Pantone for the win! Take a deep dive into Pantone’s strategy behind its successful color commentary campaign

PMS 172 and PMS 287. The two greatest Pantone colors in all of college football history. University of Florida orange and blue. The Pantone Matching System is a universal language of color used by graphic designers, artists, football teams, and more all across the world. Having a universal color system is essential in the design and business worlds because it keeps your brand colors, touchpoints, advertising, etc. consistent throughout the process. Not only is Pantone a successful color matching company, but it is also a powerhouse on social media. Let’s take a look into one of the company’s (in my humblest of opinions) best social media campaigns, color commentary.

Color commentary campaign background

One of the biggest days for advertisers every year is the Superbowl. It’s one of the most-watched programs on television, with nearly 103 million viewers in 2020. With all eyes on the screen, it’s advertisers' time to shine, the ads cost upwards of $5.6 million for a 30-second ad. Pantone decided to skip the million-dollar ads and go straight to social. The company live-tweeted the big game but emphasized the Pantone colors that were present on the screen. This began pregame since the two teams playing are just one color code off from each other in the PMS. The color commentary was held mainly on Twitter since it is a popular site for live content.

Color commentary strategy

Anyone who works in social media knows that a good campaign is built on strategy and goals because without those it would just be a shot in the dark. If you’re new to social media campaigns, you should brush up on how to set goals before starting a new campaign. It will save you time, money, and energy all while increasing your impact. It looks like Pantone had the goals of increasing brand awareness, mentions in the press, and conversations about the brand.

Now, to measure the success of a campaign you will need to have clear KPIs. KPIs are the indicators of a company’s progress toward a goal. These metrics are what determine if your campaign was a success or a bust. Let’s take a closer look at these goals, the strategy behind them, and the success metrics most likely used for measurement.

Brand Awareness

• Strategy: Interacting with popular brands through Twitter by using the various companies’ Pantone color codes
• KPIs: Followers, reach, and engagement

Brand Awareness is a common goal for companies that are new to the industry and are working to gain attention. Pantone is definitely not a new player in the industry (it’s actually been around since 1962!), but it isn’t known to most of the general public. Pantone was looking to become more relevant in the eyes of the general public. The brand made this possible by positioning itself with some of the most popular brands. By interacting with these more popular brands such as Pepsi, Cheetos, and Reese’s, the company had its name with the ranks of the brands on social media. All of the followers from the more popular brands were then seeing the Pantone account when they were interacting with each other. In order to figure out if this goal was met, Pantone would have studied its followers, post reach, and post engagement. These KPIs would help to understand the impact of the tweets put out by the brand.

Press Mentions

• Strategy: Taking a bold stance with just utilizing social media instead of a television advertisement during the Super Bowl
• KPIs: Reach, shares/mentions, and journalist outreach

Pantone took an approach that was meant to stand out to the press. While most advertisers were fighting to get the most airtime during the big event, Pantone stuck to social media. This was a big risk to take for a brand working to increase its general presence. In order to measure the success of this goal, Pantone would have measured the reach of its tweets, the amount of shares/mentions, and how many journalists reached out. Having journalists reach out to the advertisers or brand looking for a story means that the company was making noise and people wanted to know more (all according to plan!).

Conversations about the brand

• Strategy: Utilizing a brand-new approach to live tweeting sporting events through Pantone color combinations
• KPIs: Customer conversations and feedback

Taking this risk was big for Pantone, but it helped with its goal of increasing conversations about the brand. This goal was strong from the beginning when it was decided to live-tweet the game. The metrics for this goal are customer conversations and feedback. Customer conversations can be recorded and analyzed with social listening software. Programs like that help a brand see all mentions of them on social media. Social listening is a powerful tool for any company to use.

Pantone’s color commentary is one of my favorite social media campaigns because it was different from what other brands were doing at the time. It took a unique perspective of the game, similarly colored jerseys, and made it into something worth following. In the world of social media, it pays to be different. What social media campaigns have stood out to you?