Why Sherwin-Williams is marketing its least-popular color

While Sherwin-Willliams typically promotes its color of the year, highlighting the most trendy hue that represents a consumer mindset, this year the paint brand went in the opposite direction. Today, the company is debuting its “Loneliest Color” campaign, which focuses on Kingdom Gold, Sherwin-Williams’ least popular color. “We’re not talking about color enough,” said Sue Wadden, director of color marketing at Sherwin-Williams, noting that there is an opportunity to do more than an annual color of the year and a trend forecast. “There’s so much more color that we wanted to talk about—the colors people don’t like.” Sherwin-Williams examined data from the last 15 years and found that Kingdom Gold is often overlooked when it comes to what consumers are buying. It’s certainly a contrast to the brand’s most popular color, which is creamy white. Last year’s most popular color was a shade of grey, Wadden said, noting that neutrals have been having a moment. “People can’t make decisions, it’s been a difficult year of war and politics and people default to easy decisions—they don’t want to stress out with color,” she said. Sherwin-Williams wants to help customers make those decisions by offering options around Kingdom Gold. The company has partnered with Harlem, New York-based fashion designer Dapper Dan on a series of eight wearable art pieces that will be auctioned off on eBay later this week. Pieces include a velour jacket, bucket hat and vest. Sherwin-Williams plans to donate all of the proceeds from the auction to Habitat for Humanity. The Cleveland-based paint company, which worked with Edelman on the effort, plans to market the campaign on its owned social media channels and on Dapper Dan’s and is putting some paid media support behind it. The Loneliest Color campaign took roughly a year to put together, Wadden said. Sherwin-Williams logged a 0.4% uptick in fourth-quarter sales, to $5.25 billion. The company hit a record in 2023 with sales of nearly $23.1 billion, up 4% from 2022, led by sales in its paint stores group segment. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Why Sherwin-Williams is marketing its least-popular color

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