How Can The Pantone Colour Of The Year Viva Magenta Impact Retail Businesses?

The Pantone Colour of the Year 2023 campaign has announced Viva Magenta as the winner, and once again has unleashed a new favourite colour that is set to influence the worlds of business, design and brand marketing.

An uplifting and vibrant shade of red-pink, Viva Magenta is seen by many as “unconventional” which only adds to its appeal.

Pantone’s yearly unveiling of its chosen colour is hugely anticipated as it provides a deeper meaning to colour and its influence, and strengthens its significance for businesses, especially those in the retail sector.

Why Is Pantone So Significant?

Established sixty years ago in 1963, Pantone has influenced the business world for decades and today is the world’s biggest provider of standardised colour. This matters enormously as it provides incredible creative freedom to brands to make products in their chosen colour, regardless of global location.

Individuals in different sectors can communicate in different languages, safe in the knowledge that there will be no creative errors or misunderstandings with the choice of colours. This enables your London-based designer of handbags, shoes, or gift items for your retail outlet, to speak with their manufacturer in India and their packaging company in Denmark to create products in the colour Viva Magenta – and for you to have complete reassurance that the colour matching is guaranteed.

Pantone is able to offer standardised colours globally thanks to its colour coding system for use around the world. Businesses in the design, brand marketing and retail industries understand the language of coded Pantone colour and appreciate that it is the same colour whether used for digital creations or to create physical items. For example, Viva Magenta is listed as Viva Magenta 18-750 to remove any possible misunderstanding when used internationally.

This is powerful for retail businesses as it cuts down on costly mistakes being made with mismatched colour shades for products – and is the reason for its increasing influence in the business world.

How Can Retail Businesses Use Viva Magenta?

Each year, the Pantone Colour of the Year impacts on business because the chosen colour is highly anticipated and launches a new colour trend for the retail sector to adopt – and the 2023 winner Viva Magenta is no exception.

Given its positive and bold shade of pink-red, the vibrancy of Viva Magenta will soon develop an emotional worth and retailers will begin to use it for clothing, home goods and technology devices, to communicate messages, moods and feelings that they want to be associated with their brand.

Your business might want to use Viva Magenta to invigorate older products and elevate their appeal, adding warmth and fun to products that haven’t sold as fast as you’d hoped. Or you could choose to add the complexity of colour to your product range, using Viva Magenta alongside more calming colours such as Pantone’s Serenity which is a peaceful shade of blue or Buttercup which exudes a reassuring warmth and associations with sunshine. A wider colour palette will increase your audience appeal in the process by enabling your products to communicate with different audiences and convey different moods and emotions.

How Does Colour Impact Retail Businesses?

Colour is a key part of business branding as it is an effective way to speak directly to your chosen audience and deliver the right tone, message and emotion, as well as simply capture your audience’s attention in a crowded marketplace. For example, it may be your chosen bold and bright shade will appeal to customers or perhaps a softer pastel colour will quietly convince customers to buy your products.

Retail businesses can use colour to define who they are and what they stand for and to generate brand loyalty. Colour matters and each and every shade on the Pantone colour coding spectrum conveys a different message, emotion and association – and by choosing colours carefully, your selected shades will have a positive influence on your company.

Jordan Richards is the founder of the digital design agency RCCO, a 20-person team working with tech giants and exciting start-ups with investment. He is also co-founder of WILD, a video production studio working with PureGym and Revolut, and owner of FounderSphere, a community for young entrepreneurs.