Several years ago, Better Homes & Gardens surveyed homeowners to see how they felt about painting their walls. The upshot: many are too scared to do it.
It’s not that Americans are afraid of color per se—they’re just wary of choosing the wrong one. Nearly a quarter of respondents admitted that they had no skill for picking hues at all, and 40% reported they were anxious that, whatever color they opted for, they’d soon get sick of it. According to the Home Improvement Research Institute, interior paint is a $15 billion industry in this country. But reservations about choosing colors—aversion to making purchasing decision is what psychologists call “status quo bias”—have long been a stumbling block for paint brands.
This sounds like a job for the marketing department, doesn’t it?
Over the years, paint companies have developed a singular method to help consumers get past their pigment jitters, and it’s one that Behr—the house brand for Home Depot—deployed earlier this week when it announced its choice for 2024’s color of the year. (It’s called Cracked Pepper, but more on that later.) In anointing a color—and putting the authoritative weight of the Behr and Home Depot names behind it—this initiative furnishes reluctant shoppers with the missing emotion they need to make a purchase: confidence.
“It gives them permission,” Behr CMO Jodi Allen told Adweek. “It helps with that narrowing [of choices] and it helps them with validation.”
Go ahead, buy it
Behr is tapping into a strategy that marketers in other segments have used for decades. In instances where shoppers feel a measure of insecurity over discretionary purchases, brands have stepped forward to give them the approval they need.
Consider: In 1971, McDonald’s spurred Americans to indulge in a burger and fries with the jingle “You deserve a break today.” A few years later, General Motors goaded men to spring for a new Camaro with ads that cooed: “You deserve a car this good.” Most famous of all was L’Oreal’s “You’re worth it” campaign, which gave women its blessing to spend liberally on cosmetics. Sure, said the ads, the brand might cost a little more, but “you’re worth it.” (Not only did this campaign appear in 40 languages over the course of 50 years, L’Oreal has since broadened it to “We’re all worth it” to include men.)
