You Are What You Wear

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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The Color Red and its Many Meanings

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

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Red and Green are an Unlikely Pair

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The Graffiti Artist and Street Vendor

The streets of New York City are littered with street artists. Those who succeed at this trade often combine unique artistic ability with marketing efforts. Beyond taking time to create numerous works, they have to sell them too. This is not always easy. In fact, it is downright hard, even for a world famous artist.

Banksy is a world famous graffiti artist.

While Banksy is not his birth name, art featuring this “tag” can be found decorating cities throughout the world. Beyond this talent, Banksy uses film and traditional canvas paintings to advance his position as a political activist. His satirical style, stenciling technique, and creativity lead to priceless masterpieces.

Of course “priceless” is an exaggeration. His work sells quite well, considering those who purchase it usually have to assume responsibility for cleaning it off the walls of city property. Yet the sliding scale of his work is drastic. A piece that sells for $249,000 in one venue may only sell for $60 in another.

Banksy’s Street Vendor Experiment

This was the case when Banksy arranged for an anonymous sidewalk art booth be erected in New York City’s Central Park. A piece titled, “Love is in the Air,” was on the table, listed at $60. This summer, a limited edition of the same work sold in auction for a quarter of a million dollars.

Banksy hired a man to sit in front of the booth and sell art work. He recorded the day’s happenings and created a two and a half minute Youtube video. Throughout the course of the day, only $420 was earned.

Regardless of sitting in front of a sign that read, “Spray Art,” (which was painted in Banksy’s signature stencil print) no one knew the vendor was selling original artwork signed by Banksy.

The Value of Art

What can be gained from the experiment in Central Park? Nothing, according to Banksy. He does not admit any motivation behind this stint. Instead, he describes the act with the following statement:

“I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached. There’s no gallery show or book or film. It’s pointless. Which hopefully means something.”

But this display was not pointless. It says something about the value of art. More so, it reinforces the saying, “you better shop around.” A few lucky people got one heck of a deal that day.

Image found on Opticalspy.com http://www.opticalspy.com/high-speed-photography-gallery.html.

Read more Segmation blog posts about Art and Retirement:

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The World’s Favorite Color

Marketing Art in the Digital World: An Introduction

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Selling Your Art in a Strained Economy

As we all know, experts are predicting a slow recovery for the U.S.economy. Consumers are maintaining cautions and often frugal spending habits.

When it comes to art, buyers want to know that they are making a responsible investment. More than ever they are considering a variety of purchasing options and you can assume that most buyers are now working off a budget.

If you are an artist struggling to find buyers for your art amid these unsure economic times, the following marketing tips may just give you the encouragement you need to preserver.

TIP # 1 – Keep Making Art!

The most important thing for an artist to remember is that it is essential to keep creating. Even if you work another job to make ends meet, make time for your art. By stepping away from your art you risk loosing the creative progression that might propel you towards greater success.

TIP # 2 – Don’t Wait For Others to Realize Your Potential

Most artists do not become famous during their lifetime, but many learn how to support themselves by selling their art. There are several things you can do to make your name familiar and respected.

1). Carry yourself as a serious artist by…

• Becoming a member of art organizations.
• Getting your art work reviewed by a magazine or newspaper.
• Have a gallery or art dealer publish a catalogue of your work.
• Donating a piece to a charity auction.

These things become physical proof that you are dedicated to the work you do and show buyers just how serious you are.

2). Learn to convey to potential buyers why your art has value.

• Document the process of your work, by taking photographs of different stages of the process.
• When talking to a potential buyer, share what inspired you and what the piece means to you, or how the piece changed throughout the creating process.
• Always have your contact information easy to access.

By taking these simple steps you are helping a potential buyer understand the significance of your art and you are providing them with information that allows them to feel intelligent about their purchase. In the long run, you have provided interesting facts that just might pop up in future conversations. Suddenly, you will have gained a buyer and advertiser all in one.

Don’t let the economy scare you away from putting yourself and your art out there. There are easy steps that can bring you close to achieving your goals. Keep an eye out for more easy marketing tips that will help you start to make a living off your creativity.

Image retrieved from http://ceramicartsdaily.org/pottery-making-illustrated/

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Related articles

• Selling Your Art: How to Approach Pricing and Your Market (tracygmjames.com)
• Oil Works of art an outstanding Decorative (uclaislamicstudies.com)
• International Affordable Art Fairs won’t break the budget (travelnews.britishairways.com)

Colors to Market by…

Using a particular color to market a product or brand is nothing new — but it’s effectiveness has never been higher.

All colors have some sort of symbolism that contribute to traditions, cultures, religions, concepts, superstitions, and feelings. Some of these colors are even thought to stir physical reaction in people. This encourages companies and organizations to choose their branding colors carefully.

Mr. Marketing, Rob Weinberg offers this advice: “Extend your message with colors as you would your logo, tagline, URL or other branding tools. Reinforce your color choices at every turn and you should find people recognizing them…and you.”

Do you think this is true? To draw on an example from his article, Make Selling more Colorful (http://www.pomeradonews.com/2011/10/26/ask-mr-marketing-make-selling-more-colorful/), Weinberg points out how Tiffany and Company uses robin’s egg blue boxes to wrap jewelry. This has been so effective that the color is recognized as their own (even though no one can own a color). If another company chooses to use the same color, their products or services might be mistaken for the jewelry company. In this situation, the company who follows may generate business from doing so or they may be looked down upon as a cheap knock-off. In other words, they’d have to return to the drawing board — literally.

While this approach may not produce the desired results, the thought process is right on target. They noticed how a certain color attracts a niche market and encourages those people to buy a particular product. This means the start-up company is probably close to developing their own branding package with a carefully selected color scheme — just like Tiffany and Company.

Weinberg implies the chief reasons why companies and organizations use colors in their marketing campaigns and branding techniques is because they are effective tools for non-verbal communication. Since colors can evoke a physical response from individuals, company’s use all sorts of colors and color combinations to advance their purposes.

A good example of this is the color red, which is said to encourage the feeling of hunger. It also attracts attention, elevates heart rate and gets people excited. Therefore, is it a surprise that fast food chains like McDonalds, Wendy’s and Burger King all use red in their logos? At the time when fast food was becoming popular in American culture, a lot of thought was going into the cognitive and subconscious effects of colors. Confirming studies and business successes encouraged other companies to approach color branding with high regard. This is why American grocery stores like Costco, Jewel-Osco, and Winn-Dixie use the color red in their logos, along with pharmacy stores like Walgreens and CVS.

This branding technique is widely applied. With the competitiveness of the marketplace today, it is necessary for companies to perform some sort of market research, or in depth study of color before unveiling a campaign, logo or new color scheme.

After all, the secret is out. Colors are great marketing tools. Now, allow us to ask; what color defines and promotes you best?

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