Colour-coordinated consulting

Carrying out some research recently, I suddenly realised that each of the Big Four firms have now taken ‘ownership’ (in that special marketers meaning of the word) of one of the major colours. Was this deliberate? Suddenly I’ve got a picture in my mind of the Chief Marketing Officers from each firm sitting round a table, each with a large cuban in one hand and a balloon of Louis Treize in the other. They're eyeing each other nervously. Blue (KPMG) and yellow (Ernst & Young) have already been agreed; red and green remain in play. Deloitte has a plan for green (he wants to turn it into a dot) but he's not letting on. Across the table PwC pulls on his cigar, picks tobacco from the end of his tongue and drains his glass. Deloitte can bear it no more; he makes his move, snatching green. His dot is secure. PwC seems unmoved but he is. He's seeing sunsets: oranges, fuschias and pinks. Red brings them all into play. It's all he ever wanted. The four rise from their chairs, shake hands and head into the night, colours tucked safely in their briefcases.

Dividing by colour is not a new idea, of course: political parties have been doing it for a long time and most are now just as easily identifiable by colour as they are by name. Sometimes (The Green Party) the two actually become one. It’s a useful device, allowing one ‘side’ in a competition to distinguish itself from its competitors and to be easily identifiable by its supporters. It can also be used to signal intention as well as division: when Tony Blair wanted to drag red Labour to the right in order to appeal to traditional conservative blues he did so by turning the party purple. When the Conservatives wanted to play up their green credentials they created an oak tree with a blue trunk and a green squiggle for leaves (surely one of the cleverest visual identifiers of a political party there has ever been – it works in just about every way you look at it).

But colours can be limiting for consulting firms, as they can for everyone else. For a start colours come with associations: yellow is the colour of sunshine and hope, of creativity and bright ideas, but it’s arguably the weakest colour of the four, which may have a lot to do with it being the only one that isn’t actually a primary colour. Blue is calm, reassuring and statesmanlike, but it’s also conservative. That might suit tax and audit divisions but it isn’t what you want from an advisory practice. You want spark. You want ideas. Green is probably the most useful colour in today’s business climate. It says go and – more importantly, if a little obviously – it says green; which is about as useful a message as you’re likely to find today. But, like yellow, it lacks the strength and clarity of purpose that come with blue and red. For its part, red is dynamic and warm, full of action and passion. But it’s also angry and volatile, and if green says go then red says stop. So when you pick your colour you get what comes with it.

Let’s be honest; none of this really matters one jot compared with a firm being clear about what it’s good at, what it stands for and who it helps. But that’s precisely the point. At a time when clients are telling us they’re really struggling to tell the difference between one Big Four firm and another, and when our research suggests that differentiation is the biggest challenge consulting firms face in their marketing, you just hope that dividing themselves into the reds, the blues, the greens and the yellows isn’t the only trick the Big Four have got up their sleeves.