By Mark Lee
Your grandparents remember it well. If you’re old enough, maybe you do, too. -- the days of black and white television.
In the 1950s and early 60s, when television was first introduced into American homes, that’s all there was. Drab. Gray. Black and white pictures. That’s how we met Lucy, Marshall Dillon, Andy Griffith and Superman – in their vanilla wardrobes and monotone surroundings, living large beneath a perennially gray sky.
Then
color burst onto the scene. Glorious. Dazzling. Vibrant. Television was suddenly a much more exciting medium. When we saw the first color on our screens, we wanted more. We never looked back or longed for a return to those lackluster, mundane tints of black and gray that seemed only half alive.
About the same time, the old black and white Kodak box camera gave way to the upstart Instamatic with its cartridge of
color film and the miraculous Polaroid that spit out fully developed photos on the spot and brought a new wave of color to the family scrapbook.
Today, we take
color for granted. We live life in color. Colors define us. They stir our imagination. They create an emotional response. Certain colors bring familiarity and comfort. Others stimulate and inspire.
In today’s marketing world, nothing delivers the message like color. As the website ColorCombos notes, many colors have indelibly imprinted themselves in our minds, and even though they speak subliminally, they can steer our attitudes in powerful ways.
Research has shown that 93% of customers value the
color and appearance of a product over any other factor, including its performance. In fact, 85% of shoppers say that color packaging actually determines their purchase. It’s the first thing we remember about a product and the detail we remember the longest, even beyond word descriptions.
The study
Exciting Red and Competent Blue also confirms that purchasing intent is greatly affected by
colors due to the impact they have on how a brand is perceived. This means that colors influence how consumers view the "personality" of the brand. After all, as blogger
Gregory Ciotti points out, who would want to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle if they didn’t get the impression the bikes were rugged and cool?
When it comes to marketing your product or service, let
color make some noise for you in the marketplace. Remember: Red, yellow, blue and green can make the phone ring.
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