Great to read your response. Never mind the tiny delay.

Interesting, interesting topic.

I’m assembling a future collaboration of the Danish and Swedish planning associations where we are looking for great topics and speakers. “Creative thought starters 2007” could be a very suiting theme.

Let me know if you are interested in going on a little trip to Copenhagen and Stockholm? (it will probably be after the summer holidays).

(and thanks for the ppt.)

Cheers

Casper

But, I’m excited that someones bothered to leave a meaty reply.

Ted’s spot-on with this commentary. And, I like the idea that we should be evaluating insight - for me, there’s something interesting in finding insights from anywhere in the agency, in the process, etc… flipping that old “creative ideas can come from anywhere” mantra and getting to something that we can be more expert on… Although, should it be about ideas? I still have a mental block on insights. Feels like the word itself has been abused so badly that it has no value.

Meanwhile, thank goodness Hashem’s grammar was corrected!

I was worried there for a second!

Simon seems to be arguing against generic ‘consumer insights’ generated in focus groups that specifically probe product usage. He seems to be saying not so much that insights are limiting, but that some things pretending to be insights are actually not, and that real insights can come from other places - product, manufacturing process, the greater lives of people, etc.

That’s why as planners and strategic account/media managers we do tour the factories, do in home ethnographies, stay up to date on cultural trends, get into the deep psychology of usage, and so on - all rich areas that are often off limits to the very consumers (and often creatives!) we will be communicating with.

If anything, moving away from traditional sources of insight places even greater pressure on brand strategists to break away from ‘common sense’ understandings and stimulate creatives and clients to think in DIFFERENT ways. It’s no longer enough to quote consumers. You sometimes have to go out on a limb and introduce people to really alien ideas born out of different areas of knowledge.

How can Kleenex tap into an emotionally stunted Zeitgeist and challenge people to “Let it Out”? Why do the dynamics of oral fixation make us eat Twizzlers in dark places? How can toilets that capture rain water in a factory make a car the more the ‘responsible’ choice?

If after a briefing we’ve done nothing to deepen the way our team thinks about the role of the product in the lives of people, we shouldn’t waste their time or ours. Moreover, we owe our colleagues and clients some assurances that the ideas we’re unearthing or new perspectives we’re pursuing are ultimately relevant to our audience. We owe more to the creative process than to simply not suck.

Here’s a fun example - I worked on De Beers for two years and I can tell you what really drives many men to buy diamonds - insecurity, social dominance, guilt, the need to fetishize intimacy given deep fears of commitment, leverage in negotiating sex-access. Fun stuff!

But none of that is terribly useful in selling the product or building equity for the brand. Ironically these are some of the first places creatives go “Give her a rock and she’ll let you go golfing.” “She’ll pretty much have to.” or “Be the talk of the country club.” These executions seem creative because they dare to tap into areas that go unspoken. Unfortunately, these areas are damaging to the brand and toxic in communications. They’re original and have never been done before… because they’re wrong.

So let me propose a caveat - yes, insights can and should come from anywhere and the best ones do. If you don’t have one, don’t make one up, it’ll only bog everyone down. Yes, planners and strategic account managers should attempt to open up as large a sandbox as possible for creatives to play in.

But what about a slightly less touchy feely role for strategists - that of evaluator of insights and valuable sources of knowledge about how consumers will respond to communications built off of various insights? We might not have the answer that’s right, but we should, at the very least, have a strong sense of what isn’t.

In this way our responsibility only gets greater and our day to day involvement needs to increase when we ‘get out of the way.’ And that’s the exciting part of creative, collaborative planning!

As for aspiring to a ‘language that doesn’t lead to anything concrete’ (if I read you correctly, Hash) let me suggest a sure bet - silence.

Media…holders of the keys to client’s new media wet dreams…have failed to deliver information in a language and a way that is usable, actionable, creative…they are stuck in a traditionalist frame of thinking while whining about not being recognized & part of the process.

Planning has done the same but being so rigid to insights, to process, to some sense that they hold the answers that will unlock everything.

The irony is that at the end of the day we are paid for our creative solutions to business problems.

Both planning and media need to work in a way that ignites ideas, sparks something, seeds something, and in a way that is not heavy handed or in a language that doesn’t lead to anything concrete.