The effect of an advertisement’s colour on emotions evoked by an ad and attitude towards the ad: the moderating role of the optimal stimulation level

Despite its importance surprisingly little is known about the influence of colour in advertising. This paper studies the effects of the three components of an ad’s colour (hue, saturation and lightness) on the emotions it evokes and on attitudes towards it.

The effect of an advertisement's colour on emotions evoked by an ad and attitude towards the ad: the moderating role of the optimal stimulation level

Marie-Christine LichtléIAE de Dijon (University of Burgundy)

Colour can be used as a marketing tool to influence individuals. Research into the effect of the colour variable has been carried out in numerous fields, including physics, art, mythology, anthropology, history, architecture, psychology, philosophy and medicine. In marketing, researchers have studied product colour as a brand attribute (Eckman et al. 1990), packaging colour (Favre 1969; McNeal 1973; Favre & Norember 1979; Kojina...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands