Is Blue a little red of Green?

Something popped into my head the other day as I was bombarded by green-vertising.

How did "Green" become the word/colour/brand for environmental awareness?

It's like there was never a choice. Green was always the answer, it symbolizes nature afterall. Trees are green, grass is green, plants are green.

But if you're blue, aren't you a little bit pissed off that you were never considered? Blue symbolizes the water, the sky, and cleanliness/freshness. All things that are being attacked by the "green"house gases, pollution, and other unfriendly aspects of this earth we inhabit. When looking at an image of earth from outer space there is more blue on the planet than green, yet Green was the ultimate choice. Maybe it's the connotation of "blue" meaning sad that ultimately won the battle for Green, but wouldn't a colour that was sad better show how the earth felt about the lack of caring for it?

To me Green feels like the Paris Hilton of colours - Using any and every opportunity to get it's name used in the tabloids, television or any other kind of media. It will sell out it's good name to any company to try and promote itself.

"Hey Green, Walmart will turn off their store lights at night if you'll let them use your name."

"Done!"

I bet Blue would be a little more cautious about having their name bandied about all willy-nilly like.

Maybe i'm just getting sick and tired of every company talking about how "green" they are though. Especially these companies that have realized they can save money by being "green" and then try to spin it like they are doing it for the environment.

You may be green, but ultimately you haven't gotten the "Blue" stamp of approval yet.

Logos, logos, everywhere

The position I work in has allowed me to be a part of the branding process for both a new product and a revamped company name. The process is long, can be costly and is also extemely important. There are a number of steps in the process but the part I find most interesting is the logo development. This is the face of your brand, it speaks to your customers even when no words are exchanged. The colours, the font, the images they all add up to create a living thing with a theme, an attitude, and a personality. Its incredibly important to determine the message that you want your brand to exude because one wrong italic, one shade to dark can turn your spa into some kind of devil worshipping social club (or so it might seem in the eyes of the consumer).

As a marketer I am constantly assessing these logos as I pass billboards, see flyers, browse websites, etc. and I have noticed that colour is a huge trigger for me. But there are only so many colour options out there for a brand and sometimes a logo I see triggers another brand in my mind instead of the new one. For example here is the new Pepsi logo

Now everytime I used to look at the old pepsi logo I thought nothing but pepsi, but now everytime I see this new logo I can't think of anything other than this logo which you might recognize:

The majority of my mind triggering to oldspice clearly has something to do with the use of the blue white and red colours, or maybe I just like Old Spice. That is probably also a good sign for Old Spice as they have such a strong brand image that when I see a beverage product's logo all I think about is deodorant......or maybe i'm just weird.

Do you have any logos/brands that trigger other such logos in your mind?