For me, Apple’s choice to price the black one higher was an annoyance; I actively rebelled against buying the more attractive black because I didn’t want to reward the company for forcing me to this unpleasant choice. So in the long run,the very existence of the option to waste money on something as superfluous as a better color actually chipped away at my brand loyalty.

I wonder, though–what if they’d done something really horrible as the cheaper alternative–a really putrid pale brown, for instance? Would they have sold any cheaper ones?

I used to own a car in a really terrible color. We made fun of it, called it “the green slime,” rationalized that it made it much easier to find in a parking lot (true but beside the point) and made fun of it. It was used, and it was the car we needed; we put up with the deep forest green.

But maybe that’s because I don’t think of cars as something have much control over. Even when buying new, our need for immediate availability has trumped our color choice and we’ve never had a car in the color we would have chosen. Other than the green slime, we haven’t had to be stuck with any real losers, but just as an exaple, the last car I bought we took in a pleasant but unexciting red. I really wanted it in the stunning electric blue, but it was more important to me to grab one with a stick shift.

So if a marketing campaign is geared toward my persona, color matters less than other functions. It maters, but it’s almost never a deal-breaker.

Shel Horowitz, marketing cosultant and award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First and six other books

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