Coating Brand Fashion

Inspired by the article "Industrial Brand Fashion" (Martin Von Wolfersdorff, linkedin), I did a brief survey on the use of color in coating companies' logos. To my surprise, they are not all rainbow colors but almost exclusively blue (with occasional red highlights).

I am guessing that many of these household names in the coatings industry paid millions for these logos to be designed. Interesting how they all have ended-up more or less the same. The name of the company is presented in a similar typeface with an almost identical hue of blue. Blue, according to the advertising psychologists, is supposed to inspire clarity, conservatism, confidence, comfort and TRUST, whereas red represents passion, aggression, love and TRUST. Maybe coatings companies above all else want us to trust them? Do they have something to hide in their closets?)

Some of the most valuable brands on the planet (Google, IBM, GE, Intel, Samsung, Ford, Pepsico, Facebook, Linkedin) use a similar shade of blue in their logos. So coatings companies could well be smart by exclusively using this shade of blue. However it does work against uniqueness and maybe in the minds of the consumer, one paint brand is more-or-less the same as another. The logos depicted above are all from paint companies in the top 50 global producer list, and represent quite a significant proportion of global coatings production. According to Coatings World Magazine 2014, the worlds leading coatings companies were as follows:

1. AkzoNobel (The Netherlands) $13.300 billion 2. PPG (USA) $12.78 billion 3. Henkel (Germany) $11.174 billion 4. Sherwin-Williams (USA) $9.340 billion• 5. Axalta (USA) $4.300 billion 6. RPM (USA) $4.100 billion 6. Valspar (USA) $4.100 billion 8. BASF (Germany) $3.95 billion 9. Kansai (Japan $3.126 billion 10. Sika (Switzerland) $$3.118 billion 11. 3M (USA) $2.300 billion 12. Nippon (Japan) $2.290 billion 13. Asian Paints (India) $2.080 billion 14. H.B. Fuller (USA) $2.074 billion 15. Jotun (Norway) $1.965 billion 16. Masco (USA) $1.900 billion 17. Hempel (Denmark) $1.699 billion 18. Comex Group $1.400 billion 19. DAW (Germany) $1.300 billion* 20. Materis (France) $1.090 billion* - See more at: http://www.coatingsworld.com/heaps/view/965#sthash.au6TS17H.dpuf

In the top 20 there are a few that are not blue. Axalta is most commonly red, athough they seem to use blue too. Sika is predominantly orange, likewise Asian Paints. 3M is just red, as is Henkel. In the top 20, only DAW (Caparol) of Germany use rainbow colors in the form of an elephant. But as you can see in the image above, it's a blue, blue world when it comes to coatings logos. (unless it's red!)