Current Trends - Red Marketing

Perhaps it’s coincidence, but as of late, I’ve been seeing a new sort of trend in print and electronic marketing. It’s not the green revolution, and it’s not the customized content phenomenon; what I’ve noticed simply concerns the hair color of models and actors. Red, in a manner of speaking, has become the new black.

Yesterday a red-haired woman was selling me Zyrtec, then two commercials later, an entire family was having a Target sponsored picnic, their hair all matching the red, Bullseye logo. Looking at all the commercials I’ve seen in recent weeks that contained people, redhead actors occupy at least 25% of them, sometimes it seems closer to half.

It seems like everywhere I turn, a red-headed man, woman or child is trying to sell me a new product or service. Perhaps it is the novelty of it all that fuels the craze. Every type of business is trying to separate themselves from the competition, but the claim of providing something fresh and different needs to be accompanied by the perfect face to sell it. What better way to market an idea as original than to have what most people would consider a “rare” kind of person using it– a stand out individual promoting what companies hope will be a stand out product.

In the past years consumers haven’t seen many ads with red-headed people. For the longest time, blonde hair was the staple of standard marketing practice. In my opinion, people simply got bored. A characteristic initially used to make people stand out became the norm, requiring a progression in the cycle of public interest. Blonde hair may come back into style, but consumers need time to forget about it; perhaps for several decades, making now the time for a new push in establishing a norm. Though it is inevitable that the very thing that is new and different cannot stay that way for very long. As marketers begin to see a positive response in a certain tactic, its appearance becomes saturated within the market.

Hollywood actress Amy Adams even claims that dying her once blonde hair to red got her more work, appearing frequently as “kooky,” fun-loving characters. It must be a good time for auburn actors in the marketing business; maybe now is time for the rest of us to go out and buy it in a box.