Design and colour are essential to developing and nurturing the connection, which ultimately leads to brand loyalty and a long lasting affair between consumer and company. “Colour is a core brand asset for any business whether it is applied through identity and communication, office and retail environments, product ranges or collections,” explains Latika Khosla founder of India’s colour and trend consultants Freedom Tree Design. According to data from CMG, colour can be anything up to 85% of the reason people buy a product or item.
Khosla has been involved in many such cases where the careful application of colour has resulted in marked increases in revenue streams and market share. One such case is in Godrej Appliances, where Freedom Tree was bought in to consult upon a new range of colours for its refrigeration units, which would be specified and developed using NCS - Natural Color System©®. The result was a collection inspired by the delicious colours of food to create a colour selection as inviting as the food from which it was based. The fresh colours resulted in the company increasing its share of colour sales in the product lines to an incredible 70%.
Another example of colour being able to turn a swift profit with minimum outlay is General Motors, whose operation in India was not operating to its full potential. Using NCS and the trend insight from Khosla’s Freedom Tree, General Motors was able to tailor its interior and exterior colours for its Chevrolet Tavera.
NCS IN USE
In the past, green has not been a colour that sells well in India where automobiles are concerned. However, thanks to the holistic approach to the colour design it was easy to capitalise upon NCS’ unique abilities and create strong, sympathetic, colour combinations. The results of the colour redesign saw the Tavera strip sales from the ‘silver’ dominated colour market and the range now commands an impressive 50% of all colour sales.