Louis Cheskin - Evolution of Marketing

Evolution of Marketing

In the early 20th century, advertisers took a top-down approach to communicating value to customers. Customers were perceived as responding as a part of a group; their decisions were based on unknown psychological forces. This model mirrored Sigmund Freud’s view of human psychology: interpretation of sensory input, such as a product image, was believed to derive from childhood experience, gender, and sexual desires.

In the late 1940s, there were several consultants using this approach, then called motivational research, for market research based on psychological understanding. The first was probably the Bureau of Applied Social Research, founded by Paul Lazarsfeld in New York City. Though largely unsuccessful, it began the Institute for Motivation Research, founded by Lazarsfeld’s student Ernest Dichter. Another public relations firm was Bernays & Co., founded by Edward Bernays. These two companies met success with their Freudian approach to marketing.

Louis Cheskin had a contrasting approach. In the 1930s, he founded the Color Research Institute of America in Chicago, renamed Louis Cheskin Associates. He was one of the first marketers to use customer-centric methods, and to value direct customer input above marketers’ expectations or guesses about customers' needs.

An example of this contrasting approach comes from cigarette advertising. The Freudian approach posited that women smoked more when cigarette advertising showed uplifted, or erect, cigarettes in their hands and mouths because of their inherent penis envy. Cheskin reasoned that it could also be due to the idea of social acceptance and glamour projected by the advertisement.

Cheskin employed the scientific method in marketing, testing his hypotheses of product acceptance by observing customers, which was a unique approach at the time. His methods focused on catering to what consumers felt, desired, and needed, rather than trying to directly manipulate those ideas. His methods also advocated frequent updates to the methodology used, as Cheskin's methods were based on ephemeral consumer attitudes rather than on Freudian psychology.

By the 1950s, Cheskin had already implemented the concept that brands, messages, and offerings could be coordinated and delivered through multiple contexts and media. He relied on scientific testing procedures and detailed standards, including colour guides. One such standard was first to understand, then explain what companies had to offer in a way that customers understood.