Understanding the difference is the difference between good and great creative solutions.
Too often insights are confused with observations.
Left unchecked, this has the tendency to dilute ideas and compromise the future commercial success of a brand.
They are critical to the creative process; they form the basis of useful ideas. Without a clear insight, it is difficult to create distinctive, desirable, and engaging ideas that resonate with a brand’s target audience(s).
The good news is arriving at a good insight is part thoughts, part vibes.
I will quickly clear up what they aren’t.
AN INSIGHT COMES FROM OBSERVATION BUT IS NOT AN OBSERVATION.
Observations are just raw data: things you saw and heard. While an observation may be true, it is nothing more than passive in its application.
INSIGHTS ARE ALSO NOT INVENTIONS.
AN INSIGHT IS NOT AN IDEA BUT GREAT IDEAS COME FROM STRONG INSIGHTS.
An insight can be the first step on the way to an idea.
An idea is what you do with the insight.
Before I proceed let me take a stab at defining insights by borrowing from strategic brains…
Jeremy Bullimore, in his seminal essay ‘Why is a good insight like a refrigerator?’, a fellow I will quote extensively throughout this article, defines insight as “A new understanding, probably of human behaviour or attitude, as a result of which action may be taken, and an enterprise more efficiently conducted”
Mike Teasdale, Head of Planning @ Lowe & Partners (now Mullen Lowe) defines insight in the following manner “A glimpse inside the mind of the target audience, shining a light on a possible solution to the problem we have defined. Insight increases the chances of creative breakthrough, makes the creative process less random, and incites behaviour change.”
A less poetic definition is “A profound and useful understanding of a person, a thing, a situation, or an issue.”
Jeremy Bullimore goes on to further break insights into two types, low-potency, and high-potency.
High-potency insights are expressed in inspirational language which captures the imagination of the audience like Levitt’s famous “People don’t want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes”. Giving high potency to an insight is an intensely creative act: it requires a massive injection of imagination.
He then states derisively low-potency insight smothers the truth in complex, boring jargon and “sits there sullenly on its Power Point slide, moving absolutely nobody to enlightenment, let alone action”.
As seen in Stephen King’s low-potency version of Levitt’s insight “Product satisfaction arises less from inherent construction & performance than from consumers’ internalized perceptions of personal utility.”
The reality is. Brands don’t want research, they want enlightenment.
It all, however, starts with a hypothesis supported by a well-thought-through and simple-to-apply framework.
Sam Knowles’ easy-to-use well-built framework based on the work of Wallas and Webb Young, Flesch and Mlodinow, Kounios and Beeman called The STEP Prism of Insight (Figure 3 below) is one I prefer to reference.
STEP, an acronym, for SWEAT, TIMEOUT, EUREKA, and PROVE.
- Sweat – the research phase
- Timeout – the thinking phase
- Eureka – the enlightenment phase
- Prove – the testing phase
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Sweat
Once you arrive at a hypothesis curiosity drives you to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ it – we “sweat” it. Forming the basis of the research phase.
Techniques to expand curiosity include talking to people (experts and the naïve), consuming, and analysing comedy/shows/films, reading winning award submissions, making friends with R&D, and taking in the widest diversity of inputs from different cultures/perspectives/points of view.
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Timeout
As the name suggests, taking a time out means deliberately not thinking about the insight problem or hypothesis.
Eeek! What!? Yes. Take a time-out. Do everything to distract your conscious mind.
Techniques to deliver sufficient timeout include exercise, turning workshops into walkshops, doing boring tasks (like mowing the lawn, washing up, or ironing), not going to work, or working on something else. The neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield recommends getting somewhere big. She says: “It appears as if there’s a space-time metric in the brain. Large spaces [like mountains, deserts, and cathedrals] make time slow down, and that’s why so many of us deliberately seek them out. It’s why they so often give us a sense of awe and calm.”
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Eureka!
When insight strikes, it often does so at inconvenient times – during a dream or just when waking, when out running, or in the shower. This phase is about always being prepared by having the means to document the insight when it strikes!
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Prove
Resist the temptation to spend too much time making it perfect. Share your insights early and quickly, with colleagues and clients, and road-test as early as possible.
Techniques for testing and validating insights include rewriting your insight in a completely new language and with new terms of reference to see if it holds up and sharing it early in a tissue meeting.
Developing insight, as with any new habit, requires practice.
The STEM Prism of Insight framework is a basic structure underlying a system to ensure we activate the ‘right’ intellectual muscles until the behaviours are hardwired.
Happy crafting!