Pilot Pen: Psychology of the Pen Project
Pilot Pen Corp. “Psychology of the Pen” Survey
Pens are pretty fungible. Pretty ordinary. How do you get the media to write something about pens? For our client Pilot Pen, we commissioned a survey on the “psychology of the pen.” Who is most likely to get a raise, red pen users or black pen users? Who is viewed by the boss as being more reliable, blue pen users or purple pen users? The results of the survey ran in newspapers nationwide — along with huge photos of Pilot-brand pens. It reached a total of 53 million eyeballs. Here’s an example of an article that ran nationwide and and made Pilot Pens the talk of the water cooler.
Knight Ridder Wire Service: What does your pen color say about you?
By Jessie Milligan Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Posted May 20, 2002 at 12:01 AMUpdated Jan 8, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Just when you thought you’d heard of every possible survey, along comes one that says the color of pen ink used by American workers is linked to job performance.
Purple-pen users -- male or female -- say they pitch in to help, even when not asked. Users of red ink are the most likely to have been recently promoted or given a raise. Men who use erasable
pens are least likely to work extra hours with no pay.
All that is according to Pilot Pen Corp. of America’s recently commissioned survey of the ink preferences and work habits of 645 women and men. The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corp. International of Princeton, N.J., is an unintentionally comic look into the
American workplace. To Pilot’s credit, the survey for which it paid reports
negative personality traits associated with some of the products the company
sells.
Why would red-ink users be more likely to get raises? That’s the weak point of the survey. It tells us the likelihood of certain pen colors coinciding with certain performance attributes. But it
doesn’t tell us why.
“We don’t quite know what all this means. Frankly, we are quite flummoxed,” Ron Shaw, president and chief executive of Pilot, said in one of the funniest and most refreshing quotes to come from
corporate America in a long time.
If we accept that the reasons for choosing ink colors are downright flummoxing, then we can go ahead and just speculate on the hidden meanings associated with the pens we choose.
The pen-based personality indicator,
according to Pilot:
Workers who preferred erasable pens were the most irascible. They were least likely to pitch in to help their bosses, and they were least likely to work extra hours with no pay.
They were more likely than many others to say their jobs are boring. They
were most likely to have poor job reviews.
Men who use purple ink don’t fare as well in the workplace as women who use purple ink, if survey results hold true. Male and female purple-ink users say they volunteer to help their
bosses, even without being asked. Yet men who use purple pens are among
the most likely to work extra hours with no pay and are the most likely
to report being criticized by their bosses.
Women who opt for purple ink report recent raises and promotions almost as frequently as people who use red ink. They are among the most likely to be looking for a new job. (We
say that actively searching for a job indicates a certain amount of self-confidence,
which is pretty much required in order to use purple ink.
Red-ink users, male and female, are the most likely to report that their boss is “nice.” These folks also
were the most likely to have received a recent raise or promotion, which
may well explain their attitude about their bosses. Women who use red ink
were the most likely to work extra hours with no pay.
Males who prefer green pens are most likely to steal pens intentionally from co-workers. Female green-ink users -- and really, how many of these people do you know? -- may be more
bored on the job than anyone else, which, we think, may explain why they
have resorted to the entertainment value of green ink. Women who use green
ink, as well as those who use red ink, are the most likely to be “the office
pen hog,” with a dozen or more pens at their desks.
Black ink is still the power ink of the workplace, much more so than blue. Men who use black ink or expensive pens of any color ink are the least likely to find their jobs boring, which
we figure means that they are they are actually doing something at work.
Women who use black pens are the least likely to report being criticized
by the boss. Women who use expensive pens are most likely to report being
criticized by their bosses, who, we suspect, may well come from the green-ink
school that trains its users to steal co-workers’ pens.
The Pilot survey says men who use blue ink are not likely to be helpful to their bosses.
The survey says one in seven American workers doesn’t use a pen at all, because he or she is so busy working at a computer keyboard.
Pilot Pen’s Shaw had a response
to this: “Ouch!”