White Paper Pundit

When it comes to the use of color in white paper design, most businesses treat the issue as an afterthought after the primary content has been developed.

While color in support of corporate guidelines is critically important, its use with design and layout is viewed as less strategic. With smaller firms that don’t have an internal creative department, color selection is often left up to an external creative consultant without concern to the indirect messages that color may convey.

But with short attention readers that are accustomed to short online media messages, color has now become a more important attribute that can either create greater reader engagement, or create a negative impression of the company and/or brand.

According to the book, “The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Business“, author Jay Lipe references a survey from ColorCom where over 30,000 graphic professionals provided input on the meaning behind color choices. Here are some of the results from that survey:

Also, don’t forget the indirect messages behind the standard ’stoplight’ colors:

What brands do you associate with these colors? Here are three you may recognize:

These color choices are no accident. Organizations carefully choose their colors based on the indirect messages they convey. The colors you choose for your white paper will also convey a particular message. If you choose a color that doesn’t compliment your solution or brand message, you will create greater reader confusion and detachment.

Here are three white paper examples taken from my weekly Friday FREE White Paper List, where the colors that were selected did not serve their sponsor’s intended marketing message very well:

Now compare these examples to three other white papers that used warmer, more inviting colors:

The use of warmer colors in these examples engages short attention business readers and builds a stronger incentive to download the white paper to read what’s inside. So, carefully consider your white paper colors in your next project if you want to build greater reader affinity that will generate exceptional results for your marketing campaigns.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Design & Format, Social Media, WP Components, WP Examples, WP Marketing, short attention marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.