color psychology | Outside The Lines

Color is both symbolic and persuasive. For instance, red means stop. It also arouses feelings of excitement. Have you ever been at a red light and seen a McDonalds sign? At that moment, did you start craving an ice cream cone, french fries, or a hamburger? This occurrence seems all too common.

Color, Psychology, and Marketing

Companies use color in powerful ways. Branding is an art, not an afterthought. It is also an area of study. Companies use color psychology to better understand how they ought to sell products, promote services, and represent their purposes. After understanding the impact colors have on people’s psyches, companies use this information to decide on what logos, websites, and uniforms they will use.

UniFirst Corp is a company that provides specialized uniforms to companies throughout the United States and Canada. The director of marketing claims that “Utilizing the psychology of colors can help reinforce a sought after business image or message…”. He goes onto say that consumers may connect more with a company’s uniform choice than its logo because a uniform is “… being worn by a real person, someone who embodies that brand and makes the brand more tangible to them.”

Effective Uniform Colors

According to UniFirst, the colors below have common perceptions and are often worn by people in certain roles.

White: pure and clean (worn by doctors and nurses to imply sterility)

Black: power and authority (helps project knowledgeable expertise)

Green: calming and growth and fertility (favored by landscapers/garden centers)

Purple: royal and dignified (helps suggest “premium” products and services)

Orange: warm and vibrant (used to create a playful business environment)

Silver: prestige and scientific (often the choice of high-tech companies)

Red: excitement and confidence (tends to be used to distinguish employees in expansive business settings)

Blue: Trust and belonging (the most popular color used in all businesses)

Yellow: Warmth and happiness (used to promote a general sense of well-being)

Gold: Elite and prestigious (fosters a sense of the very best)

Another color that needs to be mentioned is brown. Brown relays a sense of reliability. And who knows this better than a little company called UPS? Their uniforms are easy to recognize and symbolize their reliable services and on time deliveries.

When employees wear colourful uniforms, they embody the missions of their companies.

If you don the apparel of your employer, get to know what their colors mean. Knowing the meaning behind these colors may help to boost your confidence and make you proud of the brand you represent.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Business Branding:

Colors to Market by…

Choosing a Color for Your Business Brand

Office Paint Colors and Effective Employees

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Stop and think about the color red.

… Get it? Stop and think. The color red conveys different meanings throughout the world. In North America, the color red is used for stop lights and stop signs. It also serves this purpose in other nations in addition to representing personal emotions.

According to incredibleart.org red also represents “Excitement, energy, passion, love, desire, speed, strength, power, heat, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence, and all things intense and passionate.” In Eastern cultures, red indicates happiness.

Red comes in all shapes and sizes, but these meanings are rather consistent. Lately, however, red is a color of contradiction.

Red, a Color of Contradiction

The journal Appetite recently issued a new study that arrived at a simple conclusion: “the color red reduces consumption.” But don’t be quick to add “appetite suppressant” to its list of traits. For years, branding experts have been saying that red stimulates hunger. Karen Haller is a color and branding expert who confirms this by saying, “red triggers stimulation, appetite, hunger, and it attracts attention.”

It is no secret that people are drawn to the color red, after all, red lipstick, cocktail dresses, and roses are thought to be very alluring. How can it encourage one’s appetite while decreasing consumption?

Cognitive psychology researcher and author of the new study Nicola Bruno seeks to answer this question. She evaluates the consumption of 240 volunteers given popcorn, chocolate, or hand cream on different colored plates.

The CNN article covering this topic states, “On average, people ate less popcorn and chocolate when they were served on red plates compared to blue or white plates.” But this is not exclusive to food. “Moisturizing cream followed a similar trend. When testing hand cream on red plates, people used about half as much, on average, compared to cream on blue or white plates.”

Oliver Genschow, who studies consumer psychology at the University of Mannheim, agrees that “the study supports the idea that red reduces consumption.” However, the research only goes so far as to say this is a “subconscious” phenomenon. Should people know red decreases consumption, eating from red plates may not help them. Considering branding experts are convinced red triggers hunger, it is probably best to stop… and think about what’s on the plate.

Image made available by luizfilipe on Flickr through Creative Common Licenses.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Color Psychology:

The Psychology of Color

Vehicle Safety and Car Color

Red and Green are an Unlikely Pair

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