How to choose a brand color taking competitors in the industry into account
Most articles on choosing a brand color stop at color psychology and the advice to "analyze competitors." In practice, this is insufficient: the analysis of competitors should end with a specific color wheel map and a system of exclusions, not a list of associations like "blue — reliability, green — growth." Let's look at how this is done at the level of methodology, not intuition.
Exclusion system: how to filter out colors before choosing
The first stage of working with color is not selection, but elimination. Before discussing shades, you need to strictly rule out three groups of colors:
- Colors of direct competitors — not only identical, but also close in tone within the same sector of the color wheel;
- Colors outside the category — for example, black in children's nutrition or deadly pink in legal services create a cognitive conflict with market expectations;
- Colors that contradict positioning — a premium brand with a glaring neon loses trust faster than from a bad logo.
After this filtering, typically 12 sectors remain on the circle, not 3-4 really accessible sectors. Work then proceeds specifically with these — through tone and saturation.
Mimicry or highlighting: when something works
There are two opposite approaches, and confusing them is a typical mistake. Mimicry is the conscious choice of a color for one's product category, so that the consumer instantly recognizes 'this is a bank' or 'this is an insurance company' without additional explanations. Highlighting is betting on the color becoming a differentiator in itself.
Tinkoff chose yellow in an industry dominated by blue and green — and this worked not because of the color per se, but because behind the yellow stood a fundamentally different product: a bank without branches, a digital service. If the yellow color had been applied to a classic retail model without any changes to the product, the effect would have been the opposite — the dissonance between the bold packaging and ordinary content would destroy trust faster than the dull blue.
The conclusion is simple: you can stand out by color only if there is a real difference in the product or model behind the color. If there are no differences — it's safer to work within the industry's mimicry, but through your own unique tone.
How the competitors' color map is built
The map is not a collage of logos, but the placement of competitors on a real color wheel, indicating the exact shade (preferably in Pantone or HEX).
- To collect 10-15 key players in the category, including not only direct competitors but also leaders in adjacent segments;
- To determine the exact main color of each using the website palette, packaging, signage — not 'by eye,' but with a pipette from real materials;
- To apply the colors to the circle by sectors, noting density — where clustering, where emptiness;
- Within dense sectors, to fix the spread by tone (lighter/darker) and hue (warmer/colder);
- To highlight empty niches — sectors without representatives or areas with low density within a occupied sector.
It is at this step that solutions are often found: the color is formally 'taken,' but the specific tone within the sector is free.
Case: how VSHM differentiated itself from RANHIGS with red
During the rebranding of the Higher School of Management, the team created such a map for the business education market and discovered that most universities clustered in the blue sector — the classic 'academic' color that has long ceased to distinguish anything. Going into an entirely new color was risky: the audience expects recognizable signals of seriousness from a university.
They found the solution not in changing the color, but in its detailing. They chose red — rare for the sector, but not a random shade: a lighter and cooler tone than that of RANEHIGS, which also used red. The difference in tone and color temperature was sufficient to visually avoid confusing the brands on the same shelf, while still maintaining the status of red as a color.
The same logic applies to the paint brand Komandor: a logical choice for 'the color of the sea' would be blue, but blue was already on the shelf with analogs for everyone. They chose turquoise — a shade that no competitor had, while still remaining part of the same semantic zone of 'freshness, water'.
| Parameter | Mimicry | Salience |
|---|---|---|
| When to apply | The product is standard, quick recognition of the category is important | There is a real difference in the product or model |
| Risk | To blend in with the background, to lose recognizability | Dissonance if there is no content behind the color |
| Working with color | The same sector, with one's own tone and shade | A free or contrasting sector of the color wheel |
| Example | VSHM (red, but a different tone) | Tinkoff (yellow in a blue industry) |
A saturated market: narrow the niche or change the shade
In the mobile operator market, all 12 basic colors are long allocated among major players. In such a situation, a newcomer has two options. The first is to narrow the niche to a segment where the competitor with this color does not operate: for example, to occupy a color in the MVNO category for a narrow audience where a large player is weakly present. The second is to stay in a broad category, but take a free tone within a occupied sector: not 'blue', but a specific cold blue with increased saturation, which no existing brand has.
Both paths are viable, but require different degrees of boldness in positioning. Narrowing the niche is safer for the promotion budget, working with a shade is riskier, but scales better when entering the broader market later.
How to objectively check the chosen color
Subjective 'like/dislike' of the client is the worst criterion for selection. There are more reliable metrics:
- Consumer evaluation of the logo according to 7 criteria: attractiveness, business fit, legibility, color adaptability on different backgrounds, memorability, originality, and overall perception;
- The 60/30/10 proportion rule — 60% primary color, 30% secondary, 10% accent — checks whether the palette is not overloaded;
- Testing on different media: print, screen, old monitors — color, ideal in the layout, often distorts during printing or on cheap screens;
- Nielsen data confirms: correct use of color in the interface directly increases conversion and improves brand perception, so the final choice must be tested not only on the logo, but also in real digital interfaces.
This is an error — to determine the final color based on a printout from one printer or one designer's screen. A color that passes all three checks — visual, proportional, and technical on various media — can be considered a justified decision, not a lucky guess.
Most articles on choosing a brand color stop at color psychology and the advice to "analyze competitors." In practice, this is insufficient: the analysis of competitors should end with a specific color wheel map and a system of exclusions, not a list of associations like "blue — reliability, green — growth." Let's look at how this is done at the level of methodology, not intuition.
Exclusion system: how to filter out colors before choosing
The first stage of working with color is not selection, but elimination. Before discussing shades, you need to strictly rule out three groups of colors:
- Colors of direct competitors — not only identical, but also close in tone within the same sector of the color wheel;
- Colors outside the category — for example, black in children's nutrition or deadly pink in legal services create a cognitive conflict with market expectations;
- Colors that contradict positioning — a premium brand with a glaring neon loses trust faster than from a bad logo.
After this filtering, typically 12 sectors remain on the circle, not 3-4 really accessible sectors. Work then proceeds specifically with these — through tone and saturation.
Mimicry or highlighting: when something works
There are two opposite approaches, and confusing them is a typical mistake. Mimicry is the conscious choice of a color for one's product category, so that the consumer instantly recognizes 'this is a bank' or 'this is an insurance company' without additional explanations. Highlighting is betting on the color becoming a differentiator in itself.
Tinkoff chose yellow in an industry dominated by blue and green — and this worked not because of the color per se, but because behind the yellow stood a fundamentally different product: a bank without branches, a digital service. If the yellow color had been applied to a classic retail model without any changes to the product, the effect would have been the opposite — the dissonance between the bold packaging and ordinary content would destroy trust faster than the dull blue.
The conclusion is simple: you can stand out by color only if there is a real difference in the product or model behind the color. If there are no differences — it's safer to work within the industry's mimicry, but through your own unique tone.
How the competitors' color map is built
The map is not a collage of logos, but the placement of competitors on a real color wheel, indicating the exact shade (preferably in Pantone or HEX).
- To collect 10-15 key players in the category, including not only direct competitors but also leaders in adjacent segments;
- To determine the exact main color of each using the website palette, packaging, signage — not 'by eye,' but with a pipette from real materials;
- To apply the colors to the circle by sectors, noting density — where clustering, where emptiness;
- Within dense sectors, to fix the spread by tone (lighter/darker) and hue (warmer/colder);
- To highlight empty niches — sectors without representatives or areas with low density within a occupied sector.
It is at this step that solutions are often found: the color is formally 'taken,' but the specific tone within the sector is free.
Case: how VSHM differentiated itself from RANHIGS with red
During the rebranding of the Higher School of Management, the team created such a map for the business education market and discovered that most universities clustered in the blue sector — the classic 'academic' color that has long ceased to distinguish anything. Going into an entirely new color was risky: the audience expects recognizable signals of seriousness from a university.
They found the solution not in changing the color, but in its detailing. They chose red — rare for the sector, but not a random shade: a lighter and cooler tone than that of RANEHIGS, which also used red. The difference in tone and color temperature was sufficient to visually avoid confusing the brands on the same shelf, while still maintaining the status of red as a color.
The same logic applies to the paint brand Komandor: a logical choice for 'the color of the sea' would be blue, but blue was already on the shelf with analogs for everyone. They chose turquoise — a shade that no competitor had, while still remaining part of the same semantic zone of 'freshness, water'.
| Parameter | Mimicry | Salience |
|---|---|---|
| When to apply | The product is standard, quick recognition of the category is important | There is a real difference in the product or model |
| Risk | To blend in with the background, to lose recognizability | Dissonance if there is no content behind the color |
| Working with color | The same sector, with one's own tone and shade | A free or contrasting sector of the color wheel |
| Example | VSHM (red, but a different tone) | Tinkoff (yellow in a blue industry) |
A saturated market: narrow the niche or change the shade
In the mobile operator market, all 12 basic colors are long allocated among major players. In such a situation, a newcomer has two options. The first is to narrow the niche to a segment where the competitor with this color does not operate: for example, to occupy a color in the MVNO category for a narrow audience where a large player is weakly present. The second is to stay in a broad category, but take a free tone within a occupied sector: not 'blue', but a specific cold blue with increased saturation, which no existing brand has.
Both paths are viable, but require different degrees of boldness in positioning. Narrowing the niche is safer for the promotion budget, working with a shade is riskier, but scales better when entering the broader market later.
How to objectively check the chosen color
Subjective 'like/dislike' of the client is the worst criterion for selection. There are more reliable metrics:
- Consumer evaluation of the logo according to 7 criteria: attractiveness, business fit, legibility, color adaptability on different backgrounds, memorability, originality, and overall perception;
- The 60/30/10 proportion rule — 60% primary color, 30% secondary, 10% accent — checks whether the palette is not overloaded;
- Testing on different media: print, screen, old monitors — color, ideal in the layout, often distorts during printing or on cheap screens;
- Nielsen data confirms: correct use of color in the interface directly increases conversion and improves brand perception, so the final choice must be tested not only on the logo, but also in real digital interfaces.
This is an error — to determine the final color based on a printout from one printer or one designer's screen. A color that passes all three checks — visual, proportional, and technical on various media — can be considered a justified decision, not a lucky guess.
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