While wandering around an old bookstore one day, I picked up a copy of Louis Cheskin's book "Secrets of Marketing Success - An Expert's View on the Science and Art of Persuasive Selling." Originally published in 1967, the book is a gem offering keen insights into the psychology of selling, and tells us how and why people buy.
Cheskin was a motivational researcher who sought to understand how consumer's perceptions motivated their purchase behaviour. He coined the term "sensation transference", and spent most of his life researching how people's perceptions of products or services were directly related to aesthetic details of their design. He consulted with companies such as Standard Oil, Betty Crocker, Phillip Morris and Ford on issues including logo and package design, new product launches and advertising and brand campaigns.
The interesting premise in Cheskin's book is his return to the basics of selling and communications, and how he incorporates them into marketing and advertising challenges. He lists the four pillars of marketing as: 1) Product quality 2) Packaging or styling that has psychological appeal 3)Advertising that communicates and motivates and 4) Price that is right for the specific type of consumer.
His most interesting commentary can be found in points #2 and #3. To Cheskin, not only must packaging be designed to be an effective marketing tool, it must also "communicate graphically and semantically" to the consumer. The aesthetic design will determine how the consumer reacts to the product.
On an advertising and communications level, Cheskin claims that "advertising, like the package, has to communicate on an unconscious, as well as on a conscious level - semantically and graphically." The appeal must not only be rational in its foundation, but have an emotional undertone as well.
How often is this done today? I see ads over and over again on television, but I couldn't tell you from one day to the next which brands they represent! (not an efficient way to spend advertising dollars!) What's missing in a lot of advertising is not only a great degree of thought and creativity, but an appeal to my emotions that would encourage me to ACT. To me, most television advertising is so annoying, that I actually purposely don't buy products if they represent an annoying commercial. As early as 1967, Cheskin claimed that "much advertising suffers from an abundance of creativity and a lack of motivating communication."
For advertising and marketing to be effective, they must also be persuasive. Think of the old sales term AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). If an ad or marketing campaign isn't persuasive, it won't motivate consumers to take action and a decline in sales will be the result. Simple in theory, but not practiced too highly today. To be successful, practitioners must take into account the psychological effect of a product or service as well, in order to motivate consumers to take action.
What's interesting about Cheskin's approach is that he took the science of selling and marketing to a more subconscious level. We don't always buy what we see, we may also buy what we FEEL. When Cheskin worked with Ford on the name of a new car, he encouraged them to change the name "Impala" to "Mustang", based on the fact that "Mustang" had emotional meaning to most Americans (ie. "rugged and fast"). The Impala might run away, but the American consumer could control a Mustang.
Cheskin was a true visionary in his time, and many of his findings are still applicable today. He predicted that advertising would eventually take on the "character of entertainment, with emphasis on humour"...a fact that holds true today.
Perhaps Cheskin's ideas hold the key as to why some products or services succeed today, and why others fail.
