My tryst with colour

The country celebrates Holi this week, with glorious bursts of colour. Millions of Indians will revel in this carnival of colours, painting our loved ones and friends with a hundred wonderful hues. We will spray them with coloured water, with abandon and with joy. In the streets, balloons filled with coloured water will be thrown at passing neighbours and strangers alike. Thandai , the delicious bright yellow drink made with milk, almonds, saffron and fennel seeds will be happily consumed, often mixed with the curiously intoxicating bhang . Humans and cars and roads will be splashed with colour, in equal measure.

I still fondly recall the first time I played Holi, on my college campus at BITS Pilani in Rajasthan, over 30 years ago. The campus went wild with colours. We played with colours in our hostels, we played on the streets, and we played at the Shiv Ganga, a picturesque, circular canal located within the campus. In large groups, we went visiting to the homes of our faculty, where we were received with colours, sweets, thandai and spontaneous warmth. By afternoon we were pleasantly colour-drenched and colour-exhausted. I had never seen so much colour at one place, and on one single day, ever before.

Thereafter, over the past three decades, the colours of Holi have constantly followed me, teased me, and have helped me, in my career as a marketer. The first product I helped market, for the Tata Group, was tea. I quickly realised that big brands of tea in India bore one of two colours – bright green, or bright red. When I asked consumers why, the answers I obtained were simple and clear. Green was associated with flavour and freshness, hence went well with brands of flavoury and fresh teas, such as Taj Mahal and Tata Tea. Red was associated with strength, hence was most suitable for brands of strong tea such as Red Label. So when the time came for my company to launch a brand of strong tea, appropriately called Agni (which means Fire), no wonder we chose bright red for the colour of the pack. It was a big success then, and India is still painted red with the colours of Agni tea, now called Tata Tea Agni.

Multi-hued learning However, I soon understood that the subject of colours is not always so simple or straightforward. One of our best-selling brands was Gemini Tea, which continues to be a strong market leader in Andhra Pradesh. The pack of Gemini Tea is neither green nor red – in fact, it is blue in colour. Now, I wondered as a young marketing greenhorn, what does blue convey to consumers? After asking several people, I came to the conclusion that blue conveyed neither freshness nor strength, it was just a very distinctive colour that helped consumers in small towns immediately recognise the Gemini tea brand. The colour penny dropped in my mind that day – colours can help reinforce brand propositions, but, equally, colours can also create distinctiveness for brands.

No wonder we spontaneously think of Coca-Cola when we see a red bottle. Cadbury chocolate immediately comes to mind when we see a purple bar. In fact, the Cadbury purple is so sharply defined, it has to be the specific shade called Pantone 2685C. Similarly, Barbie is pink, Starbucks is green and Apple is white. Closer home, Tata is blue, Bank of Baroda is orange and Idea is yellow. These colour associations are so deeply embedded that these brands leap out at us loud and clear, even if we spot them for just a fleeting moment. As I understood how a single consistent colour could make a brand distinctive, something else happened, quite suddenly and forever. Into my life (and indeed into all ours) came Google, perhaps the most ubiquitous brand on our planet today. In a mono-coloured brand world, Google stood out by being proudly multi-coloured, even changing its hues from one day to the next. On reflection, maybe Google is the Holi of brands. Generally, it sports three primary colours and one secondary colour – blue, red, yellow and green. The secondary colour was included specifically to make the point that Google did not follow the rules. But on certain days, Google also shows a special colourless or dull grey logo, often to acknowledge and make a telling point about a major tragedy which has just occurred.

Taking a stand And then I realised that colours do make a powerful point in our lives, for so many diverse causes and brands. All seven colours of the rainbow have been proudly used for several years by the lesbian and gay community worldwide, making this movement a worthy predecessor to the rule-breaking Google. Green is used by a number of environmentalist brands and organisations. Closer home, saffron is the colour of most brands that have some link to Hindutva, while black flags are a universal symbol of protest. I must admit that I have not yet come across a cause that uses the purple colour, but I have no doubt that some organisation will soon adopt this wonderful colour as its own. I am secretly hoping that this will be a group that stands for the rights of chocolate eaters, which is a delicious cause that I will gladly join, because I am constantly inspired by dark chocolate, which is also a new-age colour in itself.

Finding inspiration To tell the truth, I have been inspired by colours all my working life. Some of my finest marketing ideas have blossomed as I have walked idly through the wonderful colours of Lal Bagh, the sprawling garden in my home town of Bengaluru, which takes its own name from the colour red ( lal in Hindi). So many times have I stopped below the bright orange Flame of the Forestthat stands at the edge of the lake there, to stare at the amazing colours in awe, to wonder and to think.

Orange stimulates me, and never have I left that spot without some sort of a nice new idea.

These days, I live in coastal Mumbai, and whenever I look out at the azure blue sea, I can feel the calm of the blue, and distant new thoughts and concepts gently drifting over me. No wonder the most creative marketing, design and advertising offices are generally so very colourful, with green, blue and yellow walls. Colours trigger imagination and ideas, always a wonderful thing for marketers.

John Ruskin once said: “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.” I hope marketers like you and me are counted amongst such minds, alongside musicians, poets and artists. And of course, we could be pure and thoughtful in this festive season by simply deciding to play an eco-friendly Holi, because organic and natural colours are safe, and are also the most beautiful. Holi Hai!

Harish Bhat is Member, Group Executive Council, Tata Sons. He is author of Tata Log:Eight modern stories from a timeless institution”. These are his personal views. He acknowledges valuable inputs from Jude Rodrigues, Tata Sons, in the writing of this article. bhatharish@hotmail.com

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