Euro 2008: Turning a colour into a brand
Orange is a distinctive colour that has attracted the attention of marketing men at many companies. In Britain the RAC car breakdown service repainted its blue vans orange and the British School of Motoring has adopted its bright tones. EasyJet has tried to lay claim to it as a colour to apply across all its brands – and a mobile phone company uses the name as well as the hue.
It is in your face, but it works as a marketing technique. Yet, as viewers of the European football tournament have been reminded, the colour has been hijacked as a country branding as well as a corporate branding. The Dutch team is decked in orange from neck to toe and its supporters wear the same colour – not just a scarf or replica shirt, but a whole uniform of orange so that the fans become a phalanx in the stands.
That could be a good example of a branded footballs team, albeit a national side rather than a corporate club. But it is more than that: orange no longer means simply the Dutch soccer team; it signifies the Netherlands as a nation.
It is a highly successful strategy but one created by the consumer – the fans. Indeed, a marketing man would have had reservations. He would have remembered the politics of the Orange Revolution of 2004 when the Ukraine government was replaced; he would have had doubts about the House of Orange’s historic religious stance and the Ulster Orangemen it spawned; he would have worried about the other companies claiming a right to the colour.
Yet orange is the new symbol of all things Dutch. The country’s leading bank, ING, uses the colour as its marketing identity. Dutch brewer Bavaria has latched onto the strength of colour by distributing orange shorts to football fans to link its own product to the national brand.
Ireland may be associated with green and the colours of Italy’s red, green and white flag are used to identify all things Italian, especially restaurants. But Holland has ignored the red, white and blue of its flag – colours it shares with many other nations, including France, the UK and United States. The Dutch have created a strong brand and a strong colour-association that any marketeer would be proud off.
How long before the Dutch change their national flag to the colour that is now their own?
June 19th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Back in history when the Dutch choose their current flag, also the orange one used to be a contender.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I looked it up for those interested.
Originally the flag used to be Orange, Whit, Blue (starting in about 1587). During the France invasion around 1794 the flag is changed to Red, White and Blue and it has stayed that way since then.
I guess we’ll just stick to oranje for our soccer matches