Ros­es are red, vi­o­lets are blue, and so are most phar­ma com­pa­ny brands. Pfiz­er, Roche, Ab­b­Vie and Am­gen are among the many phar­ma com­pa­nies with lo­gos in hues of blue, while a small­er band in­clud­ing John­son & John­son, Eli Lil­ly and Glax­o­SmithK­line re­side in the red and or­ange zone.

More re­cent­ly though, a hand­ful of phar­ma com­pa­nies jumped on the “not-blue” band­wag­on – like Sanofi’s re­brand with pur­ple and GSK’s Ha­le­on spin­off with green – so we de­cid­ed to talk to col­or ex­perts about phar­ma and health­care brands. What do dif­fer­ent col­ors mean in the in­dus­try and why does it mat­ter?

First, it does mat­ter. Study af­ter study ex­plore the psy­chol­o­gy of col­or and the fact that con­sumers, which in­cludes physi­cians and pa­tients, of­ten make buy­ing and judg­ment de­ci­sions based on col­or.

One of­ten-quot­ed col­or and mar­ket­ing re­search study found that be­tween 60-90% of con­sumers’ prod­uct de­ci­sions are based on col­or. An­oth­er pop­u­lar study from the Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Mary­land, found that col­or in­creas­es brand recog­ni­tion by 80%. A more re­cent sur­vey last year of dig­i­tal and cre­ative agen­cies found 39% say peo­ple care about col­or more than any oth­er vi­su­al el­e­ment when it comes to com­pa­nies’ web­sites.

For phar­ma, col­or can lend au­thor­i­ty or se­ri­ous­ness to the im­por­tant, but al­so per­son­al, sub­ject of health. That’s one rea­son why blue – re­li­able, staid and trust­wor­thy – is so pop­u­lar.

“When you’re talk­ing about phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, you’re talk­ing about a very broad de­mo­graph­ic,” said Jill Mor­ton, the CEO of Col­or­com and a long­time col­or con­sul­tant who helped come up with the red, white and blue col­ors of Tylenol ex­tra strength gel caps. “Blues are go­ing to be the safest col­ors. Col­or be­gins in na­ture and our re­ac­tions to it there are a hard-wired re­sponse. When we see blue, we think of the sky and the ocean, so it’s a very pleas­ant heal­ing kind of col­or.”

And it’s not just the phar­ma in­dus­try that has a thing for blue. Some 70% of glob­al brands in­cor­po­rate blue in­to their brands, Mor­ton said.

Pan­tone, the col­or au­thor­i­ty that is­sues an an­nu­al col­or of the year – “Very Peri” pur­ple for 2022 – works with brands across phar­ma and health, Lau­rie Press­man, VP at the Pan­tone Col­or In­sti­tute, said in an email in­ter­view.

She agreed that blue and red are “safe col­ors” with clear psy­cho­log­i­cal mean­ings and ones that can cross cul­tur­al bound­aries more eas­i­ly than oth­er tones.

Red, for in­stance, stands as the col­or of the heart and ra­di­ates pos­i­tiv­i­ty and en­er­gy, she said. Mean­while, blue is “long linked to the seren­i­ty of the sky and sea. Light, medi­um and deep blues are em­braced by the hu­man mind as con­stant, trust­wor­thy and de­pend­able, so it makes sense that we would see a lot of phar­ma and biotech us­ing the blues.”

Still, it’s not as sim­ple as choos­ing blue for trust or red for en­er­gy when it comes to pick­ing a phar­ma col­or. Some­times brands are look­ing to stand out in a cat­e­go­ry and will choose un­chart­ed col­ors ver­sus ones with es­tab­lished emo­tion­al con­nec­tions.

Non-bi­o­log­i­cal col­ors, that is, col­ors that are not as­so­ci­at­ed with the body, can work in cas­es where a health brand may be look­ing for a made-up col­or that doesn’t have as­so­ci­a­tions – such as the pro­lif­er­a­tion of pur­ples in the ear­li­er 2000s, in­clud­ing al­ler­gy med Al­le­gra and re­flux med Nex­i­um, said Ha­ley Hi­ers, a copy­writer at bfw Ad­ver­tis­ing who’s done re­search on col­or.

But if brands are go­ing for un­con­ven­tion­al, why not some­thing like the col­or brown for a gas­troin­testi­nal spe­cial­ist? Tra­di­tion­al­ly that would be a no-no, Hi­ers said, point­ing out that “some col­ors are as­so­ci­at­ed with sick­li­ness and that’s part of why we don’t see a lot of brown and yel­low in gas­tro,” she said.

Still the “rules” of col­or can be bro­ken, and that’s es­pe­cial­ly true in to­day’s me­dia-noisy world where get­ting no­ticed can be dif­fi­cult.

“There is some­thing re­al­ly post­mod­ern about the era we’re in right now, and I think some peo­ple might ac­tu­al­ly get a kick out of brown (in gas­tro). So I can def­i­nite­ly see some­body go­ing for shock val­ue, al­though I’m not sure any­one in phar­ma is brave enough to do that,” Hi­ers said.

Be­fore Klick Health dives in­to col­or for a new prod­uct or com­pa­ny over­haul, it starts with a brand per­son­al­i­ty dive to find out the sto­ry or emo­tions the phar­ma or health brand wants to in­spire. Still, the sub­ject of col­or usu­al­ly comes up quick­ly, said Jay Schacher, Klick’s de­sign di­rec­tor. Klick’s goal is to find the right col­or that serves as a quick vi­su­al iden­ti­fi­er and con­nects peo­ple to the sto­ry be­hind the brand. They al­so check out what the com­pe­ti­tion is do­ing.

“Some­times we have what we call an area of op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore. Maybe it’s a com­pa­ny or a drug that isn’t in that space – not part of the blue or the red, for in­stance – and want­i­ng to dif­fer­en­ti­ate and stand out in­stead,” he said.

That think­ing would like­ly ring true for Sanofi, which re­cent­ly chose pur­ple as its new cor­po­rate col­or – stand­ing out was one of the sev­er­al fac­tors it con­sid­ered. As Chris Williams, Sanofi’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and brand, ex­plained to End­points News last month, he and his team chart­ed the lo­go col­ors of ma­jor phar­ma brands to­day and end­ed up with a chart show­ing two dom­i­nant col­or clus­ters. With a ma­jor­i­ty of brands on the shades of blue side of the map, and a small­er num­ber of red and or­ange lo­gos on the oth­er side, Sanofi’s bright pur­ple is a sym­bol­ic mix of the two, stak­ing out the white space be­tween the oth­ers.

An­oth­er re­cent phar­ma brand col­or choice that stands out from the blue-and-red pack is Glax­o­SmithK­line’s Ha­le­on con­sumer spin­off with a bright green block in the mid­dle of its lo­go as the mid­dle line of the let­ter “E.” It was pur­pose­ful in choos­ing green as “a dis­rup­tive and dy­nam­ic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion” in the con­sumer health cat­e­go­ry, a spokesper­son said when the brand de­buted last month.

GSK’s al­so chose green be­cause it “sym­bol­izes many things around the world, in­clud­ing har­mo­ny and health. Green is a gen­er­ous, re­lax­ing col­or that re­vi­tal­izes body and mind. It bal­ances our emo­tions and leaves us feel­ing safe and se­cure. It is a pos­i­tive col­or that gives us hope, with promis­es of growth. Along­side the sym­bol­ism of green, the as­so­ci­a­tions with sus­tain­abil­i­ty are strong,” he said.

The dis­rup­tor no­tion fits with Pan­tone’s health in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence as well. Much of its work for phar­ma and health­care brands cen­ters on tried-and-true needs like col­or con­sis­ten­cy. Press­man said some health brands do ap­proach Pan­tone for col­or mar­ket­ing help.

“The brands that are look­ing to us for col­or mes­sag­ing and mar­ket­ing sup­port are tar­get­ing a younger au­di­ence and/or one that is look­ing to es­tab­lish a stronger emo­tion­al con­nec­tion,” she said.

An­oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion for phar­ma com­pa­nies is his­to­ry. J&J’s sig­na­ture lo­go is James Wood John­son’s ac­tu­al hand­writ­ten sig­na­ture penned 130 years ago when the com­pa­ny was found­ed, al­though the red col­or wasn’t stan­dard­ized un­til the 1950s. Still, hold­ing on­to her­itage can be a rea­son to stick with a col­or.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be up­dat­ed though. Pfiz­er took its 70-year-old lo­go – a blue oval pill shape – and spun out a mod­ern brand last year with two new blue tones. Pfiz­er’s new brand now us­es a dark­er and a lighter shade of blue in­ter­twined as a DNA he­lix spi­ral­ing up be­side its name.

Why stay blue? Pfiz­er ex­plains on its web­site: “We evolved the his­toric Pfiz­er blue to a vi­brant, two-tone palette sig­ni­fy­ing Pfiz­er’s com­mit­ment to both sci­ence and pa­tients. In an in­dus­try awash in blue, we’re dou­bling down. A choice that cham­pi­ons Pfiz­er’s his­to­ry as a leader for the pi­o­neers who have fol­lowed.”

Leslie Har­ring­ton, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at the Col­or As­so­ci­a­tion of the US and founder of Hue­Da­ta col­or in­tel­li­gence con­sul­tan­cy, said it can be im­por­tant to con­sid­er lega­cy col­ors.

“When you’re mak­ing these de­ci­sions there’s al­so the col­or lega­cy or brand lega­cy. How much change do you want to sig­nal to peo­ple is hap­pen­ing in your com­pa­ny?” she said. “Some­times a com­pa­ny has a re­al­ly bad rap so they need a re­al­ly big change. But some­times it’s just try­ing to look a bit more mod­ern.”

Shad­ing can make a dif­fer­ence in mean­ing too. Dark­er shades are more an­chored and usu­al­ly seen as trust­wor­thy or time­less, while lighter shades can move a brand to a more cre­ative and younger per­cep­tion, she said.

To­day most com­pa­nies ex­pect re­search and da­ta be­hind why a par­tic­u­lar col­or rec­om­men­da­tion is right. While that’s a de­par­ture from the past when per­son­al pref­er­ence or in­tu­ition may have played a big­ger role, Har­ring­ton has heard sto­ries from col­leagues who present ex­ten­sive re­search on a col­or on­ly to hear, “Or­ange? Oh no, we’re not do­ing or­ange, I hate or­ange,” from a C-suite ex­ec­u­tive.

So in the end it may not be about the ex­act col­or, whether bold or neu­tral, that a phar­ma com­pa­ny choos­es, but rather the sto­ry it en­ables.

Klick’s Schacher said, “Col­or is all about the sto­ry­teller. What you’re look­ing to do is cre­ate re­la­tion­ships through peo­ple and col­or and us­ing it as a way to com­mu­ni­cate and sto­ry-tell.”

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.