How Color Affects Us
Marketing uses every trick to achieve its goal and every means at its disposal to bring a product or idea to our attention. One such resource is color.
Marketers have discovered that specific colors influence customer and user decisions and they are taking advantage of it. Colors are used in the marketing campaigns to create a certain image for a brand or product in the hope that this image will influence people to buy it.
“Colour psychology” is a field that specializes in analyzing the effect each color has on our thoughts and behavior. This data is used not only in marketing, but also in art, architecture, education, design and so on.
How do colors make us buy things?
Depending on the shade chosen by a company’s creative minds, a product or an entire brand can be a success or a failure. Colors have such a big effect . They can influence the estimated value of a particular product, the desire we feel to buy it, the feelings it evokes and so on.
Our perception of each individual color depends on our personal experiences and preferences, but there are also general rules when it comes to how colors affect us. The emotions and feelings evoked by a particular color tend to be similar within a population group.
The most important brand names and logos in the world are based on a table that associates color with perception. It is as follows:
Yellow
Stands for optimism, warmth and clarity. Examples of logos with this color are Subway, Shell, Nikon, IKEA, McDonald’s, Zeeman and Intertoys.
Orange
Stands for friendship, trust and confidentiality. Companies with this color in the logo are Nickelodeon, Fanta, Mozilla, ING, Easyjet and Zwitsal.
Red
This stimulates the senses. Examples are Coca Cola, Nintendo, Kellogg’s, Bart Smit, Lego, Canon and Pinterest.
Violet
Stands for creativity and imagination. A number of brands that have chosen this color are Yahoo, MTV, Milka, Cadbury and Andrélon.
Blue
Stands for confidence and seriousness. Examples of products with this shade are HP, Oreo, Facebook, Sanex, Albert Heijn and Dove.
Green
Stands for peace, health and growth. Brands with this color are Android, Starbucks, Oxfam, Heineken and Transavia.
Black and white
Together they represent peace and balance (grey can also be used). Examples include Apple, Wikipedia, Nike, Rituals, and Chanel.
There are also brands that choose to use multiple colors in their logo. This is the case with, for example, Google, Windows and Ebay. In these cases , their goal is to make the user experience multiple sensations.
Why do we choose a brand because of the color?
According to a study called “The Impact of Color Marketing”, 90% of customers rate a product based on its color. We also make decisions when it comes to colors based on our emotions. This means we don’t choose something yellow or orange when we’re depressed, for example.
Colors can affect us in important ways. For example, we feel differently in our office when it is painted in dull colors than when it is decorated in attractive tones. Colors can help us get more rest, study, feel calm, enjoy our home and so on. Why can’t they “tell” us what to buy or use?
Beyond the strategies of the companies to get our attention, our own experiences also count. For example, if your favorite color is green, you are more likely to choose products with this color. It will also be more difficult for you to choose a product with orange or blue.
If you want to test this, you can go to the supermarket and see what gets your attention. It is probably the striking colors, such as yellow. But that doesn’t mean we’ll buy that product. There are other things to convince us. These are the elements we think about, because the product has caught our attention.
The key is knowing how to differentiate products based on quality, price, or quantity, not color. In this way we are conscious buyers and not just robots who just buy what the big companies want us to buy.
