Is our fetishisation of insights misled?
Agencies worship their human insights like deities. Freelance creative strategist Zac Martin considers if they are as critical as we once believed.
Occasionally I read something which completely challenges a long held belief.
Most recently it was BBH planner Mel Arrow’s piece Forget Human Truth, Brands Should Be Talking Human Fiction. She suggests we spend too long obsessing over insights, when humans are just as attracted to fiction and narrative. It’s a good argument – Homo sapiens lasted by sharing stories.
There is no insight in Justice4Grenfell’s 3 Billboard campaign. It’s simply a cracking media idea.
As a subscriber to “strong opinions, lightly held”, I’m suddenly questioning my philosophy on how advertising works.
I’ve long been fascinated by how agencies treat insights. I’m partial to Mark Pollard’s definition: “an unspoken truth that sheds new light on the problem”. One of the great things about freelancing is being exposed to a variety of strategic frameworks. When you flirt with eight agencies in a year, you see their differences in how each uncovers, uses, respects and encourages insightful thinking. (Or rather, how similar everyone is!)
Almost always, at the foundation of every brief template is the coveted ‘human truth’. Surprisingly no one seems to agree exactly what this is:
- An evolutionary truth – human behaviour that has always been true and will always be true
- A pop-cultural truth – a long or short trend to exploit which may only be true right now
- A target market truth – a unique behaviour true only to our audience and no one else
Arrow asks a bigger question – do we need a truth at all? And no, it’s a cop out to say “the human truth is humans like fiction”. I’m talking about writing a useful creative brief.
Walmart’s Famous Cars campaign is a glorified product demonstration. There’s no insight in this work, but it is fame-building excellence.
Agencies worship their human insights like deities. Yet there are a number of schools of thought suggesting they may not be as critical as we once believed:
- Low Involvement Processing theory suggests most comms are processed relatively passively. Simply by being exposed to an ad builds preference through familiarity, irrespective of message (see mere exposure effect).
- The value of advertising is in its signal as much as its message. Ads create (a self fulfilling) faith in the future popularity of something.
- Byron Sharp’s research on distinctiveness, where being famous for something, even when it’s not technically different from competitors, creates memory structures which influence you at purchase.
Ads do not need a human truth to be effective. Which is a compelling notion having worked on two automative clients last year, where uncovering an insight on yet another retail brief isn’t easy, or necessarily helpful.
Instead, perhaps the role of the planner remains simplifying the problem, ensuring the approach to advertising is theoretically effective, and then getting out of the way.
In many cases the brilliance in an ad comes from a well told story. This is what makes the product or brand famous for something. Like the greatest product demonstration ever made, for Volvo Trucks, which is entirely devoid of truth:
John Hegarty said: “Advertising is 80% idea and 80% execution.” That doesn’t leave much room for a human insight.
So when do you need one, and when do you not? I don’t know. If you’re a strategist who’s stretched (lol, joking, that’s everyone) ditching them on retail campaigns might be somewhere to start. Campaigns that focus on specific product attributes might be another. If you have a thought, let me know in the comments below.
Zac Martin is a freelance creative strategist from Melbourne, Australia. Subscribe to his irregular newsletter or read more at Pigs Don’t Fly.
My experience is that insights are generally reverse engineered out of ideas to sell the work, or they are generic observations that get upgraded when it comes time to write the award entry.
One of the most over used terms in advertising.
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Byron Sharp – Typo!
I’ve experienced a range of views, from an agency that obsessed over insights to the point that it crippled the strategic process, to one that didn’t mind if the insight was very simple as long as it made logical sense.
The latter won many creative awards and some Effies.
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I love this article! In a world where people increasingly don’t want to be ‘categorised’, insights sometimes risk doing just that!
Some of the best ad campaigns have been radio campaigns where great ‘stories’ unfold over time and great brands are built.
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A thought-provoking article! I am interested to hear more on why you think Justice for Grenfell, Volvo and Walmart had no insights at the heart of the creative / campaign mentioned?
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The magic in those three pieces is the idea. I don’t see what strategic insight would have been written in the brief that helped Creatives get there. But happy to be proven wrong, what do you think the brief could have uncovered?
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Not familiar with the Walmart or Justice for Crenfel ads, but an insight for Volvo could easily be that they’re (still) seem as boring or conservative.
That’s from spending 10 secs thinking about it. No reason to believe there couldn’t be an insight that led to the final ad.
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Awesome article Zac. Just like not every problem needs a big idea to solve a problem, not every big idea needs an insight to create a solution. Will share.
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But that’s not a human insight. That’s not even an brand insight, that’s the problem you might put on the brief.
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Enjoyed this. A genuine insight will own the brief probably better than any other input, but coming to one is rarer than coming up with good creative.
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True, that’s an observation, not an insight.
And even if it was, I don’t see how the ad communicates that insight. What it tells us is that Volvos are incredibly precise and reliable. The boring stuff.
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Bravo.
Great piece.
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Agree advertising campaigns don’t need a behavioural insight, or an idea or any great level of craft or entertainment value—be honest how many have any of this? So that’s it. Let’s go about getting paid without the angst. Unless of course you care. And if you did why wouldn’t you at least look for an insight about the way your market buy or use the stuff? Laziness?
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I’d suggest that the real question here is whether an “insight” needs to be dramatised in an advertising execution – and that the answer has always been that no, of course it doesn’t. I’d argue that this idea that we need to literally ‘bring to life’ the consumers’ world has always been flawed. That doesn’t mean that the creative strategy shouldn’t be insightful (i.e. informed by a relevant tension or dynamic which the brand can help resolve) though – quite the contrary. Good briefs will have insight behind them – although as you say the it might not be a literal “human insight” , it might be a competitive, cultural, business, political dynamic to be leveraged.
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Zac, this is a great piece. And it’s great because it (rightly) points out that consumer insights are seen too often seen as the be-all-end-all by agencies – the only kind of insight that can possibly be interesting and therefore dramatized. (And shout out to Andrew McCowan questioning this as well at the bottom of the thread).
But there is an insight in the Volvo work, and it’s a product insight (patented stability technology). Add JCVD – you get gold.
There is an insight in the Justice4Grenfell work, and it’s a socio-political insight (a disconnected political class is mistaking preventable, criminal disasters for tragic accidents). With a relevant, zeitgeist media execution – gold.
There is an insight in the Walmart work, and it’s an operational insight (90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Walmart, so it’s actually the best click-and-collect network in the US). With easily-grasped pop-cultural references – gold.
Bottom line: agencies would do better to consider different types of truths and insights to base creative solutions on. ‘Consumer’ insights do not have a monopoly on creative execution.
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You’re not wrong Si. I wrote this through the lens of the creative brief – how a planner can add value to the creative process. The Walmart insight you mention would have been provided by the client, so I don’t imagine the planner did much to solve this, only simplify (which is not a bad thing!).
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