Colours in advertising

🎨 It has been said that 80% of our psychological reaction to advertising is based on the colours used.

Each shade triggers a different psychological emotion.

With this in mind, it’s interesting to study how colours used in different industries vary and the affect it has on consumers.

🍲 Restaurants primarily use red, green and blue.

Red symbolises energy and grabs attention - which is especially important in a ever competing fast-food based world.

Green, unsurprisingly, represents health and wellbeing. 🌱

Blue, especially when paired with pink, is used to represent sweetness in food. 🍬

✈️ The aviation industry primarily uses blue, red and yellow, to trigger different reactions.

Blue represents dependability and trustworthiness to consumers.

Red represents warmth, indicating their focus on customer service and hospitality, especially within high-end, luxury aviation brands. Think Qatar airways!

Finally, yellow represents optimism and the joy of travelling and exploring the world.

🚘 The automative industry primarily uses silver, red and blue. It’s interesting that these colours cross over from different industries, but are used to trigger different emotions.

Silver represents luxury and high quality, red represents strength and power (particularly from a speed and durability point of view), and blue represents tranquility and consistency, suggesting that their cars are reliable and worth the investment.

I find it incredibly interesting that these seemingly unimportant features of adverts have a fundamental link to the response from the consumer. Now that you think about it, what colours do you use most in your branding, and why? 🎨