As a member of the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, I was required to prepare a defendable thesis on a topic within the realm of my major and minor subjects, which are Business Administration (with concentrations in Sports Business and Marketing) and Psychology, respectively. For my thesis, I decided to delve into the color theory as it pertains to marketing, specifically the difference between Black + White and Color sports advertisements.

I began my research with 7 interviews with industry professionals, including representatives from Nike, Adidas, Wieden+Kennedy, and other agencies. With these interviews I tried to pinpoint why advertisers use Black and White. I found that their main intentions were to cut through the noise of color ads, create added drama, and to create a feeling of nostalgia and timelessness.

My next step involved utilizing the Insights Research Lab at the University of Oregon. Here I was able to conduct three different surveys to test these theories quantitatively, using A/B testing to measure consumer attitudes and possible behaviors based on exposure to either a B/W or Color ad. The studies will be a 2x2 Sports vs Non-Sports study, a 2x2 Product Ad vs Brand Ad study, and a 4x2 Solo vs Team vs Team Color study.

These studies are currently being run this winter, and I will be analyzing the data and synthesizing it into my final thesis in time for my thesis defense this spring.

Below are a couple items I’ve prepared so far through the process, including my Thesis Prospectus and my study stimuli, generated with Gemini.