Davis Masten

Davis Masten creates customer-inspired breakthroughs for his clients with innovative brand and product experiences. Davis joined Cheskin Associates, Inc., in 1975 and worked closely with founder and motivation research pioneer Louis Cheskin. Davis stepped down as the CEO of Cheskin+Masten to gain flexibility in pursuing his passions.

Focusing on the areas of youth culture, branding, trust, and product development, Davis has offered his expertise to more than 2,500 projects in innovation for retail environments, packaging, interactive environments, and corporate positioning and identity, as well as industrial design and product development. He is a pioneer in expanding client perspectives, offering a unique and time-tested view of marketplace trends. He applied ethnography to branding in the early 1980s. Past clients include Microsoft and Coca-Cola, among many others.

Davis has coauthored an article for the Design Management Review on digital ethnography and has been quoted in numerous leading publications, including the New York Times. Davis is a past board member of TRUSTe; he also chaired the AIGA Center for Brand Experience, exploring the points of interaction among brand, culture, science, and technology.

In 2003, Davis was selected to be a mentor at the Oxford University Saïd Business School and a member of the President’s Circle of the National Academy of Sciences. He is currently the chair-designate of the Presidents’ Circle of the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council) and a member of the oversight committee for the Division of Earth & Life Studies (DELS), one of six study divisions of the National Academies.

dmasten@cheskin.com