Who owns the colour purple?

No, I'm not talking about the movie. (I've never even seen it.)

I'm talking about the use of purple in logos and on marketing materials. In freight purple, along with orange, belongs to FedEx. (FedEx uses purple to identify the company and orange to identify its air freight division. The ground freight division used a purple and green logo, with the "Fed" in purple, and the "Ex" in green.) In chocolate most people in North America associate it with Cadbury. (Although a few smaller companies also use it and there has been at least one lawsuit in Australia over chocolate firms using purple.)

But the biggest firm to use purple in the chocolate business is Cadbury. And when I saw this page in a McDonald's flyer I immediately thought of Cadbury, even before I saw the logo.

That sort of brand/colour linkage is rare and very valuable. Only a few companies have built that level of consumer understanding. Some important ones are Coke = red, Pepsi =blue, Tide = orange, and UPS = brown. There are hundreds and hundreds more, but the most important issue is that if a company can establish the linkage in the customers mind, then there can be huge savings in the marketing budget.

As John Wanamaker is supposed to have said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." If you don't need to spend money to get the customer to recognize the colour of your product, then you can either just save the money, or use it for something more persuasive.