This post is Q1, Part 3 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?" Regular readers will be surprised that 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, then going into how humans borrowed marketing concepts from their animal cousins. We continue from there.
What we recognize as commerce – the exchange of goods and services – goes back to at least 10,000 BCE (as mentioned in The First Sale is the Next Page). Town markets encouraged the use of color in marketing and advertising. The trade- or crafts-person who could attract the most people to their tent or wagon had the most customers, regardless of the worthiness of their product or service. How do you attract the most customers? One way is big signs with pretty pictures.Colors and pictures have incredible importance in marketing to all cultures and specifically cultures and societies without written text. How do I let you know I’m a dentist if you can’t read “D E N T I S T” in my title? A big picture of a tooth outside my office.
Let’s add some color to this one example so listeners can begin to get an idea of just how important and subtle color usage can be. Think about that big picture of a tooth outside an office. Split that sign in half. Place a tooth image in the upper left, make the tooth just off-white and show a black spot, a cavity, in the upper right of the tooth. Have red, blue, green and gold arcs over the cavity in that order, red closest to the cavity and gold furthest away and larger than the other color arcs.
Down in the bottom right have a bright, white, shiny tooth, no cavities, gold aura all around it.
That sign tells a story anybody with a toothache will respond to. It makes use of color, color imagery, color iconography, image placement, emotional cueing, everything’s right there for people who want to market something.
(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
- 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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