Impact of Logo… & Its Colours

A logo is a graphical element used by business houses for immediate recognition. It is the icon, which symbolically represents your company. It is the identifying emblem that people recognizes with, first and foremost.
Your corporate logo is the first brick in your image. Without a logo, you have no brand, and thus no consistent image to convey to your customers. Moreover, people generally tend to relate more with colours & graphics than with alphabets. So, be it a large business or a small one, having a corporate logo is a must. A logo is a corporate signature of a company.
A company’s logo speaks volume about the company & so, it is very necessary to examine it carefully. The important features of a log are its colour, & the image. These two together communicates the values, motive & the purpose of the company’s existence.
Colors speak all languages…. They connote different attribute to different culture. The cultural basis for colour symbolism can be very powerful, and if you don't understand what you're saying with your colours, you can make big mistakes. Let us evaluate some of the colours

RED
On funeral notices in Southeast Asia, it is a Buddhist custom to print the name of the deceased in red, instead of the black, to which we are accustomed. For this reason, individual names should never be written in red in Southeast Asia unless the person concerned is dead. It is highly offensive to print the name of a living person in red ink. Asians are superstitious, so it may even be interpreted as an omen -- a prediction that the person whose name is in red will soon die. Giving an Asian associate your business card with your own name printed in red could cause them to back off for no apparent reason.
Most Asians, otherwise consider Red & Gold -- as lucky colours. In China, for example, brides often wear red and annual bonuses to employees are given during Chinese New Year in red envelopes.
So while you should be careful to avoid using red for names on a visiting card, it is a good choice for your company logo or product packaging.

YELLOW
Yellow has diverse associations around the world. In some countries, including the U.S., it is traditionally associated with cowardice.
In Asia, however, it is reserved for persons of the highest rank. At the same time, in Malaysia, there is even a particular shade of yellow, which may be worn only by the king.
So, while it is good to use yellow to portray a courageous image in Asia, it is better avoided in the West.

GREEN
The color green is associated with the environment. So, if you are an environment friendly organization, you can use green in your logo. In Western countries it denotes spring, new birth, Saint Patrick's Day, Christmas (with red)…you can use green to introduce your products in the West.
However, be aware, it also being the colour of Islam is a poor choice of color in countries dealing with conflicts over Islam.
Colours make a great first impression, which is helpful, as the average reader decides within 2.5 seconds if your document will be read or binned. We can conclude that colors can determine the shopping habits of customers. Before designing an advertisement, advertisers should recognize their targeted customers & use the colours according to the ad campaign.

Origin of Advertisement

Advertisement! What is it? We are continually bombarded with it –choked with stuff, confusing our sense of balance and peace. To advertise is to publicize and draw attention. The peacock loves it. He advertises his wings in the hope of catching the best mate. The cuckoo does the same with its voice to woo its partner. Nature runs the best advertising agency. We are all at it from dawn to dusk.

Advertisements are also not without history!

 

It chronicles the movement from face-to-face selling messages to the stilted, repetitive, printed advertisements of early newspapers to the dynamism of mass communication by radio and television to the re-personalization of messages via cable, Internet, and direct mail.

 

Chronology of advertisement developments

 

Advertising began to take on its true colors with the coming of the Printing Age in the 15th and 16th centuries mainly in the form of handbills.

 

In the 17th century, it made its presence felt in the newspapers. The first newspaper advertisement was published in the Boston News-Letter. It was an announcement seeking a buyer for an Oyster Bay, Long Island, estate.

In 1729, Benjamin Franklin began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia, which included pages of "new advertisements."

In 1843, the first full-fledged advertising agency started operating in Philadelphia, by Volney Palmer.

From the 19th century advertising began to march hand in hand with economic growth. This is when mail-order advertising made its appearance. From 1920 radio stations began functioning and soon became advertising mediums. Television joined in from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

 

A new trend was seen from the 1960’s.

Advertising became an art. It became creative and called out to the best talents.

 

India & Advertisement

 

Indian Advertising started with the hawkers calling out their wares right from the days when cities and markets first began.

Concrete advertising history began with classified advertising.

The first print ad appeared in Hickey's Bengal Gazette, India’s first weekly newspaper, in the year, 1780. Englishman James Augustus Hickey, the pioneer of Indian newspaper realized that publishing newspaper was very costly process. He was loosing money faster than the speed at which newspapers came out of the printing press. To make ends meet, Hickey decided to take on advertisements or ads. Advertisers during those times were mostly from 'patent' medicine manufacturers. (The concept of chemist or druggist shops was not known then. Most medicines were grandma’s recipes and were thus sold (patented) under their own names.)

It took nearly 120 years for someone to discover that expertise was required in framing catchy copy to attract customers and a right magazine or journal to address the right audience. 

 To fill up this vacuum, the first Indian ad agency, B Dattaram & Co from Girgaum, Mumbai, was set up.  It didn't take long for others to notice that Dattaram's cash registers were ringing. By the 1920s, other agencies like Gujarat Advertising and Allied Advertising came up. 

The first foreign ad agency, in India was Alliance Advertising, set up during World War I. Later on, in 1929, J Walter Thomson (JWT) set up. It was hired to look after General Motors' Indian interests in the country. 

With the arrival of various multinational ad agencies, smaller agencies began to disappear or got merged with larger ones.

 

The social history preserved in advertisements is like an archaeological record. It is not a simple, faithful chronology of society but an assortment of bits and pieces on which the passage of social life is inscribed. By their very nature, advertisements are fleeting and ephemeral. Once they serve their intended purpose, they are typically discarded and quickly replaced. But some ads survive, preserved in old newspapers and magazines, on wire and tape recordings, and in kinescopes and videotapes. These preserved advertisements can be studied in the present for what they reveal about our collective past. From them, we learn not only about the techniques of past advertising but also about the society that produced them and the lives of the people who wrote, read, and heard their messages.