Samenvatting

Since the dawn of advertising in the Netherlands there have been much changes. Advertising has become an essential tool for any type of organization (Rakker, 2009). Nowadays, grasping the attention of an audience is becoming more and more difficult (Libbenga, 2013). Mark Jetten (2014) said “We barely get any time or money to do research.” Therefore, I have decided to save them time by writing this thesis. I have analysed new and old theories and literature, and created a comprehensive report on colour and emotion in advertising. This thesis should help advertising agencies influence their target audience in a more effective manner through visual aspects. In the current times, the favourite methods that are used to appeal to audience’s emotions are: the Social Proof method, the Scarcity Effect, and the Fear Appeal method (Ford, 2013). According to LeDoux (2002) it has been widely accepted by many that emotions have an essential part in driving people’s decisions, whether it is a decision on purchasing items, or watching television. The audience will be more willing to engage and share once they feel a strong emotional appeal, preferably positive, towards an advertisement, which will also increase their appeal to a certain brand (Henning, 2013). Therefore, advertisers increasingly aim to evoke emotional responses rather that presenting factual statements (DeJesus, 2007). In order to evoke emotion, however, one first needs to grab the attention of the audience. Therefore, colour is the first step. Each colour that the audience sees directly affects their hormones, which in their turn control the audience’s emotions and responses. (Wright, 2008b) A study from Millward Brown (2012) has shown that colour influences the human memory performance by increasing the attention level. In an example case (Appendix E), a company used the colour red for an important button on their website, which maximize the clicks. In Appendix E there is also an example of a use of emotions in order to increase sales by beauty brand Dove (Millward Brown, 2009). Below you can find the simplified version of the theory that I have created, which is meant to guide Dutch advertising agencies in choosing the most effective colour for their campaign or project. This theory has been confirmed by literature as well as own research through a questionnaire amongst 108 people who are part of the target audience. Thus, if one succeeds in using the correct colour and evokes a certain emotion with this colour, it will be able to better influence its target audience. Nonetheless, if one chooses to use this theory for a campaign or project, I would advice to conduct further research in order to be completely certain the outcome is right.