Orange

At the beginning of 21^st century, the orange color seemed to represent the changes in the societies, both developed ones and those that were in the post-communist area. The “colored” or the orange revolutions from Georgia and Ukraine seemed that this type of political change will be promoted in other countries too. For instance, like Moldova. But it wasn’t the case. The orange color appeared suddenly to a pro-Romanian party PPCD (Popular Christian-Democratic Party), which had clear nationalist and anti-communist slogans. But this party wasn’t successful at the elections in 2005, even after months of continuing protests in the front of the Parliament and Presidency buildings. The 12 deputies, out of a total of 101, voted a communist leader, which disappointed by much their party’s electorate. PPCD hadn’t entered the Parliament at the 2009 elections and their rating dropped down by much in this period. Well, orange was the color of the second mobile operator Moldcell, and later, of the main mobile operator Voxtel, that was rebranded in Orange. Outside the post-communist are, Orange moved forward to conquer new markets of mobile services.  

Former Romanian PNL-PD alliance

Moldcell, before rebranding

Remember the adds like “The future is bright, the future is Orange”, or the big banners in the cities, that were just colored in orange, and the name of the company was tiny represented somewhere in a corner of the banner. New companies that appeared in Moldova, for example, supermarkets, started to use orange color in their symbols (like Nr.1). A “orange” change took place in Romania too, were PNL (with yellow background on the logo) and PD (blue) joined together in an alliance that took the orange color as their symbol. So, till 2007, or even 2008, we can consider that the orange color symbolized the CHANGE, something new, something fresh.  

PPCD, Moldova

Ukraininan orange revolution

The matter with the purple color is still not as clear as with the orange one. For the Moldovan public opinion, the first rumors about purple color had come from neighbor Romania. After Băsescu won the presidential elections, when the exit-poll stated clear that his opponent Mircea Geoană has won the elections, the PSD – a social-democratic opposition party started to complain that the purple color was the mystical force that helped Băsescu to win in a competition in which all of the rest were against him, even the former allies from PNL. PSD stated that a man in purple sweater always appeared at the meetings Băsescu hold, and even he was in purple during the last days before the elections.  

Nr.1 supermarkets network logo

Another part of the story was with changing the background of the Romanian emblem from blue to purple. PSD said it was against the Romanian Constitution. In Moldova, the purple color wasn’t familiar to the common people till 2010 when two major changes in colors occurred: Moldcell, the second mobile operator changed its color from orange to purple. It was an international rebranding, so that all the companies from the same trust with Moldcell changed to purple colors. First of all, it was a shock for the Moldovans, and then it became something normal.  

Was Băsescu wearing violet after winning the elections in 2009?

European Action Movement Party (MAE)

Not long after this change, a small party from outside the Parliament – the European Action Movement (MAE) changed its colors from white to purple, with some blue elements. If in Romania, purple was associated with a mystical force, it’s interesting to find out how purple will influence Moldovan people.  

Moldcell, after

In the end, I would like to express my opinion on this colors matter. I think both orange and purple are successful because they are not common. Orange is not red, nor even yellow; and purple is not blue. These colors should have been invented and promoted, because they symbolize something mild, something intermediary and something new. Anyone knows RGB color – red, green and blue and all know that these colors are most commonly used by political parties and the big companies. Why not add something new? Let say purple! We’ll see after a year if purple will  be new succesfull color or a failed experiment.  

iDEA! Club

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