Colours In Motion Sdn Bhd

Colour and Marketing

1. Research conducted by the secretariat of the Seoul International Colour Expo 2004 documented the following relationships between colour and marketing:

92.6 percent said that they put most importance on visual factors when purchasing products. Only 5.6 percent said that the physical feel via the sense of touch was most important. Hearing and smell each drew 0.9 percent.

When asked to approximate the importance of colour when buying products, 84.7 percent of the total respondents think that colour accounts for more than half among the various factors important for choosing products.

2. Research reveals people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on colour alone.

3. Research suggests 73% of purchasing decisions are now made in-store. Consequently, catching the shopper’s eye and conveying information effectively are critical to successful sales.

Color and Brand Identity

1. Colour increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent

2. Heinz
Colour influences brand identity in a variety of ways. Consider the phenomenal success Heinz EZ Squirt Blastin’ Green ketchup has had in the marketplace. More than 10 million bottles were sold in the first seven months following its introduction, with Heinz factories working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep up with demand. The result: $23 million in sales attributable to Heinz green ketchup [the highest sales increase in the brand’s history]. All because of a simple colour change.

3. Apple Computer
Apple brought colour into a marketplace where colour had not been seen before. By introducing the colourful iMacs, Apple was the first to say, “It doesn’t have to be beige”. The iMacs reinvigorated a brand that had suffered $1.8 billion of losses in two years. (And now we have the colourful iPods.)

Colour Increases Memory

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture with natural colours may be worth a million, memory-wise. Psychologists have documented that “living colour” does more than appeal to the senses. It also boosts memory for scenes in the natural world.

By hanging an extra “tag” of data on visual scenes, colour helps us to process and store images more efficiently than colourless (black and white) scenes, and as a result to remember them better, too.

Source: The findings were reported in the May 2002 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). “The Contributions of Color to Recognition Memory for Natural Scenes,” Felix A. Wichmann, Max-Planck Institut für Biologische Kybernetik and Oxford University; Lindsay T. Sharpe, Universität Tübingen and University of Newcastle; and Karl R. Gegenfurtner, Max-Plank Institut für Biologische Kybernetik and Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen; Journal of Experimental Psychology – Learning, Memory and Cognition, Vol 28. No.3., 5-May-2002

Colour Engages and Increases Participation

Ads in colour are read up to 42% more often than the same ads in black and white (as shown in study on phone directory ads).
Source: White, Jan V., Colour for Impact, Strathmoor Press, April, 1997

Colour Informs

Colour can improve readership by 40 percent (1), learning from 55 to 78 percent (2), and comprehension by 73 percent (3).

(1)”Business Papers in Colour. Just a Shade Better”, Modern Office Technology, July 1989, Vol. 34, No. 7, pp. 98-102
(2) Embry, David, “The Persuasive Properties of Colour”, Marketing Communications, October 1984.
(3) Johnson, Virginia, “The Power of Colour”, Successful Meetings, June 1992, Vol 41, No. 7, pp. 87, 90.

Colour Attracts Attention

Tests indicate that a black and white image may sustain interest for less than two-thirds a second, whereas a colored image may hold the attention for two seconds or more. (A product has one-twentieth of a second to halt the customer’s attention on a shelf or display.)

People cannot process every object within view at one time. Therefore, colour can be used as a tool to emphasize or de-emphasize areas.

A Midwestern insurance company used colour to highlight key information on their invoices. As a result, they began receiving customer payments an average of 14 days earlier.

Other Research

92% Believe colour presents an image of impressive quality
90% Feel colour can assist in attracting new customers
90% Believe customers remember presentations and documents better when colour is used
83% Believe colour makes them appear more successful
81% Think colour gives them a competitive edge
76% Believe that the use of colour makes their business appear larger to clients
Source: Conducted by Xerox Corporation and International Communications Research from February 19, 2003 to March 7, 2003, margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

Colour and the Senses

General facts about sensory input and human beings:

Although the olfactory sense was a human being’s most important source of input in the pre-historic era, sight became our most important means of survival. Furthermore, as hunters and gatherers in the early days of our evolution, we experienced a variety of colours and forms in the landscape. This has become part of our genetic code.

In our current state of evolution, vision is the primary source for all our experiences. (Current marketing research has reported that approximately 80% of what we assimilate through the senses, is visual.)

Our nervous system requires input and stimulation. (Consider the effects of solitary confinement in jails.) With respect to visual input, we become bored in the absence of a variety of colours and shapes. Consequently, colour addresses one of our basic neurological needs for stimulation.

Color and Visual Experiences

“It is probably the expressive qualities (primarily of colour but also of shape) that spontaneously affect the passively receiving mind, whereas the tectonic structure of pattern (characteristic of shape, but found also in colour) engages the actively organizing mind.”
Source: Arnheim, Rudolf, Art and Visual Perception, University of California Press, Berkely, 1974, p. 336