Sunday, February 11, 2018

Fast food color logo science: fake news, or real?

On Saturday morning, I found myself at the Sonic on Placentia Avenue in east Fullerton, California.

This file is copyrighted. It will be used in a way that qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.

I only mention the location because people familiar with the site know that this Sonic is near an El Pollo Loco, an In-N-Out, and a McDonald's.


The person who was with me pointed out that there was a lot of red and yellow in many fast food logos, and we were able to think of many other examples of fast food logos that used one or both of these colors. Supposedly there was a well-supported reason for use of those colors.

After returning home from Fullerton, I began consulting the research on the use of red and yellow in fast food logos - and was able to find a lot of statements, but no real research. Here is an example.

Looking at the positive psychology qualities of red & yellow in relation to the fast food industry, red triggers stimulation, appetite, hunger, it attracts attention. Yellow triggers the feelings of happiness and friendliness.

When you combine red and yellow it’s about speed, quickness. In, eat and out again.

Yellow is also the most visible colour in daylight, which is why the McDonald’s M can be seen from a far distance.


Evidence for these assertions came from studies that were conducted in...oh, none was cited.

OK, the text above was written by a marketer, and I know all about marketers. :)

But this post on the psychology of color should cite some evidence, right?

Red – Creates a sense of urgency, which is good for clearance sales. Encourages appetite, thus is frequently used by fast-food chains. Physically stimulates the body, raising blood pressure and heart rate, associated with movement, excitement, and passion....

Orange & Yellow – Cheerful colors that promote optimism. Yellow can make babies cry, while orange can trigger a sense of caution. Used to create a sense of anxiety that can draw in impulsive buyers and window shoppers.


Again, rather than saying that "red means this because these n studies have proven this association," this article seemed like a restatement of conventional wisdom. "I know this is true, because a friend of a friend told me this."

Right, and Craig Shergold still needs cards.

Color me unimpressed with the "authoritative" sources on fast food color branding that I had read to this point.

Then I encountered a paper by Andrew J. Elliot entitled Color and psychological functioning: a review of theoretical and empirical work. I skipped to the empirical section, and encountered this statement by Elliot:

Empirical work on color and psychological functioning dates back to the late 19th century (Féré, 1887; see Pressey, 1921, for a review). A consistent feature of this work, from its inception to the past decade, is that it has been fraught with major methodological problems that have precluded rigorous testing and clear interpretation (O’Connor, 2011). One problem has been a failure to attend to rudimentary scientific procedures such as experimenter blindness to condition, identifying, and excluding color deficient participants, and standardizing the duration of color presentation or exposure. Another problem has been a failure to specify and control for color at the spectral level in manipulations. Without such specification, it is impossible to know what precise combination of color properties was investigated, and without such control, the confounding of focal and non-focal color properties is inevitable (Whitfield and Wiltshire, 1990; Valdez and Mehrabian, 1994).

Elliot did note, however, that the situation is improving, and cited a Lauren Labrecque / George Milne paper as an example. The authors conducted four empirical tests, the first of which specifically controlled for hue:

To examine the relationship between hue, which refers to the wavelength of a color and what a person typically notes when describing a color (e.g., red, blue, yellow), and brand personality in the context of logo design, we hold the value and saturation levels constant across colors. Although some logos use multiple colors, we rely on single colors to isolate the color effects.

Since you obviously can't use a real multi-colored logo for such a test, the authors created their own logo. They then conducted a study with a precisely-measured group of undergraduate students, and came up with these results.


So what does the study say about red and yellow? It turns out that these colors, as well as orange, display a positive association with excitement. (Yellow is also associated with sincerity in this study.) This seems to fit our assumptions, since one can claim that seeing the "golden arches" makes us excited.

But what of ruggedness? Some of these fast food places have offerings that appeal to a rugged personality, someone who would growl for a Double Double with Animal Fries. But look at the numbers - red has practically no correlation with ruggedness, and orange and yellow are negatively correlated with ruggedness.

So what color exhibits a high positive correlation with ruggedness?

Green.

Yeah, when I go to Starbucks and order my chai latte, I'm more rugged than the Marlboro Man.


Sophie G., via the Yelp entry for the Mansfield, Texas Starbucks

Going back to Elliot, he has performed a lot of research on color, but his most famous bit of research has nothing to do with Animal Fries. The work that merited mention in Wikipedia was a study co-authored by Elliot, Women's use of red clothing as a sexual signal in intersexual interaction.

Well, Dr. Elliot, I still think that the Hot Dog on a Stick uniform is ugly.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Revisiting the Shotwell's / Google Glass controversy, several years and one ocean later

(BIG OL' DISCLAIMER THINGIE: I AM EMPLOYED IN THE BIOMETRIC/SECURITY INDUSTRY. VIEWS ARE MY OWN.)

Actually, I was employed in the biometric/security industry back in 2013, but video didn't mean that much to me in those days. (It does now.) So it was primarily due to curiosity that I wrote the post Sometimes it's OK to be a Luddite (Shotwell's vs. Scoble). Here are a few relevant points regarding that 2013 post:

First, at the time, Google Glass was a big thing.

Second, there was (and is) a bar called Shotwell's Bar in San Francisco, just up the road from Google headquarters. Therefore, there was a pretty good chance that a Google Glass-wearing person might wander into Shotwell's Bar.

Third, it turns out that this did happen, prompting a Facebook post from Shotwell's that wasn't that complimentary of Google Glass.

This resulted in an Atlantic article and some angry comments from Robert Scoble - whom, you may recall, was photographed in a shower wearing Google Glass, referencing his previous book Naked Conversations. Here is a line drawing representation of that moment, taken from a patent application.


Excerpt from Robert Scoble's angry comments:

[S]oon I'll be directed to the best bars by the Google Glass and if the bartender doesn't like me wearing them I'll change the review so that people get guided to go somewhere else!

So, if you are a bartender, you better watch out. Those of us who will be wearing Google Glass are often influencers, rich, and willing to change OUR behavior when it comes to spending our money, time, attention. Hint: I tip well and drink a lot of expensive Scotch (although I'm trying to cut down, which the Glass will help me with too).


So what happened after 2013? Well, Google Glass didn't become the next great consumer item. Robert Scoble stopped drinking, but didn't use Google Glass to do it.

Oh, and one more thing happened. China happened.

Chinese police have begun using glasses equipped with facial recognition-enabled cameras to spot fugitives traveling through train stations. Though Chinese police have said the glasses will spot people using fake IDs or traveling to avoid a warrant, many are concerned about China using the tech to target political advocates and minorities. China has been accused of using face recognition tech to “fence in” the Muslim Uighur minority in northwestern Xinjiang.

I won't get into my personal views about this whole thing, because I have a story to tell. It's a story that you won't hear anywhere else. (Blatant hint.)

Because you see, Tom Madonna, owner of Shotwell's Bar in San Francisco, reportedly has a sister - Lady Madonna. Using some San Francisco connections, Lady Madonna traveled to Shanghai to open up an East Coast (Chinese East Coast) version of Shotwell's Bar. She's managed to make ends meet so far, but she ran into trouble one day when two undercover police officers walked into the bar.

Lady Madonna offered this comment on Chinese social media.

Two people just walked into the bar. Looked me square in the eye, and acting as if everything was normal they ordered beers.. Oh did I mention they wear wearing AR glasses! In public! In A BAR!

Seven minutes later, someone whom Lady didn't know added a comment:

Please delete the comment above.

Well, Lady's like her brother Tom, and can be a little feisty at times.

When you buy a new phone, it's in your pocket, but this, you're wearing something on your face. Anyone that cares what they look like is not gonna wear AR glasses. That's my opinion. If you are super nerdy and you like to show off that you're in tech and smart and all those things, I can see you probably wearing AR glasses, but you are probably in a bubble.

Seven minutes after that, the mysterious commenter showed up again.

Please delete the comment above. The two persons who visited your establishment are charged with maintaining public order. You would not want a criminal element patronizing your establishment.

Lady continued the conversation.

Hey, it wasn't just me. Everyone thought the two people looked ridiculous!

Seven minutes later, health inspectors were knocking on the door of Lady's bar.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

When did individual coworking become corporate outsourcing?

I remember parts of this from a decade ago.

[Tara Hunt and Chris Messina] started putting together meetups at Ritual Roasters in the Mission in San Francisco because we thought it would be even better to get a space full-time for independents....

We put the call out for people to come together and were super excited because lots of people showed up. Within a few months, we co-rented a live/work space in Portrero Hill with a group of others (we called it Teh Hat Factory — not a typo).

A few months later, Chris and I both left our startups and decided to start our own company, which led us to looking for and renting a bigger, more professional space in SOMA. We called this Citizen Space. It opened in October 2006.


Citizen Space is no longer open, but its indie feel can still be found in some other coworking sites, such as Pro Desk Space in Fullerton, California. This space caters to individual entrepreneurs, and its pricing supports people who need a desk for one day, or for one day a month, or more frequently.


And closer to home, it appears that there's a coworking space near downtown Ontario.

But Hunt and Messina didn't invent the office sublet - Regus (now IWG) was around long before 2006, and informal office sublet relationships have existed since the first office was established.

However, I wonder if we're seeing a new trend of coworking.

In march 2017, the New York City–based editors and writers of The Atlantic moved to a WeWork office in Brooklyn. I remember our first morning vividly: It was like entering the Millennial id. Craft beer and cucumber water poured from kitchen taps. Laptoppers in jeans and toques clacked along to MGMT in the wood-paneled common area. A WeWork “community manager” showed us to a glass-walled office so small that my colleagues and I could clasp hands while seated. We sat. Had we arrived in the future of work?

The Atlantic told us this arrangement would be temporary while our real office was renovated. As of this writing, we’re still here. If WeWork had its way, we’d stay forever, along with much of the 21st-century workforce.


This is fundamentally different from Factory Joe Startup renting a desk. And you can see it in WeWork's pricing. While Pro Desk Space's pricing page starts by asking how many days you want to work, WeWork has a different question: how many employees need seats?


Not all companies are supporting the concept of remote coworkers away from headquarters, but the WeWorks of the world are positioning themselves to cater to companies that are spread in multiple locations. If the companies outsource the whole "remote worker" thingie to a WeWork, then they don't have to worry about leasing facilities themselves, or supporting an employee's home office. And in the same way that companies expand and contract cloud storage, they can expand and contract square footage.

I'm not sure if I'd thrive in such a situation, but perhaps I'd learn how to do it. At present, my boss is over 2,000 miles away from me, so I'm already starting to adjust to this kind of life. (One of my coworkers has worked from home for over a decade now.) Why not work from a place in which I can just plug in (and put on the headphones)?