The Offer: For those on a color-matching quest, The Sherwin-Williams Company has created Chip It! (available at LetsChipIt.com), a free online tool that allows users to source any image on the Internet and produce instant color palettes, known as chip cards in the paint industry. Developed for Sherwin-Williams by Durham, N.C.-based agency McKinney, the interactive Pinterest-inspired platform analyzes the pixels in a picture to determine which Sherwin-Williams paints best correlate to the colors in the image.
The Data: There are 1,500 Sherwin-Williams paint colors in the LetsChipIt.com database. Visitors can paste an image URL to chip a single picture or they can drag and drop the Chip It! bookmark to add it to their Web browser toolbar. Users who create Chip It! accounts can save their cards and share them on Facebook.
The Channel: LetsChipIt.com links back to the main Sherwin-Williams website, a Sherwin-Williams store locator and a sign-up form to receive email coupons, e-newsletters and details on in-store sales events.
The Creative: Chip It! is a product of the “McKinney Ten Percent,” an in-house agency initiative that encourages employees to dedicate 10% of their time to innovation. Other projects include Crows Nest, a mobile web app and Twitter tool that aggregates and filters tweets by topic.
The Verdict:
Stephen Malbon is CEO and founder of The Malbon Group, a content development and marketing company split into three divisions: BON, a creative agency; Frank151, a lifestyle brand; and The League, a creative community. The company has worked with Casio and HBO, among others. Read our Q&A with Stephen for more.
In a world of “pin it” and insta-gratification, this is a brilliant playground for the color savvy. The concept is there and easily navigated. Being that this is driven towards the creative mind, though, the enticing factor of the visuals is relatively muted and could use a bit of “bump up.”
