However you communicate your organisation’s image and services (through offices, logos, stationery, forms etc.), this is often the most tangible way in which you present your brand to your customer. Although advertising campaigns are a major focus for many marketers (large expenditure has a tendency to focus the mind amazingly) visual communication is changed almost at will. Care is taken to research many aspects of products and services but the visual communication is often (not always) determined internally by the marketing team, possibly in consultation with their advertising agency and design team.
Does it matter? Well, I believe it does and here is an example I have used elsewhere which which almost always ties me up in knots.
Here are the notices you will find at NZ Post boxes and my brain tells me that yes, the blue sign signifies International airmail (a fast service) and the red sign tells me that is for Standard letters (a slow service). At a rational level that works for me but the number of times I have almost put the airmail letters in under the red sign are now past counting. Why? Blue is a slow colour to me and red is the fast colour and I am trying to send my mail by a fast service.
This is not a criticism of NZ Post, they are stuck with international conventions in these matters. However, it is an example of communication in which there is dissonance between the colours used and the written messages. Dissonance in some instances can be advantageous. It can cause the customer to look and look again (great if you need to be noticed in a cluttered category) but where it just causes confusion, it doesn’t benefit any of us.
Brilliant Reflections/Consumer Research Specialists 