When a colour is not a colour (Product Labeling India)

Often times, we see the forest but miss the trees. Many, including my students, struggle to see beyond what is projected to them and try to explain the obvious. The obvious need not be explained. The obvious is there, shouting from the rooftops.

Can you see, observe and decipher what is the undercurrent, or what the problem is, or what could be the cause.  In many cases, the obvious is so glaring that we are blinded by its harsh light. Like they say, common sense is not so common. My dad often used to say, “A dhobi is better than a well-educated person.” What he meant was that, in many issues, it would be common sense that should come to the fore.

Take, for example, the saffronisation of the Indian hockey team's jersey. Why was the colour changed from blue? In fact, the famous Pepsi ad says, “We bleed blue,” meaning that even the sweat and tears that the team spills on the field are blue in colour.

For generations, accustomed to seeing Indian sports teams in blue, it was a big shock to see the Indian hockey team turn up in saffron. Frankly, I did not connect with the Indian hockey team. I felt like I was watching an alien team. How can I support a team that has a saffron colour?

And the results showed. We finished 8th in the men's category and 5th in the women's category at the 2026 Hockey World Cup.  And the worst part, from a colour perspective, was that the World Cup was held in Belgium and the Netherlands, and the Netherlands too plays in orange. In a match against the Netherlands wore white colour jerseys. The whole situation looked even stranger because white is not the colour that one normally associates with Indian hockey team.

And now we are back to seeing India in blue again at the 2026 Asian Games. Hockey India has given blue as its primary colour preference and saffron as the secondary choice. Hope the result will be better now that we are back to our traditional colours or, at least, back to the colour with which generations of Indian hockey fans identify.

Today, while browsing through my In Shorts app, I came across an interesting piece of news: food products with very high levels of fat, sugar or salt could have their packaging labelled with a red warning label. And that stopped me dead in my tracks. Why?

Because colour is already heavily loaded with meaning on Indian food packaging. Green is used to identify vegetarian food, while red is used to identify non-vegetarian food, including products containing egg.

To cut a long story short, the egg issue is an interesting one. The National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) has, for years, argued that unfertilised eggs should be considered vegetarian because they do not contain a developing embryo. This argument has been part of the long running Indian debate over whether eggs are vegetarian or non-vegetarian.

But Indian food-labelling rules take a different position. Eggs are treated as a non-vegetarian ingredient for labelling purposes, and the prescribed symbol is red. Of course, one could argue that if the logic is that anything that comes from an animal should be considered non-vegetarian, then milk should also be considered non-vegetarian because it comes from a cow. But Indian food-labelling regulations specifically exclude milk and milk products from the non-vegetarian definition.

So, slowly, we are seeing colours acquire different meanings in different contexts. Red and green already have strong meanings in food labelling. Red is now being proposed as a warning colour for foods high in fat, sugar or salt. This could lead to confusion and even the inference that high sugar and high fat content are non-vegetarian.

And brands that use red as their signature colour could potentially start  getting worrying thoughts especially Coca-Cola, which has made red almost synonymous with its brand.

But colour always means different things to different cultures. A US employee of a major company once stepped into a meeting wearing a very bright green cap. He should have heard the giggles and whispers all around him, but he shrugged them off, saying to himself that these were probably the reactions of people seeing a handsome, virile American.

He wore the green cap for the entire day. When he returned to the office, he got the shock of his life. His Taiwanese partner, who knew English almost as well as he did, nearly fainted when he saw the green cap. He exclaimed, “Why did you wear that colour cap, for God's sake?”

In Chinese culture, wearing a green hat is associated with a man whose wife has been unfaithful. The expression “wearing a green hat” carries precisely that meaning. So the big, strong American was unknowingly communicating that he was not a man and that his wife was unfaithful!

Colours have very strong cultural meanings, and we as marketers need to be much more aware of them and avoid making such goof-ups.

The lessons are very simple:

1. Never assume that what you see is what the consumer sees.

2. The designer may see a colour.

3. The marketer may see a brand.

4. But the consumer sees a meaning.

5. And that meaning may be completely different in another culture.

Colour Psychology, Colour Symbolism, Cultural Meaning of Colours, Consumer Behaviour, Marketing, Brand Communication, Visual Communication, Semiotics, Cultural Marketing, Cross-Cultural Marketing, Consumer Perception, Brand Identity, Sports Marketing, Indian Hockey, Food Labelling, Packaging, Coca-Cola, Saffronisation, Common Sense, Marketing Mistakes, Cultural Sensitivity, Advertising, Brand Colours, Consumer Psychology, Marketing Strategy, NECC, Egg is vegetarian campaign, Sachin NECC ad. 

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