Well they finally did it. LIME moved out of the darkness of all black, into the bright rainbow, skittles infested colours of daylight.

The dramatic change in the color scheme of their new advertising campaign, spearheaded under regional Chief Marketing Officer Chris Dehring, is the first visible bold move by the new marketing head. He has apparently dumped the black and has now gone for every color in the rainbow. The colour change, not surprisingly was done with very little fanfare, the vast majority of consumers would not have noticed the subtle but obvious shift and even if they did would not have realized the strategic implication and motive for LIME.

The first public indication was a series of press advertisements in the local Jamaican print media in the form of a consumer promotion – 100 DAYS OF SUMMER. The color scheme was bright and carried various colours, as opposed to the one dominating black previously used. This was followed up with what can only be described as a low budget television commercial using still shots with stylized color backgrounds.

The www.time4lime.com website has also undergone a major overhaul, with a dominant canary yellow on the home page and various other bright colours on other pages.

As one person commented to Businessuiteonline, “It’s like moving from night into day, from black to every colour of the rainbow, but hey guess what I like it. The change in colour scheme I believe will do a lot for the brand and company in terms of perception and affinity. The exciting, bright colours are positive, cheerful and happy, just what they need right now. How long before they change the colours of their commercial vans, which look like hearse. Well the sooner the better.”

Reports had reached Businessuite two months ago that LIME had finally decided to do what almost everybody knew had to be done. Drop the dominant black from their creative. For those in the advertising industry it is well know and accepted that newsprint for example has a tendency to suck up or absorb the black ink, resulting in a dull print finish. LIME’s newspaper advertisements were suffering badly as a result of this. Black in print tends to work best in glossy publications where the color is known to jump off the page.

The decision to make yet another defining image adjustment came following what was reported to be an extensive consumer and market study around the region. LIME whom for many years has been trying to get their branding and image right is now undergo yet another makeover. Hopefully this will be last, for now anyway.

Lime was launched with much fanfare over a year ago using Black as its dominant branding colour having shifted from Blue.

See related story at http://businessuitemagazine.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/342/