The stereotype of marketing research, or any discipline that involves the compiling and analysis of numbers, is that it’s dry as dust, requiring little in the way of creativity or personality. While there are always examples to bolster the conventional view, all you have to do is attend a research industry conference or read an issue of Quirk’s to find displays of both traits, along with ample helpings of ingenuity and curiosity.

You’ll also find them if you pick up a copy of the new book, A Nation of Numbers – The Development of Marketing Research in America, by longtime researcher Paul Scipione.

I spent much of this past summer editing the book (it’s published under the Quirk’s Marketing Research Media banner) and among my many takeaways, I was struck by the multiple examples of gumption, ambition and outside-the-box thinking (before there was even a box to think outside of!) Scipione has captured in the book’s 500+ pages.

Now of course, since the book is about the birth and growth of the marketing research industry, naturally the early researchers were trailblazers who had to make up the rules as they went along, paving the way for how things are done today. In other words, creativity was a necessity.

As Scipione so entertainingly chronicles, a host of factors, from our rapid population growth to the accompanying explosion of our democracy’s commercial and industrial output, coalesced to create an unending and ever-growing list of things that needed to be measured: babies born, products sold, ad spots placed, TV shows watched, elections won and lost.

And thus were needed people to figure out how to measure them all – the metrics to use, the machines to build to do so – and, once measured, to make sense of the resulting sea of numbers. Charles Coolidge Parlin, Daniel Starch, John B. Watson, George Gallup, Ernest Dichter, Elmo Roper, Alfred Politz, Paul Lazarsfeld, Arthur C. Nielsen, Herman Hollerith – the book brings them all to life.

Scipione’s enthusiasm for his subjects and subject matter is infectious and he tells their stories with a well-informed, conversational style. He effectively grounds events in context and tries to give all sides to a story, especially in sections such as those dealing with the supposed feud between Ernest Dichter and Alfred Politz. While acknowledging their various individual achievements and their importance, he gives them humanity by including their foibles and failings along with their accomplishments.

These days, the marketing research and insights function stands at a bit of a crossroads. There are questions about MR’s role and relevance. In order to forge a viable future, we’ll have to blaze some new trails but, as A Nation of Numbers shows, we’ve done it before and, if history is any guide, we can do it again. 

In conjunction with The Quirk’s Event this month, Paul Scipione will be speaking about A Nation of Numbers and telling some stories from it along with signing copies of the book afterwards. If you’re in Brooklyn, stop by. Head over here for more info on the conference: www.thequirksevent.com.