If No Standard Exists, Create One: How Pantone Quantified and Dominated Color

Robin: “In entrepreneurship, quantify your products and services wherever possible rather than offering only empty narratives. Follow quantitative industry standards where they exist. Where they do not, an even greater opportunity awaits. Let’s look at Pantone, which dominates the definition of color.” ----- A well-known “seven-second rule” says people need only seven seconds to decide whether a product interests them. During those brief but crucial seconds, color becomes an important factor in whether they like it. A Color Marketing Group survey found that 85% of consumers make purchasing decisions based on product color, and 90% have made impulse purchases because of color. For brands, using color is therefore crucial. One reason Starbucks chose green is that this calm, cool color has a soothing effect, encouraging passersby to stop for coffee and a rest. McDonald’s yellow is the most conspicuous color in daylight, making the Golden Arches immediately noticeable wherever they appear. Other examples include Coca-Cola red, Tiffany Blue, and Hermès orange. Because color can instantly arouse emotions and corresponding physiological and psychological responses, it is, in a sense, the first step in building brand recognition. Among companies in the color business, Pantone is the most influential. Since 2000, it has chosen a color each year to represent the spirit of the times. That color is widely used in industrial, interior, and graphic design and other fields in the following year, subtly influencing everyday consumption. For example, Pantone’s 2023 color is Viva Magenta. ---- From standardized swatches to trending colors, Pantone gives color authority. Standardize color and turn it into a business. Pantone specializes in developing and researching color, chiefly establishing color specifications. Its predecessor was a commercial printing business called M&J Levine. In the 1950s, its color mixer Lawrence Herbert noticed that people understood colors differently, making communication about color selection costly in design and production. A customer might want a particular blue, for example, but words alone could not precisely convey the shade in their mind. Herbert solved this by creating a universal color language everyone could understand. He made a swatch for each color and assigned a numerical code. A designer could tell a printer to use color 007; the printer could consult the swatch and mix the corresponding inks to achieve the intended color. This greatly reduced color-related trial and error and allowed printers to cut inventories and costs. In 1962, Herbert bought the company’s printing division and named it Pantone, meaning “all colors.” He thus became Pantone’s founder and introduced the proprietary Pantone Matching System, or PMS, in 1963. The system was both transformative and simple. It precisely calculated pigment proportions for a particular color, assigning each pigment a number. Pantone turned subjective color descriptions into rational symbols. It also compiled colors and numbers into books. Rather than supplying ink cartridges directly, Pantone sold a method that let printers reproduce its swatches faithfully and consistently. Herbert tamed color’s mysterious nature and turned it into a commodity, essentially quantifying what had previously seemed unquantifiable. Pantone developed matching schemes not only for pigments, plastics, and powder coatings, but also for screen technologies and textiles. Encoded and defined, color became a standardized product, and selling it became a substantial business. Pantone recommends that all swatch users buy the latest version annually because printed inks fade over time and lose accuracy. It also adds colors every year. Selling swatches and matching guides thus generates recurring cash. The New York Times reported that Pantone’s guidebooks bring the company more than US$100 million annually. Giving color definitions mystique and authority To preserve and strengthen its title as creator of a universal color language, Pantone began an ambitious, sustained marketing program in the 1980s. In 1986, it hired experts in color and psychology and established the Pantone Color Institute. Each year, they publish forecasts of fashionable colors in book form. Fashion, art, and other industries refer to and use those colors. At the end of 1999, the institute used the turn of the millennium to announce the following year’s color: cerulean blue. Intended simply as a timely marketing campaign, it performed unexpectedly well. Pantone subsequently began announcing the next annual color every December and seasonal trend colors each September or October. For more than twenty years, it has promoted its color-oriented professional services through these annual and seasonal presentations without spending a penny on advertising. Since 2000, Pantone executives have joined twelve color professionals from around the world annually to form an international expert panel. They gather at a secret location, drawing on current trends and social developments, representative films, and events such as Paris and Milan fashion weeks. After several rounds of discussion, they forecast the coming year’s hottest color trends, influencing the entire consumer value chain through a combination of emotion and color. In the months before unveiling the annual color, Pantone also signs licensing agreements with companies so that the shade will suddenly appear in different forms sometime after the announcement. Defining color has gradually built Pantone’s corporate identity. Today, it is not merely a color-service provider but an institution that shapes trends and aesthetics across society. That, in turn, reinforces its influence. An expanding licensing business—and concerns about a color monopoly Over time, Pantone’s dominant position in the color kingdom has allowed it to expand by helping brands tell stories through color. Tiffany Blue and Coca-Cola red are among the best-known examples. Pantone assigned Tiffany’s founding year, 1837, to its color. Without Tiffany’s authorization, that numbered color cannot be printed using Pantone colors. According to The New York Times, brand colors across hundreds of collaborations contribute 15% of Pantone’s profit. Pantone also licenses other colors, including “Minion yellow” developed with the films, “grass green” for Huawei phones, and “Tencent blue” for Tencent’s updated logo. Its reach extends into different settings. Almost everything in a Pantone hotel in Belgium uses a color from its swatches, with exact color codes identified. A Pantone café in Morocco serves food according to color. These venues are not operated by Pantone itself; companies around the world license the name and run them. In 2012, to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession, Pantone and advertising agency Leo Burnett created commemorative royal swatches documenting sixty years of her clothing colors. French design studio Chic & Artistic replaced color words in classic songs with Pantone swatches. Elvis Presley’s 1956 song “Blue Suede Shoes,” for example, became “Pantone 229C Suede Shoes,” while the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” became “Pantone 129C Submarine.” More than a decade later, the once-mysterious Pantone began turning toward a “Pantone Everywhere” strategy. Not long ago, Adobe announced that changes to its Pantone agreement meant users would need to pay a subscription of 49.9 yuan a month or 599 yuan a year to use Pantone colors in applications such as Photoshop and InDesign. Otherwise, Pantone colors in their files would appear black. This prompted further concerns about Pantone’s monopoly over color. #聲動早咖啡20230203 (Shengdong Morning Coffee, February 3, 2023)