Advertising Effect of Color

Overview

Objectives/Goals This project investigated the effects of subliminal messaging by using color. I created three commercials advertising red licorice with three different color schemes (red, white, and brown). I wanted to see if the color scheme had a bearing on the amount of children that responded to my commercial clip. I anticipated that the white scheme would be the most effective in persuading students to get licorice, whereas the brown scheme would be the least effective. Methods/Materials Nine fourth period junior high classes were shown either a red, white, or brown color-schemed clip advertising licorice. All factors (spokesperson, film footage, music, etc.) were kept the same throughout each clip. During the clip, I told students to come to my science classroom at lunchtime and there they would receive a free piece of licorice. I recorded the number of students who saw the clip and came to the classroom in my logbook for further analysis. Results My results showed that my white clip had the largest effect on students, though brown came in as a close second with red trailing in last. Proportionally, 8% respondents came from the red category, 29% came from the brown category, and 30% came from the white category. Conclusions/Discussion When looking back over my project, I came to the realization that my results were inconclusive. As I planned my project, there were several factors I had not foreseen that tainted my results. A few were lack of teacher cooperation, word of mouth, and technical difficulties that resulted in me having to be present during the presentation of some of the clips. Despite of the mishaps, I am fully prepared to replicate this project in high school where I will make the necessary adjustments in order to prevent problems from arising that I encountered my first time around. I am also going to test a larger sample of people in order to disaggregate my data by gender and age. This data is important because it can be applied to twenty-first century technology considering that people today use more visual media than they do telephones or posted mail.

Competition history

• CSEF 2010 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0633

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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