Lobal Warming

Hard to believe I’ve survived 20 plus years in communication/PR with nary an inkling of Pantone’s color of the year - today’s splash headline on the news wires.

Pantone, branded as the “global color authority,” announced PANTONE® 14-0848 Mimosa, “a warm, engaging yellow” as their official 2009 color of the year.  (Bet like me you missed the announcement of Blue Iris as their 2008 pet pick and bought a cerulean wardrobe.) In broadcasting their 2009 selection, Pantone gushed “in a time of economic uncertainty and political change, optimism is paramount and no other color expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow.”  Are we all aboard the mimosa bandwagon now?  Call me a chromatic cynic, but I’d have picked the color of money.

Let’s compare this to Pantone’s inspiring 2008 selection . . .”As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast.  Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic.”  Dependable, meditative and magical as signs of the times for the current year?  Seems our color experts have a crack in their crystal ball.

But why shouldn’t news of this favorite flavor warrant a media fuss?  After all, Pantone’s golden forecast is bound to change color palettes worldwide from fashion design to architecture to defense (think submarines).  Heck, New York cabbies are suddenly feeling jollier. Sure, it’s creative and probably quadrupled Pantone’s annual media clips, but their alignment of the color yellow with our global economic crisis strikes me as an off-colored public relations stretch and not the kind of PR that PR needs.