Over the semester we have been stressing the importance of image and visuals for better online presence. The following infographic created by KISSmetrics highlighted the role of color in driving conversions.
This inforgraphic is quite informative but it only touches on color and conversion. Trying to find more about color and marketing in general, I stumbled on this cool article on HelpScout. It gives a larger picture on the relationship between color and branding.
The article showed the gist of psychologist and Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker’s study on Brand Personality: the 5 core dimensions of a brand’s personality and how to use the right colors to communicate these messages.
I think the main takeaway from this article is that there is a real connection between the use of colors and customers’ perception of a brand’s personality. It is important for your brand’s colors to support the personality you want to portray (e.g. white for Apple’s clean and sleek design), instead of trying to align with stereotypical color associations (e.g. green means calm, brown conveys ruggedness). So the bottom line is, the context you’re working within is far more essential when it comes to choosing the right color.
U Penn Social Book 
Color is a key feature of human perception. We are visual creatures. We see color before really anything else. You have focused on something intrinsic to how we interact with our environment and therefore social media and branding have made it a top priority. Another feature of branding is the use of faces and in one interesting example of cereal companies marketing to kids is having the eyes of the face on the cereal box adjusted so they fix on the kids eyes. Since kids are likely smaller in stature and the cereal boxes higher on the shelves, the eyes on the face of Cap’n Crunch gaze downward, 9.6 degrees, in fact, according to a Cornell University study: https://youtu.be/8u6xdGCIq6o.
Thanks for the comment, Syd. This is very interesting, I’ve never thought about that before. But I wonder how many parents will let their kids pick their own cereal though.