Lecture 4: Visual branding | colors and hues

Question 1

What is sensory branding?

Answer 1

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)

Question 2

Thinking, fast and slow (Kahneman) | What are the 2 different systems?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What is conditioning?

Answer 3

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)

Question 4

explain the Pavlovian conditioning

Answer 4

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

Question 5

what is the key idea of evaluative conditioning?

Answer 5

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)

Question 6

Bringing color back in marketing – Labrecque et al. 2013
What is the research question?

Answer 6

What is the role of color in the overall marketing of product/service? What do we know about how color is processed?

Question 7

what is saturation?

Answer 7

How pure a color is

Question 8

what is lightness?

Answer 8

what is the proportion of white to black within the color

Question 9

what is temperature?

Answer 9

how warm the pigment is

Question 10

what do we mean with color as an aesthetic experience?

Answer 10

We can think of color as an aesthetic stimulus, i.e. an input to our taste and our sense of beauty

Question 11

what is an embodied meaning when talking about colors?

Answer 11

property of the stimulus itself, independent from the context (e.g. red is arousing)

Question 12

what is a referential meaning when talking about colors?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

color interpretation is a response to…

Answer 13

biology
learned associations
cultural influences
context

Question 14

Biological response to color

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Color as learned association

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Color is culture

Answer 16

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

Question 17

context matters

Answer 17

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?)

Question 18

color and branding: the various sources of color interpretation are an integral part of branding, e.g.

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
What was the research question?

Answer 19

how does color influence consumer responses when it comes to healthy/unhealthy food?

Question 20

Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
Explain the Construal level theory

Answer 20

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

Question 21

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?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Congruency and processing fluency

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
What are the conditions?

Answer 23

Condition 1 (AD): health or tasty
Condition 2 (color): colorful or black and white

Question 24

Food branding and color – Wang et al. 2020
What are the results?

Answer 24

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