color green…please let me live!

And so, without further ado, I introduce to you the color green and what it can do for your winter marketing campaign.

Green-The Real Color of Rebirth

Green is the first color we see in the spring, when the leaves are coming back to the trees and the grass is starting to break through the snow. It’s bright. It’s fresh. It’s new. And let’s face it, after you’ve been staring at snow, mud and that weird gray/black color that slush turns when it’s been sitting around for a while, green’s pretty gosh-darned exciting!

That (in my somewhat-humble opinion) is EXACTLY what Starbucks was going for when it launched its new Siren logo. By taking out the darker circle and creating its new logo in an explosion of green it was able to open the door to its clientele seeing their coffees and other products in a new, fresh, exciting way. It’s as though she’s shedding the constraints of the past and stepping out into a bright, more vibrant future.

The human subconscious is a beautiful, exciting thing when you look at it from a marketing point of view.

Shades of Gray

All right, all right, so we’re talking about green rather than gray here, but since saying “shades of green” makes it sound like I’m about to give a lecture on the shades of green (which I don’t want to do and you don’t want to listen to) I figured we’d go for a more familiar fall back. Besides, we are talking about shades of gray here. The shades of gray standing between the use of green as a new, vibrant beginning and the slightly grisly green that makes you think of jealousy, vomit and a thousand other unpleasant things in between.

Dark greens and yellow greens are associated with more negative connotations and should be given a fairly wide berth when you’re choosing the colors for your marketing campaign. Leaf greens, olive greens and yes, even on occasion bright greens inspire warmer feelings in your viewers and should play a key role in your winter marketing campaign.