The word “consumer insight” in everyday language has ended up becoming a generic term which is synonymous with “inspirational nugget”, an observation, an observation that makes a creative person do good marketing thinking. But the diversity of concrete situations in which this term insight is applied casts doubt on what it really covers. See also our training programInsight Academy.
Note that our training in writing insights and concepts can allow you to improve your skills in this practice.
By losing precision on what “an insight” really is, we end up encountering difficulties in writing and more generally managing “insights”.
The term insight has ended up designating extremely different notions ranging from weak signals, consumer verbatim, anticipated trends, to certain results from a study, and generally to any observation worthy of interest to stimulate innovation.
“There we have an insight.” This expression is now ultimately used to illustrate very different notions in terms of stakes, maturity, exploitability, problematization or potential, and we say it as we could exclaim “There, we have a nugget”. However, it is very difficult to manage what we have not very clearly defined.
Insight is the result of work or interaction based on an observation, but it is not limited to this observation alone.
The insight itself is the fruit of real work of problematization and marketing perspective based on observations, as basic material. It is not, like the gold nugget, a raw material that can be found in its raw state. What we can find in the raw state are precisely these inspiring signals that companies are full of: study results, verbatim, monitoring elements, etc. However, in themselves, these signals can be ambiguous, leading to several complementary or contradictory interpretations. We cannot therefore remain at the stage of inspiring observation to have an exploitable insight.
In this context, the mission of a consumer insight manager therefore consists of:
Technically, truly usable insight is therefore a structured and articulated thought, which is no longer a raw signal, as we have already underlined (see the SMT editorial method): an observation, a motivation, a point of tension. It is this ternary which makes the insight usable with precision for a marketing response (product, service, speech, etc.).
If the ingredients of an insight can be found easily, like raw materials, insight is the fruit of articulated and thoughtful work and it cannot be limited to a simple observation (even if it is inspiring). This work is generally carried out by the marketer but can also be partly carried out by the consumer if they are guided to articulate their thoughts (see our note on insight crafter) within the framework of a well-conducted co-creative dialogue.
We offer intra- and inter-company training in the management of these insights, see our program note in this regard.Insight Academy.