Next year, Kermit the Frog may be singing, "It IS easy being green." He'll be delighted to know that Pantone has selected Emerald Green as the Color of the Year for 2013, and will feel right at home on its Pinterest board devoted to the exact shade of green: 17-5641.

For over a decade, Pantone, a company long associated with setting color standards in printing, has been selecting a "Color of the Year." According to the company, "Pantone quite literally combs the world looking for color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections, hot new artists, popular travel destinations and other socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from technology, availability of new textures and effects that impact color, and even upcoming sports events that capture worldwide attention."

So why is 2013 a Green kind of year? "Green is the most abundant hue in nature — the human eye sees more green than any other in the spectrum," said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. "Symbolically, Emerald brings a sense of clarity, renewal and rejuvenation, which is so important in today's complex world. This powerful and universally appealing tone translates easily to both fashion and home interiors."Continue reading...

Does your child's face light up when you mention the possibility of visiting a fast-food establishment for dinner? Well, apparently, their brain does, too. 

According to new research of MRI scans of children’s appetite and pleasure centers in their brains, the logos of such fast-food giants as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King causes those areas to “light up,” according to research by University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas Medical Center as cited by London's The Independent.

Logos that aren’t food-related did not elicit the same response from the 10- to 14-year-olds involved in the study. Researchers fear that the marketers have “tapped into the 'reward' areas of the brain which develop before youngsters learn self-control,” the paper notes.

The research project will be published in the Oxford journal Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN), which notes in its abstract: "Branding and advertising have a powerful effect on both familiarity and preference for products, yet no neuroimaging studies have examined neural response to logos in children."

“Research has shown children are more likely to choose those foods with familiar logos,” commented study leader, psychologist Dr. Amanda Bruce, whose B.R.A.I.N. Lab (short for Behavioral Rewards And Incentives Network) conducted the Pediatric fMRI Logo Study. “That is concerning because the majority of foods marketed to children are unhealthy.”Continue reading...

Breaking: consumers are not the most reliable source of what grabs their attention and influences their shopping choices. So marketers are using sophisticated eye-tracking technology to measure shopper response to different products and design.

That's why P&G, Kimberly-Clark, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever are just a few of the CPG giants using three-dimensional computer simulations of both designs and store layouts with the eye-tracking technology to deduce how to improve sales.

“Eye-tracking gives you the only valid way of measuring shelf visibility, because it’s fully a behavioral measure," Scott Young, president of Perception Research Services, told Packaging World. "If you ask consumers attitudinally what they saw on shelf, you’re not going to get accurate information, because recall is biased by brand familiarity. If a shopper sees a soda shelf, she will ‘remember’ seeing Coke and Pepsi, even if they weren’t actually on the shelf.”Continue reading...

This week, neuromarketing firm and Nielsen partner, Neurofocus, unveiled what it's calling the world's first wireless full-brain EEG-tracking headset, designed to capture brainwave activity, at the 75th Annual Advertising Research Foundation conference. Attendees were invited to its booth to demo the product (right) and chat with NeuroFocus CEO, Dr. A.K. Pradeep.
 
NeuroFocus, one of the leading neuromarketing experts, is already doing intriguing work for some of the world’s top companies. Pradeep was at the ARF event in New York to showcase Mynd and talk up his firm's methods, which he says are the answer to the flaws that many marketers find in focus groups.

The device took three years to produce, and as Pradeep describes it, the company already has ambitious plans for its use—from consumers donning the headset at home, perhaps using it to sync their mood with their TV viewing options, to medical-related research.Continue reading...

It's understandable that marketing folks would have branding on the brain. But do consumers? Or more to the point, are scientific methods of analyzing brain waves, eye movements, heart rate and other physical indicators a more accurate form of market research?Continue reading...