Leaders All — Robert H. Cochrane, Practical Psychologist (1924) 🇺🇸

Leaders All — R. H. Cochrane

Because he began his career with the advantage of seven years in newspaper work with its large contact with men; because following that in an advertising agency he had full opportunity to develop his natural aptitude for arousing the other man’s interest in the most direct way; because of his unerring facility in striking the weak spot of his opponent’s armor; and because of his straightforward and aboveboard ways of conducting business.

Eighteen years’ uninterrupted partnership comes pretty near to being a record in the film industry. It was late in 1906 that Robert H. Cochrane, then in an advertising agency in Chicago, became affiliated with Carl Laemmle, who had just opened an exchange in the same city.

Mr. Cochrane took to the showmanship side of the theatre like a duck to water. Before entering the advertising business he had spent seven years in a newspaper office, and undoubtedly it was the training he had there received, the development of the news sense, that gave him such an uncanny grip on the art of writing attention compelling advertisements.

For it was on the advertising side of the industry that Mr. Cochrane made his deepest impress on motion picture men in the earlier days of his association with Mr. Laemmle.

He had the knack intuitively of digging under the skin of the customer prospective or actual he wanted to reach and also searing the soul of his uncomfortable target.

It was a straight shaft which flew from the bow of this young associate of Mr. Laemmle. It struck hard and bored deep. Almost always it aroused antagonism, the man who was hit fought back, and the fight was on.

Mr. Cochrane was born in Wheeling, West Va., and at an early age his family moved to Toledo, Ohio. Here he went to school. Following graduation from high school in 1897, he became a reporter on the Bee.

The initial salary was $6 a week. It was not long before the reporter was advanced to city editor and the compensation increased to $13.

In 1904 Mr. Cochrane went to Chicago to join his brothers, Phil D. and Witt K., in the Cochrane Advertising Agency. The firm handled the regular run of newspaper and magazine accounts.

One of these accounts was that of the Continental Clothing Company of Oshkosh, Wis., of which Carl Laemmle was manager. In February, 1906, Mr. Laemmle bought a theatre in Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, and in the following October he opened an exchange.

It was a few weeks after this that Mr. Cochrane bought an interest in the Laemmle Film Service. Thrown into more intimate companionship with him he saw at once the lovable qualities of his new associate and realized that these attributes were Mr. Laemmle’s greatest initial assets.

Just at that time Rockefeller and Standard Oil were under attack. Mr. Cochrane suggested to Mr. Laemmle that if the oil man had started thirty years before to build up public esteem for himself no amount of mudslinging could have made him a villain to the public. He had waited too long before starting to employ the power of the press to show his human side.

Mr. Cochrane added that if Mr. Laemmle would permit him to present his personality to the public as he saw it he would make him known over the world in a short time. He explained that whether the ads brought criticism or praise they would in any event make him talked about and that was what he wanted.

With the suggestion came an intimation from Mr. Cochrane that Mr. Laemmle might be subjected to some criticism, but if the latter would stand pat he would guarantee the results.

Mr. Laemmle did stand pat, and Mr. Cochrane demonstrated his knowledge of the psychology of advertising. Mr. Laemmle and his service became world famous.

Back of Mr. Cochrane’s plan of campaign was the conviction that the world will take an interest in a likeable aggressive human being where it will not in a hardboiled corporation. The idea was revolutionary in those days, but it has been used in many lines with success since.

“I have been in the United States forty years,” said Mr. Laemmle the other day. “Just one-half of that period I have been closely associated with Mr. Cochrane, for we have always worked very closely together. Yes, team work is the expression. We have never run out of ideas, so far as that goes.

“There is one trait about Mr. Cochrane that is outstanding: He never hesitates to give credit to the other fellow and he is never too proud to accept the other fellow’s idea.

“Our advertising has been unique from the very start. It was different from anybody else’s, just as it is today. Take our Saturday Evening Post advertising. I can show you hundreds of letters from the readers of that magazine. Some of them tell me the first thing they look for is our advertising.”

No history of the development of the film industry will be complete without a record of Mr. Cochrane’s contribution to its advertising, not to mention other substantial if less spectacular achievements in the building up of a great company and an important division of the country’s commerce. As to the former it made a distinct mark upon its time.

In January, 1913, Mr. Cochrane became a full-fledged and an active member of the Universal organization, severing his connection with the advertising agency and coming to New York, where he has occupied the office of vice president ever since.

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Collection: Exhibitors Trade Review, 19 April 1924

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