Best Colors for Promotional Ads?
- Futech Staff
- Jan 30, 2020
- 3 min read
Are specific colors really going to make a difference in how many people see your "Sale!" poster? They absolutely will!
Look at the three colors below and tell me what one do you look at first.
Your eye most likely went right to the red color didn't it?
This is because our brains interpret the color red as both a warning and as arousing. The vibrant color is eye catching and can subconsciously lure people to look at it. Also, think about the colors you see most throughout your day. Lots of grays and other shades of buildings and roads, blue if the sky is clear, green and maybe orange is you're around nature and depending on the season.
But we don't really see vibrant tones of reds everywhere, except for on "sale" signs/ posters and on warning signs/ labels. The color red is scientifically proven to increase peoples' heart rates while blue colors will lower them. So if you want people to be calm in your store, then maybe paint a wall blue instead of red.
According to the Art Therapy Blog on the emotional effects of color the color red is associated with these thoughts and emotions: love, romance, gentle, warmth, comfort, energy, excitement, intensity, life, and blood. Which are pretty much all attention grabbing thoughts and feelings.
Think of how weird it would be to see a blue "BOGO all Clearance Items!!" poster in a store window. Now imagine the inside of a mall, stores with big glass windows and manikins dressed in the latest trends on display. Picture all the normal sale posters and ads in the windows as well, you will most likely imagine them as red because that is what our brains are so used to seeing. Okay, lastly imagine one of the store has royal blue sale signs in the windows. Does the royal blue sign grab your attention as much as the bright scarlet red signs? It stands out yes, but in a way that makes it less noticeable compared to the red signs.
The main drawback of using colors that contain red hues is people with red and green color blindness will not be able to see the vibrant color. It would appear to be brownish or muddy instead of bright scarlet. Since roughly 4.5% of the entire population (approximately three million people) is colorblind the majority of people will still be able to see the bight red. But this is something to consider if a major part of your target audience are people with color blindness. Make sure the color you use for a campaign for people with this condition is something that will stand out to them. If you are wanting to design your advertisements for people with color blindness, this blog post by Usabilla talks about the different types of color blindness and tips to working with colors while keeping in mind what designs will look like to color blind people.
Blue represents the thoughts and feelings of: calmness, serenity, cold, uncaring, wisdom, loyalty, truth, focused, and unappetizing. According to the same article we used for what the color red represents above. Unlike the emotions that red invokes in people there is nothing about blue that draws people in to it. The fact that red is linked to several desirable and warning emotions (love, blood, romance) and blue is not is one of the reasons it is so attention grabbing.
One color besides red that would work to trigger beneficial emotions would be the color orange. Orange triggers the following emotions and feeling: happiness, energetic, excitement, enthusiasm, warmth, wealth/ prosperity, sophistication, change, and stimulation according to the Art Therapy Blog. The main downfall with using orange would be that in society most sale and promotion signs are all in red, so we are used to seeing them in red and automatically recognize a red sign as either something for sale or a warning.
If you are interested in seeing what colors men and women prefer/ dislike here is a blog post by Hub Spot. This can really help you if you are trying to target a specific gender and when planning not only your advertisements, but also what colors to use for your logo.
Getting familiar with color psychology can be very useful for planning your advertising campaigns and marketing strategies. We hope this blog helps you understand a bit more about color marketing and that colors can really make a difference in your advertising success!
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Sources:
Image 3: https://www.wpclipart.com/signs_symbol/business/sales_banner/sale_ banner_page_blue.png.html
Image 5:
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