business branding colours… what are you saying when you wear pink

Companies who have a staff uniform are looking to gain maximum brand recognition and brand awareness, and it helps the staff be easily identifiable. Those companies who wear pink uniforms are looking to instil the feeling of being helpful in a caring, nurturing way. This not only instils these positive characteristics in their staff but to project this to their customers too.

applying brand colour to uniforms
Customers come into The Hello Kitty Cafe for a girlie, cute, fun experience. Heavily decorated using their primary brand colour in the interiors, they carry this through to the staff uniforms, as they are the face of the brand.  One of the negative effects of pink is emasculation. It would be interesting to see how the male staff feels wearing pink and being surrounded by pink all day.

colour association
Breast Cancer charities all use pink (of varying tones) as their primary brand colour due to its psychology characteristics. Azul Airlines and Embraer recently joined the Brazilian Federation of Institutions Philanthropic Support for Breast Health in the fight against breast cancer.   They chose to paint an Embraer 195 jet pink. The plane will be operated by an all female crew wearing pink uniforms. This is a great example of colour association – how pink is being used to support the Breast Health campaign. This campaign will be run over the next three years.

Branding Uniforms - Azul Airlines have rebranded one of their planes and the all female crew wearing pink uniforms all in support for Breast Health | Image: Amimegusta.blogspot

using pink to stand out
Here is another interesting use of pink. A Tennessee gaol decided to give their inmates who were being transported pink t-shirts. Previously they had worn orange t-shirts. Not a good colour given the local football team’s colour was orange, it was very easy for escaping prisoners to blend in with the fans, who also wore orange.

Wearing the pink t-shirts not only made the prisoners stand out, it is also playing a psychological role which they may not be aware of. That is pink has a calming influence.  But it needs to be a warm pink otherwise they will find the inmates, over time becoming aggravated and possibly aggressive.

Branding Colours - Tennessee gaol prisoners wearing pink during transportation for easy identification and having a calming influence | faniq.com

Many tones of pink
There are many tones of pink from light baby pink through to cold magenta and the many tones in between such as dusty pink, pinky salmon and coral, fuchsia, pastel pink, bubble gum pink, cotton candy just to name a few.

Like any colour, it’s important to wear the right tone of pink, the right proportion and know the effects it has in combination with the other colours you are wearing. Knowing the effect this has on you and how others may respond to you, you’ll know which situations to wear it, even for those who don’t wear a uniform.

Do you wear a pink uniform? How does it make you feel?

If you enjoyed reading this post you may also be interested in Colour Psychology – the meaning of pink and other Personal Branding posts.

Images via: thenatstory.com, amimegusta.blogspot.co.uk and faniq.com.

Serophene