It was all yellow: The first color Breitling adopted for its brand identity

Like a rising sun, it suddenly appears on Breitling’s SuperOcean catalog from 1957: yellow, the color that we have ever since connected with Breitling.??

This bold, extremely visual move also made sense for a brand closely connected with aviation, where yellow is used for tags marking parts serviceable and airworthy. Yellow also signals safety, alertness, happiness, and joy. In 1950s newsprint, it was a particularly bold move to use yellow for advertising, as it really stuck out—like lightning on a black sky.?

Willy Breitling and his marketing guru?

Recall that in the 1950s, the majority of printed matter was black and white. Two- and three-color print had been readily available since the 1910s but was not overly used. Full-color print was not yet available for newspapers, which were important advertising vehicles for Breitling. However, adding yellow was possible.?

But hang on, you might say. At your grandparents’ place or in the library, you have come across color prints in old books—really old books—that are dated centuries ago! Yes, indeed, color print has been around for centuries, but such prints were made in an artisanal way and were prohibitively expensive.??

The move to brand Breitling with yellow was made by third-generation founder Willy Breitling, together with his close collaborator and marketing director Georges Caspari, a guru in all things communication with a sixth sense for knowing what the times wanted. In the 1960s, for example, when chronograph sales were in decline, upstaged by the new trend in dive watches, Caspari would be essential in masterminding the chrono’s resurrection, making them cool once more by catering to the new generation with graphic dial designs and unconventional case shapes.?

Breitling’s all-in, extremely efficient and sometimes overpowering use of yellow came after a few early color experiments. Most notably, they included a yellow-backdropped advertisement for an aircraft clock in 1950 and a 1953 yellow-orange catalog for women’s gold watches. In 1957, with the yellow-covered catalog for the SuperOcean, Willy Breitling and Georges Caspari opened the floodgates. From then on, and for decades to come, yellow was used on everything from store windows to advertising, from product packaging to shopping bags.??

A top-secret plan?

The roll-out plan for the use of yellow was clandestinely described in an internal document labeled “Top Secret,” which was of course printed on yellow paper. This document stressed that advertising should focus on printed press, not on the best cinematic films nor the best radio shows as their successes were considered “fleeting.”??

“Nothing can beat a good advert,” the secret document stated.?“There is only one commercial factor that counts in this year of 1958, and that is the power of advertising,” which makes customers understand, “even before entering the jeweler’s shop that Breitling is a great brand.” The document also talks about the shop window (for which the retailer should order yellow TransOcean material), likening it to “the salesperson who opens the door.”?

Mellow yellow?

But the team was not all for it. Perhaps because yellow is ambiguous. Whereas German poet Goethe’s eyes rejoiced and heart expanded at the sight of yellow, Russian artist Kandinsky found yellow troubling, stinging, violent, and agitating. In early Christianity it was a papal color—but also worn by religious skeptics. Saffron yellow was the Roman go-to color for love and lust—but in the Middle Ages, yellow served as an identifier for one of the oldest professions. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, during the 14th-century bubonic plague, yellow flags were used as warnings for the disease rampaging a village. Later on, it would be, and still is, (occasionally) used for weddings.??

Even though some team members at Breitling initially thought the color too flashy, Willy Breitling persisted.?As he pointed out to his staff, these yellow ads were impossible to miss. After the success of the SuperOcean, Breitling’s first dive watch, Breitling and Caspari’s pioneering ideas about a corporate color and consistency were proven to be on point—and widely accepted.??

Bringing yellow back?

Ever since then, Breitling has stuck with yellow, even though the in-your-face-and-everywhere use was somewhat softened after the Schneider family took over the company in 1979, though it remained part of the corporate ethos. Case in point: In an internal communiqué from the late 1990s, former marketing director Ben Balmer summed up the color as code for the Breitling brand identity, “We all need to have the same blood in our veins. Yellow blood.”?

It's hard to say why the years of Schneider family ownership of Breitling from 1979 to 2017 were a bit more moderate in the use of the shade for advertising. Perhaps it was no longer as exciting as it had been due to four-color print going from being a prohibitively expensive artisanal artform to printers with huge machines making it readily available for all as of 1976.?

In 2017, Breitling’s then newly appointed CEO Georges Kern decided to bring yellow—which is also connected with wisdom and intellectual energy—back in full swing, thus returning to the color strategy that the brand trailblazed.??

Today, Breitling’s contemporary interpretation of yellow is that of the 1950s: optimistic, attention-grabbing, fun. And the color’s strong link with aviation throughout history has only increased. Today’s move uses yellow in a consistent and strategic but also thoroughly modern way.??

While times have changed and print ads aren’t the only medium anymore, the Breitling yellow is still out there working its magic. Whether it’s lighting up Tokyo’s Shibuya district, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, or a billboard on the Los Angeles freeway, it’s still turning heads, still standing out, still 100% recognizable as uniquely Breitling.?

Read more about the history of Breitling in our bright yellow anniversary book, Breitling: 140 Years in 140 Stories, and discover more on Breitling.com.

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