Lecture 4: Visual branding | colors and hues Flashcards
What is sensory branding?
the involvement of consumer senses in brand communication
Multi-sensory experiences (i.e. branding or ads that involve more than one sense) are likely to lead to stronger engagement and easier recall (Gains, 2014; Hill, 2008)
Thinking, fast and slow (Kahneman) | What are the 2 different systems?
system 1:
- perceptual, uncontrollable, sensitive to first impressions
- it is heavily influenced by information coming from the senses.
- it is difficult to overcome -> e.g. association
system 2:
- deliberate and slow, explicit, directed by the conscious mind
What is conditioning?
The more often two events are associated (e.g. vision -> interpretation) the more the thought of the first will be associated with the second.
It guides a lot of visual advertisment (e.g. what is the color of…?)(ikea, lidl, mcdonalds)
explain the Pavlovian conditioning
Before conditioning:
- Food + Dog = uncoditioned stimulus and uncoditioned response
- Bell + dog = neutral stimulus and no response
During conditioning:
- Food + bell
After conditioning
- Bell + dog = conditioned stimulus and conditioned response
what is the key idea of evaluative conditioning?
the first association wins over any additional information. Manipulating people’s stimuli will not change their original association
e.g. Bayens et al (1996): children are exposed to a colored drink + the video of someone making a disgusted face -> they dislike it even though it is delicious
e.g. Dickinson & Brown (2007): when exposed to a sugary red drink and a bitter yellow drink, tasters are likely to rank the taste of a bitter red drink as better (although is it’s the same drink)
Bringing color back in marketing – Labrecque et al. 2013
What is the research question?
What is the role of color in the overall marketing of product/service? What do we know about how color is processed?
what is saturation?
How pure a color is
what is lightness?
what is the proportion of white to black within the color
what is temperature?
how warm the pigment is
what do we mean with color as an aesthetic experience?
We can think of color as an aesthetic stimulus, i.e. an input to our taste and our sense of beauty
what is an embodied meaning when talking about colors?
property of the stimulus itself, independent from the context (e.g. red is arousing)
what is a referential meaning when talking about colors?
i.e. learned and dependent on the color
Referential meaning emerges from the network of semantic associations or real-world concepts that are drawn out by exposure to aesthetic stimuli
e.g. the use of green packaging to signal that a product is environmentally friendly. Semantic association is so strong that we say that a product is green to say that it is environmentally friendly
color interpretation is a response to…
biology
learned associations
cultural influences
context
Biological response to color
Color perception is likely a product of evolution and central to our survival
Research supports the idea that colors influence our production and release of hormones, and that exposure to different colors can lead to e.g. agitation vs relaxation
While color perception is an individual experience, associations of colors to specific emotions are a universal experience
Color as learned association
Connectivist models of memory posit that we process words (including colors) through a network e.g. red is a color to use when people have to pay attention
Color is culture
e.g. White
- china = mourning, coldness, sterility, humility, age
- india = rebirth, purtiy, peace, hapiness, perfection
- uk = peace, purity, weddings, angels, hospital
e.g. Red
- china = love, lucky, happy, long life, fertility
- india = ambition, purity, ferility, beauty, wealth
- uk = passion, love, danger, energy, power
context matters
Context is fundamental to understand to a certain color.
The reception of the exact same color can be very different depending on the object (cupcake or blood stain?), on location (in a cafeteria, on the street or in a horror movie?), or the activity it’s connected to (having a snack or playing an arousing videogame?)
color and branding: the various sources of color interpretation are an integral part of branding, e.g.
Design of brand touch-points:
- e.g. a cool colored spa to induce relaxation
- biology + learned associations
Definition of brand identity:
- e.g. establish a color that is associated univocally with your brand
- learned association + context
Suggest discontinuity
- e.g. disrupt previous color scheme to suggest rebranding
- learned association
Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
What was the research question?
how does color influence consumer responses when it comes to healthy/unhealthy food?
Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
Explain the Construal level theory
Aims to describe how concretely or abstractly people think of certain aspects
- High level construals are abstact – and concern concepts that are difficult to define concretely. E.g. they can be things that are distant in space or time, or hypothetical concepts
- Low level construals are concrete – and concern practical things that are easy to quantify. E.g. these can be decision with immediate consequences
Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
With the Construal level theory in mind: Which level of construal can be assigned to Taste and Food being health?
Taste can be considered as a low level construal – gratification is immediate. The decision to eat a tasty food is one of feasibility: can we find such food? Do we want such food?
- emphasize low-level construals, such as physical characteristics, and all other elemetns that can be immediately verified
A food being healthy is a high level construal – the goal (= being healthy) is not immediate. The decision is one of desirability: why consume such food? With what goal?
- focusing on high-level construals, such as long term benefits
Congruency and processing fluency
Messages and images that are consistent are more likely to be persuasive
Congruent information is easier to comprehend and remember because it is more closely resembles how people naturally think about something
Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
What are the conditions?
Condition 1 (AD): health or tasty
Condition 2 (color): colorful or black and white
Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
What are the results?
Significant interaction effects between color and type of message on purchase intention, attitude towards the restaurant and advertisement
- health-based food + B/W = more purchase intention/attitude
- tasty food + colorful = more purchase intention/attitude
Congruence effect!
‘feeling’ right mediates the relationship between color, type of message and attitude towards the ad
One of the unexpected findings is a serial (= mediated) mediation. This means that the experience of congruency is helpful for consumers in order to feel right, which is – in order – helpful to have a better attitude towards the restaurant
in practice:
1. There is a congruency effect of color + type of messaging. This can be attributed to the referential processing of color
2. There is something in FIT that ‘feels right’. Explicitly asking respondents about their feelings around congruency uncovered one explanation for why a certain message works best with a certain color
