“Researches show that 70% to 85% of purchasing behaviors are decided in an instant. Good packaging entices customers. Pantone uses colors to change buying decisions.”

The fashion industry is a business by its nature, as well as colors.

Pantone unveiled the color of 2019 – Living Coral color to add some warmth to the new year.

Pantone's vice president Laurie Pressman announced that the company was seeking comfortable and uplifting colors. “We’re looking for those humanizing qualities because we’re seeing online life dehumanizing a lot of things”.

Pantone launches fashion trend reports and Color of the Year since 2000, predicting fashion colors that will have global influence in the next year.

Pantone provides color management and color codes, but color marketing is the core of its business.

In fact, launching the Color of the Year is a small part of its business. With a history of 55 years, Pantone is known for the research and development of colors. Pantone Matching System (PMS) sets an international standard for the selection, determination, matching and control of colors.

But Pantone is not the only institute to forecast fashion colors and develop colorways.

International Commission for Color in Fashion and Textiles, Color Association US, Color Marketing Group and International Colour Authority also do the similar things, but why does Pantone stand out?

Use Color to Enhance Sensory Experience

In a study titled “Impact of Color on Marketing” found that up to 90% of snap judgments made about brands or products can be based on color alone. Color is the most direct visual interaction between people and products. In a sense, color is the first step for fashion brands to build awareness.

Ron Potesky, Senior Vice President of Pantone, once said, “Color defines the world”. With the development of the Internet and rise of consumption choices, people live in a highly visual and distracted information world.

Just as symbols and logos, colors get increasingly critical to directly reflect the brand identity.  Scientific research indicates that 80% of human experience is gained through the eyes, and visual signals are more important than words and shapes for information harvesting.

This means that color becomes a key to build brand identity and thus extend its vitality. Pantone is in line with the changing consumption environment.

The enemy of business is risk. It is dangerous to drive trends, but wise to follow them. Pantone is doing the latter.

Pantone holds a secret meeting in a European capital every year. It gathers designers and retailers from the visual, manufacturing and fashion sectors to discuss the key colors of the next season. Then a committee of executives and customers make choices based on surveys and color chart sales.

The team member for Pantone Fashion Color said that they take reference of the colors frequently seen in daily life, on catwalks, in new films, of art works and on social media.

In other words, the birth of the fashion colors is not dominated by Pantone's forward-looking and extraordinary taste, but by fashion designers and retailers who have accurate insight into the markets. As Ron Potesky explained, the change of fashion colors is driven by the industry and it responds to the new consumption trends.

Georges Kern, CEO of IWC, once pointed out that "The best way to build a top brand is to tell a great story." In this era, consumers no longer strictly decide the value of goods based on their function, but use products for self-expression.

Pantone knows customers’ desire to connect with products emotionally. Therefore, what it launches is not just a color, but a story that resonates with the youth.

For example, Greenery, the Color of 2017, was influenced by global turbulence, rampant terrorist activities and frequent natural disasters in 2016. Pantone understands people’s desire for peace, and thus released the refreshing and revitalizing Greenery.

The storytelling strategy was certainly a success: within 48 hours of the launch of the Color of the Year, media coverage reached 4 billion, and topics related to "Greenery" and "Pantone" were widely discussed on social media.

However, it is not correct to simply define Pantone as a "collector of fashion trends" and attribute its success to the highly visual consumption background. Pantone has a mature business operation mode.

Color Customization

Boston Consulting Group has predicted that personalization and customization will be the trend of the fashion industry in the future, and Pantone is at the forefront.

Pantone aims to be a rule maker. When asked if the company would launch its own products, Pantone stated that it should be a standard maker to license and customize services but not produce goods.

Taking advantage of PMS, Pantone has color consulting and customization services. Before the release of the Color of the Year, the reports are delivered to the clients. Starbucks, Coca-Cola, GAP, IBM and Tiffany are all partners of Pantone.

In 1837, Tiffany chose Robin Egg Blue as the brand color, and used this classic tone for brochures, packaging, shopping bags and store design. Tiffany teamed up with Pantone in 2001 to customize Pantone 1837, also known as Tiffany Blue.

Pantone’s customized color for a brand will not be published, nor can it be publicly applied to other products. After the color customization, Pantone will continue to study the influence of the color on people's behaviors and emotions, so as to help the brand achieve the best promotional effect. Color will become the exclusive assets of the brand alongside its logo or symbol.

Pantone knows that brands are fear of being forgotten in the era of information. The company does a win-win business. Once the customized color is made, it will gain popularity among customers driven by luxury brands, streetwear style brands and fashionistas. Brands use Pantone to enhance awareness, and Pantone gets everywhere with the help of brands at the same time.

Use Event Marketing to Create “Pantone Universe”

Crossover cooperation and collaborative collection are good ways to extend the reach of the brand. Pantone also employs this strategy.

Pantone builds its reputation by licensing its IP to companies around the world. In addition to museums and gift shops, the company also works with hotels and advertising agencies.

For example, Vogue used Pantone colors to sum up Queen Elizabeth II’s dressing in the Diamond Jubilee Year. Brussels has a Pantone-themed hotel, and provides tea bags, shampoo bags and walls in Pantone colors. The Pantone pop-up coffee shop in Morocco served dishes by Pantone colors.

Apart from licensing, Pantone follows hot topics and is active on social media to attract the young generation. Last year, it initiated the “Pantone Smoothie” project on Instagram, creating smoothie blends to match Pantone color swatches. After Minions got a high box office, Pantone collaborated with Universal Pictures to launch a hopeful, active and happy “Minion Yellow”.

Find more fashion trend colors, you can visits https://www.popfashioninfo.com/trends/color/?pid=005