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.

I then analyzed these surveys using Claude and R Studio to see how subjects responded to the different stimuli. Utilizing t-tests and ANOVAs, I was able to compare the responses from different stimuli and portray them visually.

The studies produced some interesting conclusions, but many of them lacked statistical significance because of the small sample sizes. The most significant of my findings was about Product and Brand Ads and their interaction with B/W and Color palettes. I found that B/W palettes in Brand Ads performed better than in Product ads, and the opposite was true for Color palettes.

This project gave me an opportunity to perform marketing research in an academic environment and help to contribute to the literature I read in my research. I gained experience in A/B testing, data analyzation, and analytical writing.

Below are a couple of documents from the process including my Thesis and my study stimuli, generated with Gemini.