Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [150]
Seven non-experimental studies compared ads with photos against those with art. People paid more attention to photos in five of the studies, and the other two were equal (Finn 1988). For example, an analysis of 1,070 Life magazine ads found that photographs led to higher readership scores than did other types of illustrations (Diamond 1968).
An analysis of non-experimental data on 376 ads in a Japanese newspaper found that ads with photographs had much higher readership scores than those that used other illustrations (Yamanaka 1962).
7.11. Informative color
Colors are often key aspects of products, such as clothing and automobiles. Color can also provide information that enables customers to quickly recognize a product from the packaging. Kodak’s use of yellow is a good example.
7.11.1. Use color to provide information
Informative colors are those that help to describe features of a product (e.g., the color of a suit or car), to identify the brand, or to support emotion. For example, warm colors (red, yellow, and orange) appear larger than cool colors (green, blue, and violet), enabling firms and advertisers to use colors to emphasize product size— such as a hotel room. Colors affect information and emotions, in ways that differ from culture to culture. For example, in the United States, the following meanings apply: Green—go, on, safe; Yellow—caution, warning, warm; Red—stop, hot, danger, loss, emergency; Blue—cold, off.
Advertisers have long used colors to add emotion. Color has physiological effects on people—and also on animals. For example, when mink were exposed to daylight filtered through a deep pink glass, they became aggressive and vicious. Their sex life was also affected; only 86 percent of the mink became pregnant after three attempts to mate. In contrast, when the daylight was filtered through a deep blue plastic, the minks became friendly and easy to handle and all females in the blue light became pregnant after the first mating (Ott 1974).
When humans are exposed to red light, they have higher blood pressure, faster respiration, more muscular activation, more frequent eye blinks, and more rapid brain waves. These reactions are similar across cultures. It seems that those in the “sex industry” knew what they were doing when they marketed their services in red-light districts. In case you need evidence on this, a series of five lab experiments found that men rated women pictured on a red background as more sexually attractive than those pictured on a white background (Elliot and Niesta 2008).
High chroma and brightness can increase liking and excitement. High chroma is shiny, vivid, and pure (which means that there is no white or black).
A summary of prior research concluded that in general, light colors are better remembered and more preferred than dark colors. They reached similar conclusions for bright versus dull colors, and for primary colors (e.g., red, yellow, blue) versus secondary colors (Skorinko et. al 2006).
Some advertisers use colors to imply that a product possesses certain qualities. In the United States, false implications drawn from color can cause problems for advertisers if the ad calls attention to the claim verbally. For example, in 1971, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged two manufacturers of denture cleaners to provide documentation for their claim that “The green shows speed as powerful cleaning bubbles scrub dentures fast.” The manufacturer could have avoided the problem by saying nothing about the green (Cohen 1972).
When involvement is high, the use of a number of colors might interfere with the customer’s ability to think about the product, because people might seek the meaning of the colors or be influenced by irrelevant emotions.
Ads should avoid using color when it provides the only cue for interpretation. For example, do not tell people to “follow the safety directions in red.” Consider that about 12 percent of men are color-blind. Also, people might make B&W copies of an