With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

—Henri Matisse

For the savvy marketer, as for the artist, color holds a mysterious power to connect deeply with people. Color is the first impression a package makes. Color sets the tone for your thinly sliced expectations in the marketplace. And, as the saying goes, you don't have a second chance to make a first impression.

If the color of a package first strikes the consumer as loud or somehow "off," the consumer might just reject it. What the package "says" won't matter.

Even before we consider names, logos, and brands—or see them, for that matter—we consider color. Literally it's the frequency of light waves bouncing off a given surface, but the optics of color perception give marketers and package designers very little to work with. Sure, bright colors advance more quickly, or have greater visibility at a distance. These factors do not shape the deeper and more valuable connections that should concern brand managers and designers.

These deeper connections are often purely symbolic and based on personal memory or the tacit elements of cultural code. Take, for instance, the idea of "Night Laundry." It's a liquid laundry detergent sold in Japan and packaged in a bright lavender bottle. I was recently doing ethnography in Tokyo and discovered this product in the laundry section while shopping with a consumer. The chemistry of consumers 12,000 miles away removing stains is the same, but the cultural practices and habits of those doing the cleaning is light-years from our own considerations in the United States.

In the U.S., the notion of "night laundry" is perhaps as alien as the product's use of pink and purple bottle colors to connote a night product. The translation I sought from my Japanese colleagues involved the constraints of doing laundry in Tokyo. First, consider that for spatial economy, very few people in Tokyo own dryers; there just isn't enough room in homes and apartments of that densely packed city. In Tokyo, they air-dry clothing—often the clean-but-wet laundry is hung to dry in one's apartment. The Night Laundry product I found delivered a scent that lasted through the drying time as a way to deliver scent to the home!

Marketers and package designers need to look deeply into the motivational areas behind a consumer's actions, into what makes them tick. Color can be a powerful tool to trigger awareness, navigate in a sea of sameness, and connect where it matters most—at the level of the consumer's image of him or herself.

By Donna J. Sturgess, Global Head of Innovation, GlaxoSmithKline