It’s been more than 1,500 years since Saint Patrick was laid to rest and could no longer use the shamrock to explain to Christians the idea of the Holy Trinity. Thanks to St. Patrick's Day every March 17th, his legacy inspires millions the world over to consume massive amounts of alcohol and shout “Top of the morning to ya!” to anyone who passes. With such a jovial reputation, you can bet that brands, alcoholic or not, take advantage of the built-in marketing ploy—and not just those participating in Pantone's color of the year for 2013.Continue reading...

Next year, Kermit the Frog may be singing, "It IS easy being green." He'll be delighted to know that Pantone has selected Emerald Green as the Color of the Year for 2013, and will feel right at home on its Pinterest board devoted to the exact shade of green: 17-5641.

For over a decade, Pantone, a company long associated with setting color standards in printing, has been selecting a "Color of the Year." According to the company, "Pantone quite literally combs the world looking for color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections, hot new artists, popular travel destinations and other socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from technology, availability of new textures and effects that impact color, and even upcoming sports events that capture worldwide attention."

So why is 2013 a Green kind of year? "Green is the most abundant hue in nature — the human eye sees more green than any other in the spectrum," said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. "Symbolically, Emerald brings a sense of clarity, renewal and rejuvenation, which is so important in today's complex world. This powerful and universally appealing tone translates easily to both fashion and home interiors."Continue reading...

No wonder Pantone has selected emerald green for its color of the year. It's Heineken's 140th anniversary, and the Dutch beer giant is unscrewing all the caps to celebrate.

Today in Amsterdam, the Dutch brand is debuting a video wall projection made from 5,000 beer bottles on the side of its headquarters building. Not in Amsterdam? Worry not — fans can check it out from 4pm ET to 10pm ET, every day from Dec. 7th through January 2nd, on Heineken's Facebook page and post on the brand's virtual wall.

And that's not all it's doing on Facebook.Continue reading...

When the color purple comes up in conversation, many automatically think of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel that told the story of 1930s African American women in rural Georgia or the excellent film version that showcased just how underrated as actresses Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg could be. Others think of Donny Osmond’s socks. Parents of preschoolers may associate it with that unwieldy dinosaur Barney.

But to a group of folks in Birmingham, England (and another in Northfield, Illinois), purple is the color of money. And they’ll do everything they have to to hang onto their own particular shade of the color. For years, Cadbury, the candy maker based in Birmingham and owned by Kraft Mondelez, has been doing battle with Nestle over a particular shade of purple that it received trademark rights to back in 2008.

The fight seemed to reach an endpoint late last year when the registrar at the UK Intellectual Property Office decided that Cadbury was within its rights to ask for Pantone 2865c to be exclusively theirs for chocolate products and drinks. After all, Cadbury had been using that particular shade since 1914 in honor of Queen Victoria.Continue reading...

Sephora, the high-end beauty retailer owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, operates more than 1,600 stores worldwide where customers can try and apply make-up before they buy. Under digital head Julie Bornstein, Sephora is in the midst of its own “social and mobile makeover,” bridging the worlds of offline and online — stylishly, of course.

Case in point: today Sephora announced a partnership with Pantone, the global color authority, for a digital app. Dubbed SEPHORA + PANTONE COLOR IQ, it's described as "the most advanced foundation matching solution available in North American beauty retail. Using Pantone’s color capture and measuring technology, SEPHORA + PANTONE COLOR IQ is the first and only beauty system to scan the surface of the skin, assign an official PANTONE® SkinTone™ number, and match a scientifically precise foundation shade from Sephora’s 1,000 foundations, brands and formulas." The service launches today at Sephora's Times Square flagship in New York, and on August 2nd in San Francisco.

Social business, as Brian Solis calls it, is de rigueur for brands today, iterating from social to digital and experiential. That's why Sephora is taking its digital operations to the next level in a redesigned website with amped up search, an iOS mobile app and a new mobile website, Sephora is installing iPads in more than 100 of its stores in an integration with Pinterest replete with “Pin It” buttons for all its product pages.Continue reading...

Our most-read blog posts of the week includes Pantone's Tangerine Tango to Twitter's new design and more:

#1 Pantone's Hot Color for 2012: Tangerine Tango

#2 Meet the New, New Twitter - Now With Brand Pages!

#3 Nivea Owns New Year's Eve, in Times Square and 'New Year's Eve'

#4 Heineken Goes Aspirational and Really ‘Likes’ Facebook

#5 VW May Have Last Laugh Over Global-Domination Skeptics

#6 Starbucks Reuses Shipping Containers in Seattle Store Test

#7 Al Qaeda Looking to Rebrand

#8 Minnesota's Crapola Proud to Be Number Two Brand

#9 Moving the Mountain: Paramount Redesigns Logo for 100th Birthday

#10 Amazon Launching Promo to Lure Customers From Retail

It's a funny thing about color. It can lift a mood as much as depress it. Color is so much a part of brand marketing that many consumers may not even think about the impact one color or another has on a purchase decision.

Pantone knows just how important color is in marketing; in fact, the company has built a business around it. Each year, Pantone, which describes itself as "the global authority on color," selects a color of the year — before the year begins — to rally the world's designers around it. In fact, the color is selected based on a poll conducted with designers. Last year's color was the "vibrant, energetic" shade of pink called Honeysuckle; some referred to it as "Mad Men pink."

For 2012, Pantone's pick moves the dail a few clicks hotter, from a warm pink to pure tangerine dream, with the selection of "Tangerine Tango," a citrus-red hue that leans orange than red — although it's certainly red hot, popping up all over the Spring 2012 runway collections during the September Fashion Week shows.Continue reading...

British candy maker Cadbury has been wrapping up its chocolates in a particular purple wrapper for more than 100 years. It was originally meant as a way of honoring Queen Victoria. The company felt so attached to that shade of the color that it registered it as a trademark back in 2008.

When it was granted, one of its main competitors, Nestlé, decided to put up a fight, which has gone on now for three years before ending when the registrar at the UK Intellectual Property Office decided that the Kraft-owned Cadbury was within its rights to ask for Pantone 2865c to be exclusively theirs for chocolate products and drinks.

If the trademark had been lifted, the Birmingham News reports that it would have “opened the floodgates for rivals, including supermarkets, to use the color on their own-brand chocolate bars.” Sweetening the sting of the ruling, Time.com notes that Nestle (and anyone else) can still use Pantone 2865c on any other products that they’d like.Continue reading...