booklet was shown to a chief editor of a book publishing company, and he asked me to expand it into a full book. How to Color-Tune Your Home was published in 1954. The title was changed from Color Tuning Your Home to How to Color-Tune Your Home on the basis of a test with potential readers of the book.
Before the publication of How to Color-Tune Your Home, I received more criticism from clients. Many of them found Color for Profit too limited in scope. It dealt with basic psychological principles and basic design and color principles. It did not deal with the entire problem of producing a printed marketing tool. It did not show how various professions are involved and did not indicate a coordinated effort of many individuals. “There should be a book that traces the complete process of creating an ad or a package from the idea to the printed page,” said a client to me.
This seemed like a practical idea. I asked the publishing company of How to Color-Tune Your Home whether they would publish such a book, and they expressed interest. I wrote the book in less than six months, because most of the material was in Color Research Institute files. A number of titles were tested with businessmen and advertising executives. Color Guide for Marketing Media came out best in the tests. It was published in 1954, the same year as How to Color-Tune Your Home. The latter was published in early spring, the former in the fall. The Junior Color Charts with 300 colors are parts of both books. However, the printing codes are only in Color Guide for Marketing Media.
Of course, none of the so-called color books deal only with color. There is no such thing as abstract color. Color is part of form and space. Thus, Color for Profit and Color Guide for Marketing Media actually deal with practical problems in the graphic media. Imagery, design, pattern are covered. The creative aspects, the psychological factors and the measurement of marketing effectiveness are discussed.
How to Color-Tune Your Home includes the psychological aspects of color and furniture, of form and arrangement. The nature of color and its application to practical problems in the home are discussed. Actual experiments with colors are reported. Designs and arrangements of home furnishings are covered.
By 1950, there were many things happening besides the demand for books. I became convinced that salesmanship and research are like oil and water—they don’t mix. A friend said I had become obsessed with the idea that research, like medicine, should be offered, made available, not sold.
Perhaps he was right that I was obsessed with the idea. I knew I had to be free to tell a client that he did not need a field test, if I knew that we had the information in our files. I had to feel free to tell him that ocular measurements were all his problem needed, that field tests were not needed, if I knew this was so. All this meant that salesmen had no place in the Color Research Institute picture because a salesman’s objective is to sell as much as possible for as big a fee as possible.
After almost six years of seeing research “sold,” I separated research from salesmanship. In the fall of 1951, I organized everything on a purely service basis. I also eliminated all the technical color services that had to do with color printing. We went about quietly getting our share of marketing research from our regular clients and were kept busy getting out reports on ocular measurements, color and image ratings and field tests of brand images, packages and some ads.
By 1957, it became apparent that Color Research Institute was no longer the only organization or almost the only one in the field of motivation research. When my articles on “unconscious level testing” were published in business publications in 1947 and 1948, little attention was paid to them. But ten years later, marketing research people and marketing and advertising executives began to discover the validity of tests that are conducted with indirect methods. Many were emulating Color Research Institute.
In the spring of 1957, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders was published and motivation researchers sprouted by the dozen. Motivation research was discussed in all business and advertising circles, and the marketing research profession became divided into two camps. In one camp were the traditional researchers who conduct polls, readership studies, impact measurements, recall tests and interviews with consumers on their preferences. In the other were the motivation researchers who employ unstructured projective techniques and depth interviews.
Since Color Research Institute conducts motivation research with controlled techniques and because it employs traditional statistical forms, it remained outside of both camps.
Vance Packard classified me with Dichter and Gardner and with some who are not actually in the field of motivation research.
The Hidden Persuaders seemed to make almost everyone motivation research conscious and it aroused many people against motivation research. The implication in Packard’s book is that motivation researchers are manipulators.
Actually, what Packard points out is, that some individuals misuse motivation research, that they could use it for anti-social purposes and that there are some who would, if they could, use motivation research against the interests of the people.
This is true about almost everything. Language can be used to say good and true things, and it can be used to make evil and false statements. Motivation research can be used for good or evil. It depends on who uses it and for what purpose.
It became quite clear that I had to take quick action to accomplish the following. One, produce evidence that motivation research is not new, as many seemed to think; that Color Research Institute had been in the business of motivation research for over a dozen years. Two, that there is nothing insidious or anti-social about motivation research; that it is merely a means for finding out what people really want. Because people cannot always tell us what they like or why they like an object or product, we use special techniques for getting this information.
After a number of conferences at the Color Research Institute offices, it was decided that the most important articles that have been published in the last ten years about the marketing media testing activities of Color Research Institute, written by me and by others, should be published in book form.
Since documentation was of primary importance, it was best, we thought, to use the articles in the original form. I was well aware that such a book would not be a piece of original literature.
In order to give unity to the book and to give it a natural starting point, I wrote four new special articles and arranged to have them published in business publications. I asked Van Allen Bradley, editorial writer and book critic of the Chicago Daily News, to help us choose sixteen articles out of some forty that have appeared since 1947. Twenty articles, including the four new ones, were assembled into manuscript form. Bradley volunteered to write an introduction.
After testing a number of titles, How to Predict What People Will Buy was published in early fall of 1957.
Perhaps, largely due to its coming out when The Hidden Persuaders was still on the best seller list, How to Predict What People Will Buy became a success, considering the nature of the book. It was displayed in many bookstore windows with The Hidden Persuaders.
Many individuals in the marketing research field did not welcome its appearance in marketing literature, of course. However, it was reviewed favorably in most of the business press and was received with enthusiasm in most business circles. It is considered by many, and it was meant to be, a primer in motivation research. It is a documented record of the pioneering and progress in controlled motivation research methods and techniques. It is a key to a dozen years of testing marketing media on an unconscious level.
Most of the chapters were written by me. Some were originally interviews with me written by journalists.
Some of the chapters
