The strong shift toward operating in global markets has posed enormous adaptation challenges for product marketing especially with regard to universality and consistency of brand design decisions. The color-in-product design decision is also susceptible to this globallocal tension. A pharmaceutical film coating formulator supplier to leading local and global pharmaceutical companies was interested in developing a solid validated global color preference database to enable informed brand decision making for its customers. The following study reports results from a global survey that examined the colorbrand attribute associations within the global pharmaceutical industry. Data were collected from a multigeography gender and age balanced sample of 2021 subjects, revealing a strikingly powerful color language comprised of universally consistent associations and local contextual patterns that are each critical to global brand decision makers within this industry. (c) 2011 Wiley Periodicals,Inc. Col Res Appl, 2012;