This post is Q1, Part 2 of AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund interviewing me on NextStage's five year study of the best uses of colors, color imagery and color iconography in marketing. This study contained NextStage original research and research from others. Q1 is "Can you tell me a little about the history of the use of color in marketing? How far back does it go?" I started my response in part 1 and, surprise!, I have a distinctly NextStage take on the subject.
The posts in this arc provide content that didn't make it into the podcast, just as the podcast has content that isn't provided in this arc. You can hear the entire podcast at The Best Way to Use Color and Imagery to Improve Your Marketing. I'll be including a bibliography in the last post in this arc.
I started to answer "Can you tell me a little about the history of the use of color in marketing? How far back does it go?" with Evolutionary Biology, suggesting that the origins of marketing are in the animal world. We continue from there.
So color marketings origins has an evolutionary basis.Once you get a lock on that you extend the metaphor to human society and human systems – cultures, man-made environments, etc. As soon as humans figured out how to create and use pigments, color advertising was in bloom. Prior to that color marketing relied on using flowers and animal hides in our hair, on our loin clothes, whatever.
Our ancestors saw their animal cousins using colors to attract mates, warn off enemies, establish community and territory and said, “Hey, I like that!” and the genie was out of the bottle.
Certain colors were reserved for royalty because they were expensive to produce. Okay. You wear those colors, you’re advertising that you’re a member of the royalty, then the aristocracy, then upper-income America. Other colors became the property of the wise-ones because they represented the Animal Powers. Again, these colors went from wise-ones to wisdom-keepers and here an interesting thing happens; the wise-ones and wisdom-keepers split into two often competing roles in history; religion and science. These roles were combined in a single individual until recently. Their choices of colors to represent their callings still show this to some degree.
(more to follow)
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- The AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund Interviews Joseph Carrabis on Color Use in Marketing arc
- The Best Way to Use Color and Imagery to Improve Your Marketing
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- IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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