Tuesday 15 November, 2011. The Green Piece Column.
You might be forgiven for thinking that this week’s column is all about Volkswagen, but it is not just this German brand which is asking you to ‘Think Blue’.
Over the past couple of years, all manner of car makers have been subtly switching their marketing and advertising messages away from an association with the colour green to the colour blue; especially when marketing low emission and more sustainable products and services.
It is not just in the car industry where this subtle switch from green to blue can be seen when promoting ‘green’ goods, but as a car-related website, we’re going to focus on how-and just why-we’ve seen this switch from grass green to sky blue.
What colours tell us
If you look into the basic psychology of colours, blue is associated with calm, clean, purity, steadfastness and even loyalty (that is why many uniforms are blue). Meanwhile green has always had an association with nature, growth, nurturing, envy and luck.
Of course these associations with colours vary from region to region, culture to culture. And this is at least one of the reasons for the switch, the big car makers cater for a wide range of markets and as much as possible they try to keep a consist message in whatever market they operate. With China and India growing markets it is worth considering how these regions interpret green marketing messages. While in the west, we might consider action on climate change and reducing the impact of industry on the environment very important, in growing economies, the consumer focus can be quite different; with people more focused on improving their standard of living. Overtly green messages might seem ignorant of consumer needs and even a turn-off.
But just which brands is it that use blue to market their green goods? Well, Volkswagen’s BlueMotion badge is in good company, Nissan’s Pure Drive logo (now no longer in use) is blue, its zero emission ‘e’ logo is blue and the first models of its electric Leaf were revealed in blue. This brings us round to another cause of the rise of blue; blue is associated with energy and electricity and is therefore a fitting colour for an electric car. We see this colour use in Nissan’s Alliance partner Renault too, which, with the eminent launch of its first Z.E electric models, is already heavily using a similar baby blueish colour in its promotions for these electric models.
Of course there are practical reasons why the colour blue is preferential to green. Firstly for badges and graphics featured on cars, whether they indict low emission credentials or not, are certainly easier to see and read in blue than green. We are all use to reading blue ink writing and it is a colour which draws our eye accordingly.
We see this in Citroen’s Airdream badge, Ford’s EcoNetic badge and BMW’s EfficientDynamics logo which are all often depicted as blue. Some, of course have taken this association with blue a step further, with both Volkswagen and Peugeot using the word blue, as well as the colour, in marketing low emission products and strategies. Peugeot launched ‘Blue Lion’ in 2008 as way to identify its greenest models while Volkswagen’s BlueMotion sub-brand has indicated the brand’s low CO2 models since 2005.
A second reason for blue’s popularity in marketing cars is that green has hardly ever been a popular colour for a car, plus there have been plenty of rather sketchy studies, mainly completed for PR purposes, that have suggested that green cars are more likely to be involved in accidents due to their ability to blend in better with the natural flauna. Personally I find this hard to substantiate. With grey roads, buildings and in this country, usually the skies too, I find grey and silver cars harder to pick out, especially in foggy or misty conditions. It’s hard enough to see a silver car mainly because it will invariably flanked by a myriad of other silver cars in most circumstances..but I am getting side-tracked (if you are interested in knowing more about car colour and accident risk, the British Medical Journal published the results of a more substantial study back in 2003. See BMJ.) Ultimately we know that colours such as silver, black, white, blue, grey or red are usually the best-selling car colours over the years.
Blue is also a colour that tends to appeal to both sexes, in many countries, that is really important; according to research from the US, women are involved in 85 per cent of all car buying decisions.
Beyond greenwash
Taking a more cynical view, one could argue that the switch to blue from green is to subtly switch the consumer’s focus away from proving green credentials (afterall let’s face it, no car is really green, it takes a lot of energy and resources to produce any model) onto something else; efficiency.
We’ve talked before in The Green Piece about how the marketing of green goods 
(see story) changed with tightening advertising regulations introduced recently and how wary consumers are of overtly green marketing messages. This slightly poisoned consumer attitude towards environmental messages, caused by the occasional embarrassing green advertising gaff (like we saw with Renault and BMW, also discussed in our previous Green Piece) is further sullied by marketing experts suggesting that the wrong shade of green can look either dated (such as a Forest or Royal green) or toxic (in the case of a more yellow green).
According to marketing experts at Landor (see their brilliant article on why green became blue) blue represents global unity and is perfect for communicating sustainability issues, as climate change is something that requires global action. As the big car makers are global companies, the old marketing adage of ‘think local, act global’ means that blue communicates both the way they operate and their drive for better efficiency, in the face of a world striving to make the most of scarce resources. If blue represents pure, clean and unified actions, then I think it is safe for us to expect to say goodbye to green and hello blue.
Oh dear, we might have to rename the column!
Faye Sunderland.
