The Color of the Medium is the Message

Case studies of how corporations handle crises are a staple at business schools. Johnson & Johnson’s handling of its cyanide-tainted Tylenol in 1982, for example, is often taught as a classic in good crisis management. But if there are lessons to be learned from best practices, there are certainly lessons to be learned for companies that do the wrong thing.

Headlines filled with negative corporate news pique the interest of Marina Puzakova, assistant professor of marketing. Puzakova has found fertile scholarly ground studying how people respond to negative news, such as product failures, recalls or malfeasance.

She also has pursued a related line of intellectual inquiry by studying the effect of colors, specifically red and blue, on consumer perception.

After two years of experiments involving more than 800 participants, Puzakova and three other researchers from Drexel University, Texas A&M University and Monmouth University found those colors can have a major impact on consumer perception.

Puzakova hit on the idea several years ago as she was reviewing the literature in the field of color psychology, but found little on the use of color in corporate messaging of negative information. People associate the color red with feelings of danger, threats and mistakes, and blue with openness, peace and tranquility, previous studies showed. So she formulated a hypothesis: "If red is greatly associated with mistakes and threats, probably presenting information about failure could somehow influence consumers’ more negative reactions to the firm or to the brand."

The project, which involved four experiments, took place between 2012 and 2014. In one, participants were asked to read a fictitious news story about a new laptop battery that drained too rapidly, then were presented with an online news page that included headlines that the fictitious company’s chief executive officer was addressing the stakeholders about the defective product. It included a photo of the CEO seated against either a red or blue background.

The results? People who saw the negative information followed by the presentation against a red background had a more negative attitude toward the CEO and the company, Puzakova said. Similarly, people who saw the presentation against a blue background had a more favorable attitude.

The study also looked at the effect of color in a company’s response. If a CEO offered remedial action, participants felt more favorable about the company and its CEO and were more open to additional information when the response was delivered against a blue background, Puzakova said.