Color For Profit. Louis Cheskin

to buy her old brand, the first love. She acts according to the initial “conditioned reflex.” But after a number of times in the store, the pleasing colors and images on the new package have impressed themselves. Unconsciously, she picks up the new brand in the attractive container. The repetitious effect of the attractive colors and images has produced a new “conditioned reflex.”

Packaging Versus Art

      When a number of new package designs for soap were put before a group of women and they were asked, “Which package do you like best?” many opinions were given. Unfortunately, these opinions were taken to mean that they were indicative of what the women would do when they went to the grocery store. Actually, what the researcher had succeeded in getting was an attitude to an artistic creation, not to a soap wrapper.

      When buying soap the women’s standards and concepts of good design or art will play no part. In the store the woman is confronted with a multitude of color and image sensations, none of which is consciously appraised on the basis of aesthetic standards.

      The following two tests demonstrate the difference between what people say they like and what they actually want.

      The tests were to determine which of two package designs for face powder was the more effective. One design was ornate and in five colors (a deep and a light blue, a deep red, pink and black); the other was simple and in two colors (pink and blue-green).

      In the first test we asked, “Which of the two designs do you like better for this product?” In the second test we asked a group of women, of the same social and economic status, to choose one of six proposed names for the product and offered the winners boxes of face powder as prizes. Then we asked in which package they wanted to receive their prizes. (The women in this group were made to believe that we were testing the product name; they had no idea that the package design was actually being tested. This kept the focus of the conscious mind on the product name and not on the design.)

      The ornate design won out in the “Which do you like?” test. In the “Which package should we send you” test, the simple design pulled far ahead of the ornate one, more than three to one. No information is more important to market researchers than the results of these two tests which showed that the ornate design was the favorite where the conscious attention was on the design; whereas the simple design won out where the conscious attention was not on the design of the package.

      Numerous tests on an unconscious level have demonstrated that in the store the typical shopper is not even aware that boxes and labels are designed. Therefore, when you ask for opinions about a package design you are asking the person to become conscious of the design and to take on the role of an art critic but you are not at all getting a buying situation in a store.

      For those of us who have studied the history of the fine arts it is not difficult to see why most people consciously choose intricate instead of simple designs, although unconsciously they generally react more favorably to simple art and pattern.

      Our aesthetic concepts are still dominated by traditional craft standards and, therefore, the more intricate the design the finer we believe it is. The masses of people associate intricacy and great detail with great art. To the great majority, the more intricate the design, the more beautiful it is, and also the greater is the artist who created it.

      In the routine of daily life, however, when they are not conscious of art, people try to escape intricacy whenever they can. Complicated patterns like complicated problems and situations are normally avoided when they are not associated with aesthetics or beauty.

      We have conclusive evidence that package designs should not be judged in terms of art if they are intended to serve as marketing tools. The package design is composed of images and colors each of which produces a specific sensation, favorable or unfavorable. Packages have no relation to fine art standards or aesthetic concepts and rarely are they a conscious concern of the shopper.

Action-Motivating and Non-Action-Motivating Attitudes

      An expressed attitude may or may not be action-motivating. I may declare a friendly attitude toward tea, for example, and yet not want to buy tea at all. My friendly attitude, or rather my lack of unfriendly attitude toward tea, may be solely due to the fact that I do not believe tea to be poisonous. When I go to the store I buy coffee. Consumers often express a friendly attitude toward a certain brand of coffee and yet, at the store, they buy other brands of coffee.

      You may have a friendly attitude toward a billboard. That does not necessarily mean that you will be attracted by this billboard or that it will influence you to buy the product to which the billboard directs you.

      The following study shows that expressed attitudes are not necessarily action-motivating. A group of about seventy business and professional men were shown a number of signs designed for an oil company together with signs of three other oil companies. They were asked which of the signs they liked best. One of the old signs received forty-six votes. An investigation later showed that of the forty-six men twenty-one did not buy any one particular oil or gas and of the remaining twenty-five only four men used the gas sold by the company whose sign they admired.

      This investigation demonstrated that just because the men liked the sign did not mean that they bought the oil. The sign did not convince them that the oil it advertised was good or economical. They merely liked the sign itself as a work of art, independent of the purpose of the sign.

      Another excellent demonstration of the difference between what people say and what they do or want is a test conducted with head scarves, popularly known as babushkas, in six distinctly different designs and color schemes. Eighty-five club women were asked “Which of the six kerchieves is in your opinion the most beautiful?” Sixty-six chose No. 6. Then a product identifying contest was conducted with the same group of women and the kerchieves were offered as prizes. Out of the sixty-six women only nine wanted the No. 6 design for which they had voted only about one hour before. Obviously, what the women said was the most beautiful and what they actually wanted differed greatly.

      It is not difficult to see that when the women were asked for an opinion of the scarves, they did not associate the scarves as part of their wardrobes but merely as abstract entities, as mere designs. When the scarves were offered as prizes and brought about a possibility of possession of the article, the scarf was looked at by each woman in relation to her wardrobe and her complexion. The first expressed attitude was not action-motivating on the part of the fifty-seven women out of the sixty-six. Only when choice had real personal meaning to them did the club women express a true choice.

Determining the Character of a Design

      What management wants in a package design is an effective marketing tool and this cannot be achieved by having artists create a half-dozen or more comprehensive designs and then making a choice of one out of the group. Such procedure, although commonly practiced, is worthless and contributes to numerous marketing failures.

      Even if we should find out which of a half-dozen designs is the best marketing medium, we still do not know how effective a selling medium the best design of the six really is. We know only that it may be better than any of the other five designs. We do not know how poor each of the other designs is, nor do we know what makes one design better than the other, nor whether the best design can be improved and made a still more effective marketing medium.

      When a scientist finds an unknown animal in the jungle, his objective is to learn to which species it belongs. He examines the anatomy, the skull, mouth structure; he studies the food and mating habits. From this information he can classify the animal. We must use a similar scientific approach if marketing research is to be a reliable tool.

      A package design or a magazine ad generally consists of a rectangular three-dimensional shape, a geometric or realistic two dimensional image on the front of the package, type faces, pattern