Color Your Meeting

Create a mood, enhance retention and set the stage for success.

Whether you recognize it or not, your event is using color to send powerful emotional signals to attendees, minute by minute and second by second. Are they the messages you want to send? Color choices are too important to be left to chance or whim, but all too often that is exactly how they are made. Planners traditionally build their events around their brands’ or organizations’ colors, but increased demand for attention to every detail, from strategy to design and execution, means that color is one element planners can use more effectively to bring their events to a higher level.

Regardless of the size of the budget, conscious, strategic decisions about color can have a powerful and positive impact on your participants’ experience, their retention of and willingness to act on key messages, and their long-term attitudes toward the organization. Consider the following case study.

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The CEO of an international technology company gave me the following challenge: “Use the upcoming three-day executive management retreat to make my top executives realize it’s time to start thinking differently. I want interaction among the four divisions, and I want the whole company to become more responsive to the marketplace and more interactive with each other. Take all of our left-brained managers and get them thinking inventive, right-brained thoughts, so they approach their business more creatively. I also want them to work together as a team better as a result of attending this event.”

Using the CEO’s objectives, the senior vice president of communications and I worked together to come up with the “big idea” of the event — the central concept that would bring the company’s most senior people together around the CEO’s objectives. That big idea ended up taking the form of a single word, “change,” which drove these annual gatherings for several years. This key word was inspired by the company’s tagline, “Change the nature of things.”

One of the three-day events carried the title “Change the Nature of Things … Now.” Each day’s event centered around the idea of rapid, dynamic changes taking place both internally and externally. Each of the events, and each of the breaks, was built around a single dominant color; with every progression and event component of the meeting, one dominant color quickly replaced another. Red dominated the breakfast environment, with the pre-function area featuring red linens and organic accents on the tables, including apples and red flowers. A separate menu complemented each color assigned to meals and breaks. The red-themed breakfast featured strawberry yogurt, cranberry waffles and raspberries for cereal.

The very first break, of course, changed everything. The dominant color became white, complete with white-clad chair massage therapists behind white folding screens. The afternoon break was green, and featured a miniature golf course. Each hole was keyed to an action word from the day’s session. The driving message behind all these color shifts — change — was crystal clear, because it tied into management’s objective.

Over the course of the event, each of the participants experienced the effects of being immersed in color. Through carefully planned interactions and the various event components, a new collaborative spirit emerged; the use of color and its applications affected behavior, giving attendees permission to think differently. They became engaged in a new way and eagerly discussed the next application. Each work group, represented by a single color, began to change its patterns of interaction: The ever-red engineers, for instance, began to interact with and understand the bold blue dynamics of corporate leadership, which resulted in a new shade, purple, and a new relationship. The same merging of colors and viewpoints took place between other groups.

This color-driven process was astonishing to watch. Preconceived ideas and behaviors based on specific roles and functions began to fade, and a new, vibrant corporate vision based on collaboration emerged.

BOOST YOUR BOTTOM LINE

If you’re looking for a good way to maximize a limited budget or get the most bang for your buck out of a substantial budget, using color is one of the best answers. Using varying shades of a single color is one of the oldest, most cost-effective event design tricks of experienced meetings and events professionals.

Fashion designers know that bright colors can cause a powerful reaction that may distract observers from noticing that the actual design is relatively simple and inexpensive. Sometimes that bold fashion statement is also a cheap fashion statement, although that’s not how the end user sees it. Take a modest garment, choose your colors aggressively, and you can get by with less expense on labor and materials. The same principle holds true for a meetings and events designer. If your budget is tight, you can use a strong, impossible-to-miss color choice to distract people from the absence of elements you can’t afford.

In Philadelphia, there was an annual event, the “Beaux Arts Ball,” hosted by the American Institute for Architects. Each year, I’d look forward to receiving the invitation because the color of the invitation envelope let me know the year’s color theme. In order to attend, you had to dress in colors that matched it. It wasn’t just the décor and collateral that focused on the color themes the designer had selected; it was the guests as well. It’s another example of a powerful, budget-friendly, color-related secret of meetings and events designers. When guests are asked to wear a specific color, the color choices come to life, becoming fluid rather than static. The color becomes a dynamic, self-propelled organism.  This is a simple, compelling way to use color to turn your event into what it really should be — a work of art.

THE GREAT COMMUNICATION TOOL

Think of color as a powerful communication tool, not just a personal preference. It is a vital tool in advertising and public relations; color choices help communicate and reinforce messages, whether in a dynamic print ad, logo graphic and/or branding message. Don’t make color choices impulsively; make them strategically. Show different color combinations to stakeholders and vendors and get their reactions. Which combination best supports the theme and message? Which conflicts with that message? With the venue? With the destination? With the season? What combinations of colors evoke the emotions you want participants to feel?

Dianne Budion Devitt has a 25-year track record as an innovative leader and expert in communication through events and meetings. She is an assistant professor at New York University’s Preston Robert Tisch Center of Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Marketing with a focus on the events curriculum. This article is an excerpt from her forthcoming book, “What Color is Your Event?”  For more information, visit dndgroup.com.

 

 

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The Cultural Associations of Color

Meeting planners must understand the intonations and meaning of color in different cultures. You don’t want to leave yourself open to mistakes like using a color for a celebration that represents death, or insulting someone within the society where your event is being held. Whenever you are working in a
culture that is unfamiliar to you, ask local experts to share their knowledge. What works in Indiana may not work in India; what works in India may not work in Indonesia.

Individual color responses can come from cultural mores; reaction to color is based on powerful learned responses as well as innate physical, mental and involuntary emotional references. In other words, there are strong cultural factors to take into account, and at the same time, everyone may respond in a unique and independent way to the colors you choose for your event. What follows is based on culturally dominant color references in the United States.

Orange

• Instills a sense of energy
• Heightens cheerfulness,social interaction
• Encourages movement, gives vigor

Red
• Stimulates appetite
• Associated with impulse, desire, passion
• Promotes vitality and intensity of experience
• Provokes the urge to achieve results and succeed
• Increases blood pressure and pulse rate
• Warms, enriches

Yellow
• Instills happy, carefree feelings
• Restores personal balance
• Supports optimism
• Improves memory and creative expression
• Promotes a positive attitude

Green
• Promotes optimal use of willpower
• Creates a cool, relaxing,soothing feeling
• Establishes balance and harmony, friendly feelings
• Supports concentration and focus
• Reinforces analysis, precision, accuracy

Blue
• Promotes feelings of peace and calm
• Supports increased sensitivity
• Promotes feelings of loyalty, security, contentment
• Reinforces tradition and lasting values
• Lowers blood pressure and pulse rate
• Suggests safety, trust
• Deep blue may be associated with a conservative worldview

Pink
• Strongly associated with femininity
• Suggests a loving, nurturing, soothing environment
• Encourages healing, resting
• Stimulates intellect and clarity of thought

Violet/Purple
• Supports creativity
• Seen as regal, dignified, royal and powerful in some settings; others may yield notions of being mystical, magical, full of surprises or enchanting
• Lighter shades may suggest an irresponsible or immature nature

Gray
• Strongly associated with neutrality and borders
• Suggests solidity, security, objectivity and professionalism
(Warning: Gray is bland and uninspiring when used alone.)

Black
• Creates an authoritative, somber attitude
• Perceived as mysterious, sophisticated, stylish
• Carries overtones of being, contemporary, sturdy and substantial
• When used effectively, may suggest power and indomitability

Brown
• Suggests a reduced sense of vitality
• Perceived as passive, receptive, sensory
• Suggests desire for family, a home, physical ease, solid roots

White
• Strongly associated with innocence, cleanliness, goodness, simplicity, purity
• In some settings, also may be used to send messages of glamour, sophistication, excellence

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Color By the Numbers

80 percent that color can increase brand recognition, according to a University of Loyola, Md., study

23 million new sales, in dollars, attributed to Heinz’s decision to release a variety of green ketchup — the largest annual sales increase in the company’s history, according to colormatters.com

42 percent that color phone book ads exceed black-and-white ads in motivating people to actually read the ad, according to “Color for Impact,” Jan White, Strathmoor Press, April 1997

-.67 number of seconds the typical black- and-white image sustains interest

2+ number of seconds the typical color image sustains interest

73 percentage increase in comprehension among meeting participants attributed to color choices, according to colormatters.com