Every year Pantone declares the Color of the Year and for 2019, the institute declared Living Coral to be the “it” shade calling it “an animating and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone that energizes and enlivens with a softer edge.” And it totally is. Imagine bright red orange swimming in a sea of crystal blue water.
Pantone’s Executive Director, Leatrice Eiseman even goes so far as saying it that Living Coral was what “consumers craved” and that it incites “human interaction and social connection” which might be a stretch. It is just a color after all.
However, some found this messaging to be anything but convivial and well, off-color.
Jack Railton-Woodcock and Huei Yin Wong, partners at Jack and Huei, a Melbourne-based design agency, took umbrage with this decision and for good reason.
Their native Australia has front-row seats to the dying of the Great Barrier Reef and for them, coral is anything but lively. If anything, it’s on life support.
To call attention to the tone-deaf decision, the duo preemptively christened Bleached Coral as the Color of the Year 2020.
Touche.
The duo furthered their burn, saying, “It’s the responsibility of all of us, creative or otherwise, to find creative solutions to big problems, and right now there aren’t many problems facing humanity that are bigger than climate change.”
Oof, way to pull back the curtain, guys.
As much of a buzzkill as this pair might be, they’re not wrong, and they bring up the larger question of social responsibility in marketing.
But it’s just marketing, right?
Wrong. The very root of marketing is aspirational. We see ads for luxury cars, we imagine ourselves behind the wheel and believe that maybe we can get there. We see beauty products that promise flawless ageless skin and maybe we decide to take better care of our skin. We see Living Coral and we’re blinded to the reality that the coral just might be a thing of the past.
Yes, Pantone’s Color of the Year is one of those fun end-of-year things we in marketing get excited about, but when you’re living in a world where climate change is our reality and we see it in unnatural weather patterns and the dying off of one of our greatest natural treasures, it’s time to take pause. We can do better.
These days it’s hard
to please everybody. Try as we might to make everything for everyone, if we’re
going to attempt to talk about a unifying the human race through color, we sure
as hell shouldn’t choose a color that reminds us all that our environment is in
rough shape and it’s largely humanity’s fault. Bleached Coral isn’t the color
we need, but right now, it’s the color we deserve.
