From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
The Power of Brand Colors
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How much money are you spending trying to make an unmemorable brand memorable?
If your truck could belong to five other HVAC companies, your social content could carry another contractor’s logo, and your brand relies on “everybody already knows us,” you may have a bigger problem than advertising.
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In Episode 234 of From the Yellow Chair, Crystal Williams and Emily Fleniken are joined by Jen McKee of Kee Hart Marketing to explore what makes a business truly recognizable.
Using Lemon Seed’s signature yellow and Jen’s purple and sequins as examples, they explain how color, consistency, personality and intentional branding create something customers can remember before they ever need to make a service call.
You’ll hear:
• Why a brand needs more than a recognizable logo
• How color creates top of mind awareness
• Why contractors often overestimate how recognizable their businesses are
• How poor branding can make other marketing investments work harder
• What contractors should know before changing their brand
• How to launch a rebrand without confusing the market
• Why your brand should communicate the quality of the experience customers can expect
About Jen
Jen McKee of Kee Hart Marketing works with businesses in the home service industry and has become known throughout the industry for her unmistakable purple and sequins. In this conversation, she shares how those recognizable elements became part of her brand and why memorable businesses give people something specific to associate with them.
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From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
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We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
Welcome From The Yellow Chair
SPEAKER_02What's up, living heads? Welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I'm Crystal and I'm Emily. And today, if you haven't figured this out yet, we are some girls that love some color, and so does our guests. So get settled in, do what you're gonna do because we're about to really talk a lot about branding and how you can really build something special in your market. So let's eliminate all right. So welcome, Jen. Yay, I'm so happy to be here. Yay, our fellow uh marketer with all the colors going on. Um, love everything that you do, such a great representation, and also congratulations. You won a really cool award uh with ACHR The News, too.
SPEAKER_00Yes, the influencer of the year for 2026. So exciting and so big deal. Yes, so well deserved.
SPEAKER_02You work really hard on that full stuff.
SPEAKER_00So and I'm on the award-winning podcast right now. So uh hey, look at this that is awesome.
SPEAKER_02We were really excited too. So congratulations on that.
SPEAKER_00You too, thank you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, today I thought we would really talk about, you know, we're always the girls in yellow, even though I'm the hardest one to get in yellow, but I love to wear it when I can find good yellow clothes to wear. But girls in yellow, we have these yellow blazers that our team wears when we're at shows. And I know that you guys are what did you call them, Emily? Not just purple, but sparkles, sparkles, yeah, but it's a vibe, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, I gotta say, one of the best parts about key art marketing and lemon seed is that we are complimentary to each other because purple and yellow look so good together.
SPEAKER_01They do, yeah, yeah. But then I was thinking you and your husband, y'all go to the shows a lot, and like y'all are very complimentary of each other, like he's always wearing his swag and his stuff, and so, but and I think because
Color As A Signature Brand
SPEAKER_01we see you at a lot of shows also, and we always see you in like kind of a similar getup because like that's kind of your signature, and just like how it's our signature for the yellow blazer, and so like I think we're gonna talk a lot about that, how a color can be a signature brand piece for you.
SPEAKER_02I mean, everywhere I get a lot of harassment. If I speak or if I do anything and I'm not in yellow, people go, I can't believe you're not in yellow. Disappointed, yes. I'm like, I'm so sorry, but um, I thought it'd be a good story because you know, um, I had kind of taken a little bit of started um a marketing company a little bit for a second, like a hot minute, and then partnered with Emily. And so Emily's like, I'm happy to partner, but we're gonna change the name of this thing. And so she created our brand. Um, and I loved it from the get-go. But Emily, like, what did how did we get to lemon seed?
SPEAKER_01Well, we believe that the best brands tell an actual story and they represent what you, the person, you, their company, are going to bring. Um, it should showcase your personality, it should showcase your core values. And so we knew that the ideas and the services that we were going to bring to the market were gonna be bright and fresh. Um, we knew that we were gonna be alive and zealous. And so thus came lemon. And then we kind of tagged it along with seed because that's what we do with marketing as branding is we plant seeds for home service contractors so that they can grow and flourish. And so um, we felt like the name was super applicable to that. Um, I knew we wanted a bold, punchy color that would be unique, disruptive. You can kind of own that color and um and then just having lemon seed, it gave us lots of like brandable words. Like we love to see how we're gonna we're gonna juice things up, we're gonna bring the zest out of it. And so it just gave us a lot of legs to run with and to build a brand. And we knew if we're gonna be doing this for other people, we've got to set the example for it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you guys are so good at it. I from the very beginning, I have always been so impressed by everything that you guys do. And you're right, like lemon seed it lent itself to so much, which obviously was really intentional. And I'll be so honest, like a lot of the things that I've fallen into were not as intentional, they just ended up working. But the I mean, being able like even your podcast name and it like everything you just said, squeezing the juice out of things, it calling people lemon heads, like everything that y'all do, you're able to tie back to your brand, which in I see that in home services. It's so much more fun to create content around it's so much more fun to have your boots in the community. To, I mean, Crystal, you and I have talked about um at the sponsorships and the organizations that you support, like everything, if it can all be aligned, then it all starts to like make sense together.
SPEAKER_02Well, and like Emily said, it's it's about telling a story and you know, constantly reiterating what you do. So, but when you don't have anything interesting, so I mean if you're called Crystals Heating and Air, and I've got a snowflake and a sunshine and the same boring fonts that everyone has with a partially wrapped van. I mean, there's just not a lot. Like every other contractor, and there's just nothing to like sink your teeth into for content, for ideas, for even for the emotional connection
Naming A Brand With Meaning
SPEAKER_02that you want homeowners to make with you. And so, even us, as we're B2B people, um, as a company, Limit Seed as a whole, like we're consistently immersed in the in the market of helping our clients who are B2C, really like that brand recognition. So, well, how did you land on purple and turquoise?
SPEAKER_00Um, well and sparkles, the whole thing. Um, the purple really was like my favorite color. I actually I inherited it from a friend who passed away when I was like in my 20s. Um, she was older than I was, and um, but purple was her favorite color, and she always had these purple bic pens. I was I worked with her in the restaurant. So when she passed away, I like painted my fingernails purple for to remember her. I would started buying these pens, and so I feel like I inherited the color, like it just got passed down to me. That's such a good story. Yeah. I think purple is a really great color. Um, there's it's got a lot of interesting history. It was uh a color of royalty for a time. It was a color that was unnamed and un uh like it wasn't talked about. Um, and so it it's always lent itself to a little bit mis like not mysterious, but like I royal. Like I see it as like a royal color. And then the sequence actually, when I first started going to events, nobody knew who I was, and I needed a way that I could stand out. Um, and so I was already dying my hair purple at the time because I just wanted to. I was like, I love the color purple, I want purple hair. Um, but I wanted a way to stand out. I wanted a way, I wanted a reason for people to talk to me and to remember me. And it's just kind of grown from there. And there's a couple of lessons in it. One of the things I tell people is um that I do it to be memorable and that um social media is a place where you should stand out, where you should be your authentic self. And so the sequins are that reminder that you should stand as your authentic self. Um, and then also I love that people don't question who I am. And so if you if you've seen me online or if you um have seen me before, we've met before, and then we meet again, you don't have to think to myself yourself, like, have I met this person? Do I know this person? It is so obvious. Like, yes, of course, I do remember I've met them before. And and that's again a lesson. Like, that's how your brand should feel. Um, no matter what company you're in, like people want people to remember you and to associate you with something. And like, I'm sure people send you guys lemon stuff all the time. People send me sequin stuff. Just yesterday at the gym, a girl was like, Hey, I've got this sequin skirt. Do you want it? Like, I someone gave it to me. I'm never gonna wear it. And I'm like, Yes, please send it my way. I would love to see it. So, you know, it's like something to remember me by 100%.
SPEAKER_01And that's what that top of mind awareness is. They see sequins and they think of Jen. They see lemons and they think of me and Crystal and stuff. And again, before they ever actually need our service, we're sticking in their mind. We're trying to be sticky. And a lot of times we've got to build that relationship and that consistency before we can win over their business. And so, Jen, I don't know if you're like us, but like I get tired of kind of sometimes I will just get bored of wearing the same yellow little blazer, you know, the five little yellow blazer I have. And I'm sure you might feel that with the yellow skirt or the sparkle skirt. But it is a little bit like, like you said, people get to know you, they look for you. Yeah, it is so iconic in itself. And like you can do that and brand that before you ever buy a booth, before you ever go buy all the swag and things like that. Just being intentional in what you're wearing, you're building that brand, right?
SPEAKER_02And when you take this to the consumer side, to the like B2C side of things, like it's not, it may not be a color, it could be a mascot, it could be a tagline, it could be that you drive unique vehicles, but just having something for people to connect to is real, it is not even a hard concept, like it is not hard, but contractors will stand 10 toes down on the fact that their logo, it's they don't need a refresh, they do not need everybody knows me, and I'm like, you know, they really don't. And take and this is a very boastful thing to say, but I literally can go into a market, me personally, any either one of us, and open a new business
Purple Sequins And Being Memorable
SPEAKER_02and be in the top within six months because of the branding.
SPEAKER_00And that that's what branding is, and and you said like it could be a tagline, it could be whatever. All of those things though work together, they end up but I mean, even like I think about my my company is called Key Heart Marketing, which I'll say is just a play on my last name and my maiden name. So, again, not with this intention, but I was like, I could do so much with this because it it's like the key part of it and the heart part of it, and I have. I mean, the podcast is the key to growth podcast. Um there's it different ways that we use the word key in different things. I drove down to Key West last week. I was like, oh, the McKeys are in Key West. I know, like, how can I make this about key heart marketing? But, anyways, it is there's so much when you have that to inspire you. Um, so it does feel a little bit more exciting.
SPEAKER_02Well, and you can look at it, even designers like our design team, you know, it's like, what do they do with this one font, one color, terrible logo? And they're like, we want something amazing. And I'm like, Well, us too, like Howe's we want to help you, and it's really a mindset for the most part, where they're just like, Oh, there's no way I could change, it's expensive to change. And I'm like, Really? It's more expensive to not change. Oh, correct. You're having to spend a lot more money to be meant to be memorable than the people the people that trust the branding process.
SPEAKER_00It starts to give you momentum, and so even though, and and honestly, we just had a client go through a rebrand and they were a legacy brand. I think they'd been around, I want to say 40 years. Um, and it was a very non-memorable brand. But imagine how scary that is. Like you had the same name and they had a name change and complete rebrand. And we did a huge social campaign. They also did an email campaign, phone campaign, like all of these other things had to be in place in order for this to be successful. But I know no matter what, they're going to start to attract new people because they're so visible. So as long as they can continue that story, why they made this change, what it actually means for them as a family, as a company to their current clients, they're going to have a lot easier time gaining new share of the market.
SPEAKER_02When we're working with a couple of clients right now that re renamed their companies and then came to us. And honestly, we call it a launch plan over here. The launch of those brands was terrible. Um, it was softly rolled out here and there. And I was like, listen, this caused more brand confusion. Yeah. So while the branding was good, um, I mean, I'll be the first one to tell you the brands are good. Um, and they come from a variety of places. The issue is like contractors don't know what to do next in what they end up being really impactfully detrimental to their over like they lose a lot of ground in that time because they confuse everyone. Um, and they just lose they lose ground. And uh, it's important to understand like
Rebrands That Win Or Confuse
SPEAKER_02what is your investment look like as a whole for rebranding? What does it in what order do I do it? Am I ready? Like, are you literally ready? Um, now is not a good time to rebrand if you're cash for.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because it is gonna be there's gonna be a transition no matter what. It's gonna be there's and not only that, there's things aren't gonna go right, things aren't gonna come in time, things aren't gonna be ready, there's gonna be some chaos. So, absolutely probably not cash for is a good time to do that.
SPEAKER_02Well, I really need something to drive leads for my business, and I'm like, Well, you couldn't make payroll last month, so I'm gonna say that now's not a good time. Why don't we focus on lead gent? Yeah, at the same time, odds are, and again, we get excited when a client comes through to talk to Lemon Seed, and the first thing we go do is look at their brand, and I'm like, Oh, or I'm like, oh man, because like I'm like, man, this is so exciting. And now we ran into this what last week. Um, we have a couple of new clients with an AI brand. We it is unfortunate because they we become AI experts, but then the formats and what do you call it? It's uh not crystal terms.
SPEAKER_01Well, unfortunately, like those AI brands, like getting real technical here, but they're all just rasterized. You can't re-manipulate them to at all. Like, try to re-make AI redo something for you, like just do it like this, and then it messes everything up. But like you can't take this rasterized image and now go put it on your vehicle rack because it's gonna be pixelated, it's not a vector. You can't go put this on um on a billboard. And then how are you gonna get small enough to print on a pen? You want branded pins that you can hand, and then you're like, you're stuck. You know, you don't have the the legs to actually be able to run with this thing. It can look great digitally and everything that you do digitally, but guess what? Your brand has to exist in more places than just the internet, you know? It's super important, but you got to think of it big picture.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I think even like everything we said, I think your brand is more than just your logo. There's like literally so much that goes into it that makes it memorable. I mean, my logo is it needs an investment, but um it I made it with what I had at the time. And at some point I will definitely get something done better. But that is that isn't the only part of my brand. There's so many other things that I've made really visible and obvious that's all played into how I've been able to stay memorable.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, and on the B2C side, like membership clubs and the way you give guys community, and even the way you take care of your team, what you call your team members, what they are, um, how you approach reviews, that's all truly branding. Yeah. One piece, and again, a hard mindset to get people into because their cousin made that logo 20 years ago when they got started. Yeah, everybody knows you.
SPEAKER_01And I'm like Well, that's the thing I think. Like when we're walking through this process with people, is like they have a lot of emotional attachment to whatever their logo or brand currently is. Where we're trying to be like, we want to think more about your ideal customer. What is communicating this level of trust? What is communicating what the experience of working with you is going to be like? It's more so about them because guess what? We're asking them to pay us money to do whatever it is that we're going to do. Ultimately, it's about them. And to where also like emotionally the owners have to it, like they can get so hung up off of like, well, I don't know if my guys are gonna wear a purple t-shirt. And I'm like, don't care about you guys. I care about your customer, I care about how we can stand out, how can we get noticed? People recognize us, and then again, when when they feel like they I see you everywhere, that innately builds trust because they're like everywhere, everywhere, yeah, everyone's yeah, even if they haven't been, sometimes they innately think that.
SPEAKER_00Um, but it's again just because you've gotten noticed, it's so true, and you can't be seen everywhere if you don't have a memorable brand. That's just like you'll you'll you'll blend in.
SPEAKER_02It's not possible. Same thing with like social media, right? So if you're only if you're never doing video content and you're never letting people see your team and your vehicle and your buildings and your areas, like you are missing the boat on building up just some familiarity, right? Market and
Why AI Logos Fail Offline
SPEAKER_02really again, it's the emotional connection. Like, oh, they live here. I know those people, you see them out. Again, that's such a part of your brand story and who you are and your brand language.
SPEAKER_00And that's actually like why AI content doesn't work. That's why, like, because I mean, you guys are designers and you're like, oh, AI content, and I get it too. Like, maybe we're being bougie, but the problem is that it all looks the same. So you can't stand out with it. And that is the goal with your marketing is to have an asset that is memorable, that people are gonna look at, that's gonna stop the scroll, it's gonna stop them from looking through the um it valve path that they got, it's gonna stop them from putting it in the recycling bin, it's gonna stop them from changing the channel. That is literally the goal is to have something that's gonna catch somebody's attention and have them stop and pay attention. And when you're using those chat generated, chat GPT generated flyers, they all look exactly the same. And so even if you like put your person or put your logo in it, they have such a sameness to them that you can't stand out with them. And that's why they don't work.
SPEAKER_01Well, and people, it looks like again, like you were trying to like cut corners. Yeah, but like what can I just get instantly spit out for me by uploading this to Chat GPT? And then like consumers can all be like, is that how they're gonna like treat coming into my home? Like, are they gonna install this new set? Are they gonna cut corners? Are they gonna do it like in and out as fast as possible? Like, I really want them to take care of this for me. I'm making a huge investment, but like when you show up looking haphazard, when you show up looking homemade or DIY, when you look like you're taking shortcuts, that's how people think your quality of work is gonna be also. And I think that's what people they don't understand how much their brand can communicate that for them before they ever get that opportunity to do the work.
SPEAKER_02Okay, branding has never mattered more, it's still it has not lost its importance in the grand scheme of things. And you know, I was uh telling another another friend of mine the other day, you know, she wants to open a new company in another market. And I said, Listen, you should be at a million dollars in 14 months. And she's like, Really? It took me like five years to get to a million dollars. I was like, Yeah, but you had no brand and no money. Now you've been a brand and you have a little bit of money behind you, and you should be at that. So again, two step-on-toes purposely, right here. Odds are if I talk to someone who's been in business 30 years and they're at $2 million, it's not a it's not there's it's a deeper problem. And it's probably lack of brand or lack of vision or a combination of both, because well-breeded companies just naturally launch forward, um, naturally move quicker and faster to the top. Um, because I again, right now the world is craving authenticity. Um, when you come across imperfect and authentic and real, people are attracted to that for sure. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. So let's talk about a few little takeaways here. Um, you know, Jen, like what do you think is one thing that because you work with contractors just like us every single day? What are some of the things that you've seen that really make contractors memorable?
SPEAKER_00Um, honestly, and it's like everything we've just said, but a well-branded company on social media. There's a uh right now we have a client we've been working with for a few months, and I like to use them as an example because their content gets great engagement all the time. And when I f when I go through their Facebook, it's not because we're creating super branded graphics, it's because their brand is so strong, it's showing up in every piece of content that we have because their the walls of their shop are branded, their shirts
Authentic Marketing That Builds Trust
SPEAKER_00are branded, their trucks are branded, they've got hats on, they've got you know their logo behind them. Um there's just it and that helps it um increase our impressions and our reach on social media. It helps them stay more memorable. And so having a strong brand, which for most of us means that we're hiring a professional to create it for us because trying to just use Chat GBT or do it on our own, we don't understand the um the thing that Emily spit out right at the beginning. Like, how can this what raster size?
SPEAKER_02Rasterized, rasterized how we have human tweets over here.
SPEAKER_00I don't know what that means, but we don't understand.
SPEAKER_02Let's use it later in a conversation to sound it sounds like you said wax her eyes.
SPEAKER_00That too. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But no, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so we don't understand that. So we're not gonna make these like great decisions that are gonna actually impact us later unless you do accidentally, like I did. But even that, like, I know that there's still rumors. For improvement, but being able to have something that's memorable that you can latch on to, everything that you say, Crystal, about your membership and how what you call your team and what they wear, and all of these things are gonna play into it. So having that strong brand is gonna help all of your other marketing spend be a lot less and move a lot further, a lot more performative for you when things like that come to fruition.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then, you know, I think intentionality, Emily, behind like what people how people go to market, you know, making sure that people are intentional.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we like as much as possible. How can it be like like flipping a light switch? Like, how can we make the most bang and impact? So, like, like literally pick a day, like August 5th, December 15th, whatever it is. December 15th, we're going live. Our trucks, we've already worked out with the print installs that it's gonna do that, and then they're gonna roll out all of our digital, our website's gonna flip over, our GVP is gonna flip over, our email signatures, our team have already got it prepared. I've already ordered the uniforms, they're sitting in my box here. I'm gonna hand them out to my people, say, Hey, you're wearing these first thing tomorrow, but not before then. But that's where it creates that buzz and that excitement. And then it's like people are like, Oh, what's going on up where they're from? Oh, y'all are good. And then, like, one thing that we haven't talked about in this podcast, and it could be a whole other one, is like when you have a strong brand and when you are memorable and you are standing out, how much attention it's attracting for um employees. Oh, yeah, and people like you got people tell us this all the time. Y'all look like you're such a great company to work for. So fun, they don't know, they've never set foot in our office or had me or crystal as a manager anything, but they're automatically making those assumptions, and like we can attract talent before we without with minimal effort, right? Because of our brand. And again, I'm sure you get that too, like how that can attract people and attract talent towards your company. And so it's not just about customers, it's about building your own team in that way too.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So, even my little final say here would be the encouragement from today is to allow yourself, if you're a contractor or if you're a vendor partner of some sort, what about your brand could you really sink your teeth into? Is it your name? Is it a mascot? Is it a color? What is it? And are you really honing in on that? And using that in your marketing messaging, in your involvement. So those of us that are vendors, like when you go to a show that's for heating and air conditioning contractors, like Jen and me and Emily see each other out all the time, is your booth lost in a sea of other booths? And if you're a contractor listening to this, drive by the parts house because is your van, can I pick it out? Do your answers to your Google reviews, are they any different than anybody else's reviews could be? Could your social media content be replaced with anyone else's name on that topic and it be it be
Branding Questions And Our CTA
SPEAKER_02universal? Then you're not branded. You have a logo, but you're not really branded. So that's my big encouragement and intentionality and being memorable. So, any last words here, Jen, that you want to say?
SPEAKER_00Um, just I I love everything that you guys have said. I hope that some people are inspired. Oh, I know what I was thinking. Your brand should be something that you have fun with. And so we talk a lot about um uh like there's people that don't have their business listed on their Facebook page. Like, be you should be so proud to own your business and and represent it as much as you can. Um, I don't know if you guys have ever met Chuck Worley, but the first time I saw him, I was like, I have to talk to this man. He's wearing orange and green, and I know this is intentional. And he he loves to talk about branding and he that's what he would do. He'd go out all the time. Everything he owns is orange and green. Why not? Like find that thing that is so exciting to you. I love collecting sequins, it's such a fun thing for me to go and find them places, and then I have some place to wear them, and they have a purpose for me. So find something like that that you love and latch onto it and and be that branded vision of your company.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So good. Well, Jen, thank you for talking with us and for being a great branding example and how you can own the sequence and um, you know, just create attention, but with consistency. You're you and your husband Jason are very consistent in what you guys are doing and doing great things. So thanks for joining us on this episode. Lemon Seed is a full service marketing and branding agency um that powers the From the Yellow Chair podcast. And so if you need help um with your brand or your overall marketing strategy, we would love to talk to you. Lemonseedmarketing.com. Thanks, guys. Have a good day. Bye. Thank you.