Saw this great article in The New York Times ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/us/30paint.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me
...and it made me smile. Obviously, some of the names for paint colours they cite – “Metro at 5”, “Weekend in the Country”, “Dead Salmon” – are hard not to laugh at, especially when you realise that people are actually paid to witter on and on, go to movies and over-emote their way to these names.
But there’s a grain of truth in here too: colour does have deep roots in the subconscious memory and can access a whole bunch of emotions that $100m worth of narrative advertising simply couldn’t. A study we did about 10 years ago found colour to be enormously evocative and emotional, connecting at an instinctive level with people – male and female – in ways even they sometimes didn’t understand themselves. One dusty shade moved a young woman to tears – it was the precise colour of her grandmother’s faded old housework skirt, the one she used to hang on to as a child, and it triggered a thousand happy memories of a time (and a person) now long gone but not forgotten.
Only smell is more powerful at evoking deep wells of memory. Combine the two, colour and smell - the colour of a sunny summer meadow with the gentle time-released scent of freshly cut grass, say - and brands could well be on to unlocking a whole new category.
Paint? No, it’s Liquid Emotion.
(Somebody get me Dulux on the phone!)
We may laugh at the marketing w*nk used to create and sell it but, in spite of ourselves, we know it works.
Have an orange day!
Greig
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