2012 Color of the Year: Tangerine Tango

The color of the year is a juicy, delectable orange.

A shade they call Tangerine Tango (or Pantone 17-1463, to be precise). 

Pantone’s color guru Leatrice Eiseman told writer Jude Stewart of imprint that it is "a symbol of what people are needing, based on what is happening in the world around them. I felt that Tangerine Tango is just the color to break the malaise and much-needed today. Walk into many clothing department and you are faced with a sea of gray and black as retailers ‘play it safe’. It’s the bland leading the bland. Splashes of tangerine are a much needed jolt of visual Vitamin C. This color is not a downer, but an upper.

“I love the color in glassware and ceramics as the complexity of this secondary color is more apparent. In my travels to Italy I saw it everything imaginable— but the Italians have always ‘gotten’ orange and Missoni’s entrance into Target has helped to popularize the Italian sensibility within the States. Interestingly enough, saw lots of evidence of the color in my last trip to South Korea— especially in period costumes."

3 trends in pharma branding I see in my crystal ball

Here’s a list of the top three trends I think will impact the industry in the next year to five years.

1. Branding goes mobile: Smart phones, electronic prescribing and medical records, and CME on-demand deliver highly personalized and relevant information when and where the healthcare professional needs it.

2. Patient-generated content grows: Social networks move beyond friends and entertainment of today (MySpace, Facebook, Eons, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, etc.). Formal and informal patient group sites challenge “controlled” pharma information as users create, post, widget, tweet, download, and rate whatever they want.

3. The brand is the experience and marketing is a service: The rep was once the only “face” of the brand. Now, online initiatives, patient events, and trial programs are more appreciated. They become the start of customer conversations. And those marketers who best support their customers, providing value at every touchpoint, are the most successful.


These will be included in the Year in Preview issue of PharmaVoice magazine.