Color your Communication
Have you every thought about the importance of color for communication? And even more: for Storytelling? If not you definitely should have a look into Lewis Bond´s video "Color in Storytelling" - and you will see. Bond presents a wonderful collage of movies and films which all work so powerful with color. And he explains in a brilliant way why you should care about the hue, saturation and value of each color in your next story.
I am not talking about Hollywood. I am talking about Corporate Communication, Corporate Storytelling and Corporate Film. PR-Experts and marketing manager definitely have to learn more about the elements of a good story - visual story. And color is one of the areas to improve here. Here some examples:
Color helps the audience to immerge into your story
Ok, for a color brand like Dulux it seems easy to tell stories with the power of colors. But is it really that easy? With the story "Colourless Future" Dulux definitely presents its brand as a visionary visual storyteller with the courage to compete against Hollywood. The Science Fiction story fascinates its audience with a the cruel vision of a world where White is the dominating color and all other colors are banned or have to go "underground". Have a look how the future of color may look like - a great story by Dulux: "Colorless Future."
Color evokes emotions
To promote its new product Japanese cosmetic brand Lux hacked Google Maps and allowed its consumers with an App to paint any street or location on Google Maps in Pink - colored with a beautiful cherry blossoms bloom. Which color is better than pink to evoke the emotion of calmness and pleasure - like Lux perfumes.
Color supports our message
It´s not by coincidence that the main color of the award winning campaign "Tree concert Berlin" is green. Berlin is a green city. But everyday it loses 2000 trees which are affected by the polution of the city. To safe these trees the NGO "Friends of the Earth Germany" with the help of BBDO and Ketchum Pleon came up with the donation program "Tree Concert". Have a look into the case study of this program and see how the color supports the big idea and the key message of the whole campaign.
Color is a beast
It´s save to say that color is a very complex beast." - this are the words of graphic artist Mark D. West in his book "Stories that Move Mountains" who explains in detail how meaningful color in different cultures can be and how cultural sensitive Visual Storytellers have to be by using a specific color. But it´s not only the cultural contect - Eastern or Western - which makes it complicated. It´s the usage, meaning and association of the color itself - in any culture.
Just take Red
The color Red stands for blood, danger and anger (see also the color of the character "Anger" in Pixars latest movie "Inside Out"). But it also stands for fire, warmth, passion and love. Visual Storytelling and the smart usage of color is more than just a checklist of associations and a fixed code of meanings. Every story needs its unique context and its own color code. So most important of all is that we - in marketing and PR - start to dive into the tool box of Visual Storytelling, become more sensible about each of its tools and learn how to use them. So: What´s the color of your next story?
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