Insights — STRAT_SCRAPS Scrapbook

indifference demands t h e e x t r a o r d i n a r y
SOURCE: Martin Weigel, “Golden Drum, How (not) To Fail”

Facts should be the beginning, not the end

Start Doing Research Differently 1. Don’t only talk to the consumer. Talk to someone who spends their life understanding the target. Wife, kids, boss, subordinate, neighbor, garbage man, probation officer 2. Send them a disposable camera and a one- time brief 3. Get them to write something and word cloud it 4. Set up a video confessional booth 5. People love playing marketer. Give them your job 6. Think of the rote thing to do. Do the opposite 7. Get 10 smart people to write 10 Onion headlines for your brand or category 8. Go to their house as a forensic criminologist 9. Pitch ideas like this at your account people until you give them one that makes them think you’re insane. Then do that one SOURCE: FCB, “Getting to what Matters”

• has nothing to do with what you’re working on,
but is interesting
• is in a very different discipline or medium, but
has a similar idea to what you’re interested in
• is from a different perspecti

Write a Discovery Brief.
 
Create a list of questions you need to answer via
research in order to write an informed,
substantiated brief. Questions will likely
investigate topics such as:
1.
What

What are the specific business goals?
Where will the business come from?
Who are the people associated with this growth?
Where can we find them?
What do they think/feel/do today? Why? (point A)
What

What have
been your
top sources
of insight
for your
strategy
work?

“As soon as I understand the
business problem I start looking
for metaphors. Example I’m working
on now: I realized that this
company was Superman if Superman
never got off the farm”

We are the things we're doing
What
seemingly
insignificant
routine
defines
them?

[advertising] is always about the
future buyer. It offers him an image
of himself made glamorous by the
product or opportunity it is trying
to sell.
The image then makes him envious of
himself a

e.g. this might come to life in a brief as
“Piss off vegetarians”

Define who you don’t want to be
Franklin D Roosevelt said “I ask you to
judge me by my enemies.”
This forces you to accept that yo

Speak to real people, not aggregates
To base communications on the
amalgamated average of millions of
individuals is missing the richness
and nuance that lead to real human
insights;
“Hagen Dazs

The danger of averages;
The average person is a 24 year old Chinese
man named Mohammed with a cell phone and no
bank account.

7 ways to get numbers that matter
1. Be vigilant. Looking every day for something
that could make matters easier
2. Search outside the usual sources
3. Get more minds on it
4. Juxtapose. Put related

A beginner’s guide to writing an insight:
1. List what you’ve found
2. Select what you haven’t heard before
3. Play with this pattern: “We thought X but
it’s really Y”
e.g.: We thought alcoholism was

Do you have an insight?
Have you done the kind of
research nobody else is doing?
Do you know what’s going to make
people care about what you have to
say?
Where is the conflict? The tension?
tension

something that would make somebody say:
There’s no amount of tears that a
drive-through burger at 5am can’t dry.