Sound (grapheme)-color associativity in financial branding: linguistic marketing or theoretical linguistics

The purpose of the study is to establish the specifics of the congruence of sound (grapheme)-color associativity of verbal and color visual elements of the brand. The novelty of the research: for the first time, a brand is understood as a multimodal/creolized text, the effectiveness of which is related to the congruence of cross-modal correspondences in various modes of encoding brand information. For the first time, the congruence of the sound (grapheme)-color associativity of the brand name and the color of the brand logo is compared. The results showed that banks that have ceased to exist have the lowest degree of congruence of the sound (grapheme)-color associativity of verbal and visual brand elements (≈30%); operating banks have the highest degree (≈70%); financial pyramids occupy an intermediate position (≈62%). Statistical analysis suggests that these coincidences are not accidental. The rebranding of logos at the same time as the new name of the financial institution leads to increased congruence between the verbal and visual elements of the brand. The data obtained offer promising material for theoretical (sound symbolism) and applied (linguistic marketing) linguistics.