What’s in a Color: Creating an Emotional Impact to Incite Action (This article originally appeared in DOCUMENT’s Jan./Feb. eNotes)

by Shell Haffner, manager, Desktop Product Marketing Team, Xerox Corporation In a sluggish economy, businesses of all sizes are squarely focused on two things: sales and productivity. But in the era of information overload, the burden is on the consumer to distill meaningful information from the noise, including the nearly 3,000 marketing messages the average person is exposed to every day. Employees face a similar challenge as many struggle to stay focused on priorities amidst constantly refreshing social media feeds, a 24/7 news cycle and phones that serve as a pocket-sized entertainment system. For bottom-line oriented businesses, the answer to both of these challenges may lie in color. In a color survey[1] conducted by Xerox Corporation, 69 percent of people said that they understand new ideas better when presented in color. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed say they can find information faster if it’s presented in color.