A Few Strong Words…

In this series, we have looked at how perception affects buying habits – particularly whether or not they buy what you are selling.

There are many, many ways that you can influence this choice, and paint yourself in the best light. In this post, we’ll look at specific things that help shape that perception, and how you can harness that power.

Colour

We all realize that colour has meaning. Some are obvious: red means passion, green means envy, blue means cool and soothing. Some are not so obvious: prisons use a certain shade of pink on their walls to help calm inmates. Some meanings change over time: ten years ago, if you said “green” then someone would say “envy” back but now they are more likely to say “environment”.

Here’s a short-list of colours and their associated meanings:

Red – passion, attention, excitement
Blue – trustworthy, professional, peaceful
Yellow – happy, intelligent, “visible” (as in “grabs attention”)
Orange – bold, cheerful, adventurous
Green – harmony, soothing, flexible
Purple – regal or stately, spiritual, eclectic
White – pure, fresh, clean
Black – refined, powerful, mysterious

Of course it is not just what colours you use, but how you use them. A totally black room for example would more likely convey foreboding and evil than refined. And interestingly, orange and red in restaurants seems to say “eat up and get out” – which is exactly what the fast-food restaurants want you to do.

If you are unsure of what colours would work well with your business, take a look at the competition. McDonald’s and Burger King use similar colours to each other – reds and oranges. Coffee shops tend to used dark rich browns and creamy colours. Banks and financial institutions seem to favour blues.

Finding out what colours your competition uses might put you on the right track. Then look up what the colours mean to find out why they might be using them. Brown for coffee is obvious, but why blue for banks?

Name

The expression “a rose, by any other name, would smell just as sweet” is not true. It is scientifically proven that your name can deeply influence how people perceive you. That’s why air fresheners have names like “Country Fresh” instead of “Country Barn”. It’s also why Shaggy changed his name from Orville Richard Burrell.

Then there are names that get lost in translation: the Chevy Nova that means “will not go” in Spanish, and the Toyota MR2, which sounded out in French becomes (phonetically – and roughly at that) “emm, err, duh” or “merde”, which equals that barn smell mentioned above…

Michael McDerment has a few suggestions on how to name your company. His approach is a little basic, but his reasoning is sound.

I think you can treat names like colours. If you are operating a bank, solid “blue” names like Morgan and Chase are good. If you are aiming your business at kids, then “orange” names like Chuck E. Cheese and Hannah Montana fit the bill.

No matter what your business, come up with a few names that you like and shop them around your friends and family to find out which will help people’s perception of you most.

Font

This is a small but important consideration. The font choice you use in your logo and banners will have a huge impact on your business.

I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here: Kelly Erickson already had a great take on this subject.

I will add this though: try to look at the fonts you use like colours again. The “blue” IBM logo. The “red” Chili’s logo (which actually is red, and uses an image rather than words – how fun is that?).

In my own case, I used a hand-writing script for my name, trying to convey “artistic” and “creative” with a straight font for the “Freelance Writer” sub-name, conveying professionalism and reliability (you can let me know if I missed the mark by leaving a comment below…!)

Style

Style is very difficult to tackle. It covers many different aspects of your business, from the way you use colour to your content, your customer service, your storefront, your website layout, and more.

My last name is not Gucci, so I am not going to go too far down this road. But I will say this: I did try to consciously put together a basic style for my own website using all of the points including the blue colours to represent professionalism and reliability, the fonts as mentioned above to convey both professionalism and creativity, and the simple layout to represent “easy to work with”. The image I chose of the piled rocks also represents all of these attributes (I believe) as well as give a calming image – to represent that I’m in control and can take the stress off my clients’ shoulders.

Once you get into things like Gucci and Ferrari where style is their business, you need to have a very sophisticated palette. But for the average business, the most important thing is consistency. Again, I’ll compare it to colours: match your style so that everything works together to give the perception you want to convey.

And get rid of colours that clash. Your jewellry shop can be bathed in regal purple, well-lit, and have the most smudge-free display cases. But put up a poster with a snowboarder on it, and you will negate everything.

The “Easy” Way to Do All This

These are just a few basic ways to help influence other people’s perception of you. There are countless more. But if you start by identifying your keywords (as discussed in the last entry in this series) and choose colours, fonts, names, and style to reflect these, you’ll at least be going in the right direction.

It’s important to have a strong sense of self, but often you can save yourself a lot of anxiety and trouble by getting someone else to create your visual identity. A graphic designer understands how colour, fonts, and other design elements work to convey your image. An experience designer can help your storefront business (and perhaps even online business) create a better customer experience using these techniques and more. Find one you trust and who seems to have the same style sensibilities that you want to reflect in your own business.

In the next installment in this series, I will do a case study on a company that does it (mostly) right: Apple.

Until then, chime in with your comments! Am I right? Am I wrong? Am I blue? Let me know…

~Graham

Tags: colour, Ferrari, fonts, Gucci, marketing, McDonald's, perception, style, what's in a name

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Freelance, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.