Your brand should be recognized by color alone

The most famous orange in fashion started out as a leftover.

Today, that one shade does more work for the brand than its logo.

In 1942, Hermès couldn't get its usual boxes because of wartime shortages.

The only option their supplier had? Orange.
A color nobody else wanted.

So Hermès took it.

And then they just... never let it go.

80+ years later, that orange comes in 188 different box sizes,
and Hermès has registered trademarks for the shade around the world.

You'd know that box from across the room, way before you spot the logo.

And they're not the only brand pulling this off.

Le Creuset picked its orange on purpose back in 1925.
They called it Flame, inspired by the glow of molten cast iron.
100 years and a LOT of new colors later, Flame is still their signature.

Then there's Aperol, orange since 1919.
The color comes straight from the botanicals in the bottle.

And when they redesigned that bottle this year, they made the front label smaller so the orange could do more of the talking.

Wild, right?

Hermès got its orange by accident.
Le Creuset chose its orange on purpose.

And both ended up owning it anyway.

Which tells you how they picked the shade barely mattered.

What mattered was what they did after, which was to use it everywhere for decades without getting bored of it.

That's the part a lot of brands struggle with.

A new CMO joins, or the team wants a refresh, and suddenly the brand color has shifted 3 shades to the left.

Every one of those shifts chips away at the recognition you've spent years building.

So if you're testing creative, go wild with hooks and formats.

But keep your shade exactly where it is.

Because every ad and every box in that same color teaches people to spot you a mile away.

So, could someone recognize your brand by color alone?

♻️ Repost if your brand color has changed more than once in the last 5 years.
And follow me, Jacob Rokeach, for more on brand and creative systems that scale.