After reading the article “The rhetoric of black, white and red: Responsibility and aesthetics to persuade with color” by Jose Luis Caivano and Mabel A. Lopez the section on ritual and religious persuasion and intimidation stood out the most. It stated that color has different meanings in different cultures. In Japan red is a color of good luck, which is not the case in Western culture. In the west Christian culture we associate red with blood (death), evil, and hell. That is just one example of one color. It is that same with every color. They mean different things around the globe.

This got me thinking of the melting pot that is the United States and what a difficult job it must be for people in advertising, marketing, and promotions. To consider all of the associations that all of our cultures have here in the United States must be a difficult task. So why don’t we see more black and white in advertising? I think these are effective especially when a firm or a business is going for an elegant and mature feel to their ad.  Such ads could be for jewelry, fragrance, banks, lawyers, liquor etc. I think black and white would be the better to portray those feelings and let others put there own colors into the ad.  The colorful ads would be best for targeting youth that need to be fun and energetic.

I found a few examples here for fragrance and liquor but I think that black and white be used more. This could save the people in advertising, marketing, and promotions a black headache and have the consumers fill in their own colors into the images while still being a very effective ad.