Planners and the transparent dangling carrot...

And so to the bit where I link planners, Alanis Morrissette, the death of irony, consumer insight and fear of death together in a jumble so loose it seems seemless.

Consumer insight is a transparent dangling carrot. Or rather it's not... but it seems like one. And that's dangerous. We all sense that it's out there. That it's close. That it's worth chasing, That we'll find it. But alas the thing about consumer insight is that it’s so often mislabeled it has become impossible to spot the real thing. Agencies and the planners within them have done to consumer insight what Alanis Morissette did to irony – mislabeled, muddied and made misinterpreted and then pushed out into the world at large.

So just as the following things now pass as ironic when in actuality they’re no more than unfortunate

- Turning 98, winning the lottery and dying the next day
- A death row pardon two minutes too late
- A black fly in your chardonnay
- Rain on your wedding day

These things now pass as insightful when they’re no more than observation

- Our target will be in the market for a new car
- These people watch more sports programs than most
- These are people who aspire to things
- Yellow is the color for the coming season

Of course there’s not a shred of insight there – but the fact is that there’s more and more resource going into more and more research to get to the silver bullet of a ‘Consumer Insight’ that will ‘change everything.’ And quite frankly I believe that the money would be better spent looking for Unicorn Dung that could be sold to fuel power stations without pollution.

I’m not saying that Consumer Insight doesn’t exist. Or that there aren’t good uses for genuine insight. There are plenty. One of my favorite campaigns, Reebok’s “Belly’s gonna get ya” was based on a very real insight that some people aren’t running for the love of sport… they’re running away from middle aged spread. It was an insight that could have been better used against Nike but it was true and useful and could have led to a brand positioning that would have split the market. So Consumer Insight is out there, but it’s rare and to seems, to me at least that the whole insight industry has gone slightly mad… which brings me to a more practical objection – at least from an agency point of view.

It’s my contention that agencies can no longer afford the search for insight. That’s a relatively new thing, so let’s go back to the days when I was a junior planner again (ripple dissolve to ye olden days).

In ye olden days the insight business was a profitable one for agencies. Every client wanted one, every planner knew how to get one and there was a 10% commission (15% if you did the sums properly) on all of those lovely focus groups. Planners had ‘Research targets’ – an amount of money that they had to make from each client. Clients were happy that they were able to be involved in the strategy, and that the M&Ms were plentiful. In a bid to help strengthen their hands planning directors added a ‘Consumer Insight’ box to the Brief, thus formalizing their importance and making the research an easier sell. “We need an insight for the brief, we need a brief to progress, how soon can we do the research?”

All was good with the world. Insight was an important thing. Clients were spending money finding insights. Agencies were saying that a good Consumer Insight was needed as a springboard for communication. Time and effort were being put in. So of course clients started hiring people to manage that time, effort and expense. Client Insight Managers suddenly started springing up. They were well funded, they were bold and they spent all of their time thinking about this one subject…. which is of course why they wanted to see it evolve.

Very soon the blunt tool of the focus group was being replaced by the more scalpel like Ethnography and that quick and profitable group being done by the planner was being outsourced to a cool ethnographic consultancy (“where there’s money, there are consultants” being one of the key tenants of the business). The role of the planner changed. They were there to help manage, observe and interpret. It meant a lot more time on the planner’s part, but no more money for the agency. Client Insight Managers started to develop rosters and preferred research suppliers and internally approved methodologies and so started to use them more and the agency less. More time of planner, less money coming in. Sound familiar?

Now the whole ethno / culture commando / art hypnotherapy / observed interaction thing is a lot of fun for the planner and some agencies manage to hold on to some of it but by and large the insight business has been outsourced to specialists by people who are one step removed from marketing and agencies are suffering the financial and political implications of that.

But it’s not just affordability that has me looking at consumer insight and (like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Dane and the girls you see chewing as they text) saying “Really?”

My real issues with Consumer Insight are twofold. The first is that it’s very rarely useful, the second is that it’s a rather rickety crutch on which to rest the weight of a brand. Too often Consumer Insight becomes a list of demands “This is what we think it is that people want” and actually bars the door to deeper thinking.

So while Consumer Insight can make us sound very clever and witty and pithy at parties when we explain what we do it’s limited in its usefulness and I think that I know why.

Most insight (and insight research) tends to be focused around behavior. Which means that it tends to be culturally specific. Which makes it pretty useless on brands that are global or that need to span the cultures of a country (or even a city)

An example. When I talked about how I appreciated the thinking behind “Dirt is Good” earlier I meant it. But then I’m a Westerner with access to good sanitation and effective drugs. Were I in the slums of India where dirt harbors tuberculosis and other diseases that will kill a couple of your children then “Dirt is not good” and no amount of money is going to change that.

So here’s what I think, for what it’s worth. Consumer insight is a useful cultural modifier of a bigger idea, but it is rarely big enough to drive a brand by itself. What brands need is something bigger, something more universal and something much more Obama than Consumer Insight.

I believe that brands need to start not by looking at the behaviors that make us different and unique but at the beliefs, fears and drivers that are Universal. That what every brand needs is a Universal Truth (cue Universal Truth Consultancies forming lines outside of major clients) that is then modified locally with a Cultural Insight.

So we start with something big…

People are afraid of infirmity (Olivio)
People are running away from old age (Reebok)
Men are emotionally inarticulate in the presence of the women they love (Diamonds)

And we modify that Human Insight with a Cultural Insight

Olivio gives you a chance at a Mediterranean lifestyle in your dotage
Reebok allows you to dodge the middle aged spread that your friends will laugh at
A journey’s diamond is a way to say ‘Love Grows’

Again it’s a simple point.

What Universal Thing does the brand promise?
How does that manifest itself in market?

It’s a change and it means clients writing things on briefs that make them uncomfortable. Many seem to hate the idea of ‘negative insights’ but if we can have brands that stand for the big things in ways that are relevant to people on the ground then we have a better chance at building lasting relationships between brands and the people that use them.

It’s not about finding out what they want, it’s about understanding what they need – and how you can best deliver it.

That was a long way for a ham sandwich huh?