The Impact of Ad Background Color on Brand Personality and Brand Preferences

Past research across a variety of disciplines has established a relationship between color and emotions, attitudes, and behavior. The primary purpose of this experimental study is to explore the impact of background color in print advertisements on brand image/personality and brand preferences (e.g., brand attitudes). For example, it is expected that viewers ’ perceptions of a brand’s image/personality will reflect the image associated with the ad’s background color (e.g., a brand will be judged to be more vibrant and exciting when it is advertised with a red background versus a more calming blue background). I utilize Aaker’s (1997) five-dimension theoretical framework, composed of personality traits (i.e., Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness) determined to be relevant to both human and brand personality and generalizable across product categories. In the interest of completeness, the impact of color on brand personality beliefs and the more traditional attribute-based types of beliefs is tested here. Findings indicate that background color in advertisements impact the advertised brand’s “personality ” and brand attribute perceptions: for example, the brand advertised with the red background was perceived as being more sophisticated and more exciting than the brand advertised with the blue background. In addition, altering an ad’s background color rendered a different set of brand personality and brand attribute beliefs salient. The Impact of Color page