Colour – and how I learned about the failures of research

How bad research led to the biggest marketing failure in Ford’s history

About 50 years ago I bought a book called (I think) Why People Buy written by Louis Cheskin of the Color Research Institute in Chicago.

I remember nothing about it except that Mr. Cheskin, alone among the research tribe, predicted the biggest disaster in the history of the Ford Motor Company – and why he did so.

Ford spent an unprecedented amount of money on launching a new car. They had spent millions on research.

The car, called the Edsel, was a disastrous flop. In the annals of marketing catastrophe only New Coke competes.

One reason for the flop was that Ford ignored the research into the best name, and insisted on calling it after Henry Ford’s son- Edsel. Another may have been that the car was too heavy to go very fast. A third may have been that according to one critic the the tail-lights looked like ingrown toenails.

But only Louis C said in advance that it would flop – and it had nothing to do with colour. He asked people which decade they associated the car with. I think he asked them to choose between the 30s,’40s, the ‘5os or the 60s. Most chose a previous decade, not the one to come.

Ford planned to sell 100,000 units a year. The first year they sold about 25,000.

The truth is that nobody can tell you what they’re going to do. As Leo Burnett, at whose London agency I then worked, remarked:

“The public does not know what it wants … there is no sure way of finding out until the idea is exposed under normal conditions of sale.  If people could tell you in advance what they want, there would never have been a wheel, a lever, much less an automobile, an airplane or a TV set.”

Anyhow, on the subject of colour, you may find this helpful. I am not sure how they came to these conclusions. I hope it was testing and measurement, not just research. But I somehow wonder. http://blog.kissmetrics.com/color-psychology/

 

 

 

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

3 Comments

  1. That is a great story, Drayton. Reminded me of one of Henry Ford’s most famous quotes along the same lines:

    “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

  2. Some time ago, I read that in the early 20th century Daimler-Benz (Mercedes) predicted there would never be more than 1M cars in the world, because that was the maximum number of chauffeurs.

  3. Steve

    One of the problems with the Edsel was not its colour, but its radiator grille. As a man of the world, (and with the several divorces to prove it), Drayton, you’ll know EXACTLY what it looks like, too…

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