Everyone talks about insight:psychiatrists, psychologists, marketers, communicators, statisticians, computer scientists, journalists, decision-makers... However, depending on the discipline of use, this term implies quite different notions. Let us now discuss the etymology of the term “insight”.
The translation of the word insight...
The term comes from Middle English (between the 11th and 16th centuries): “inner sight": the inner look, wisdom,…. and from the Swedish "insik"t, Danish "indsigt", Dutch "inzicht", and German "Einsicht". In French, the term has never been translated generically. We therefore use the term "insight". On the other hand, in certain disciplines it has been translated, in psychiatry in particular.
Insight in psychiatry
In psychiatry, “insight” evokes “awareness of the disorder”. This term has been used since the end of the 19th century, in particular to assess the responsibility of a patient during an aggressive episode towards another person. It is also used to qualify the extent to which a patient feels treatment is necessary.The capacity for discernment is therefore at the center of this notion.
Insight in cognitive psychology
In contemporary cognitive psychology, insight is defined as the process by which a person goes from not knowing how to solve a problem to suddenly having solved it. Cognitive psychology will thus massively and scientifically study to what extent and in what context individuals suddenly manage to discover solutions under the effect of a sudden intuition.
In cognitive psychology, experimentation on insights will above all be used to better understand the issues of problem solving, and to understand why and how certain individuals suddenly and intuitively find answers to potentially complex problems (for which the experimenter has the solutions).The feeling “Aha!”, a sort of liberation of having suddenly found the solution, takes place in a 4-step process for the problem solver:
Here, insight is not only linked to awareness of the problem, but also to having found the correct solution to solve it (step 4). Insight is therefore linked to the fact of having found an exact solution (if the solution found is incorrect, even with the then misleading "Aha" feeling of having succeeded, we cannot speak of insight, because it is not a vision but more of an illusion).
Consumer insight in marketing
Among marketers and communicators, the notion of consumer insight will be articulated during the 90s and 2000s around two complementary notions, which precede the fact of finding a solution, innovating and communicating it:
The problematization: “An insight (we often say consumer insight) is the consumer's perception of an unresolved problem or dilemma in the product category in which the brand operates.» (“Publicitor”, J. Lendrevie, A.de Baynast, C.Emprin, Dunod, 2014). The notion of “tension” is then central,
The metaphor, the vision: “Why is a good Insight like a refrigerator? Because the moment you look inside, the light turns on. » (“Why is a Good Insight Like a Refrigerator?”, J. Jeremy Bullmore, Wpp Annual report, 2004).
The first approach linked to problematization locates the insight in the “problem” but not in the solution, therefore in that of insight into a truth. The limitation of this approach is that the “problematic” aspect seems to suggest a negative version of insight. However, certain tensions can perfectly arise from desire and illustrate a more positive context. Furthermore, this approach does not guarantee the capacity of insight to capture a unifying truth. The second approach using metaphor takes up the idea of the Aha effect seen in cognitive psychology. It is therefore directly linked to the relevance of the solution, which by definition is not yet known when the insight must be used in the upstream innovation phase before developing an offer. Ainsi, bien que séduisante, cette définition par la métaphore peut prêter à l'anachronisme, car on ne pourrait qualifier réellement "d'insight" a posteriori une information inspirante que si elle a donné lieu au lancement d'une offre ou d'une solution à succès (c'est le principe de l'insight en psychologie cognitive). The mere "Aha" effect translated by Bullmore's metaphor in no way guarantees the distinction between enlightened vision and... manifest error (illusion). We see that the problematization and metaphor approaches each have their advantages and limitations. We can therefore propose a method which allows both to problematize as is the case in the first approach but also to evaluate the attractiveness of the insight, its capacity to generate attention.
Consumer insight will be problematized, that is to say it will put into perspective the consumer truth it expresses:
It will contain asubject(S): who will determine what it is, the context, the situation, etc.
To this subject will correspond amotivation(M): it will specify why this is important for the consumer. Motivation is the “engine” of our decision-making choices. It is therefore essential to highlight it in an insight,
Finally, and without which this insight would be incomplete, it must contain atension(T): it designates the limits or possible obstacles (notably in the experience currently experienced by the consumer) which make the satisfaction of this motivation (M) in the context of this subject (S), imperfect or even unsatisfactory.
The advantage of this type of insight for marketing is that it makes it possible to accurately reproduce a situation experienced or felt by a consumer. Particularly in the test phase (analysis of opportunity territories or in concept tests) it makes it possible to avoid any ambiguity and to constitute a basis for exchange with consumers.
Once validated, this type of insight can also be effectively included in a communications brief to allow the agency to clearly understand “what is at stake”. On the other hand, such a structured insight does not constitute a communicative shock formula for a catchphrase or a slogan. This is the main distinction from communicational insight.
Communication insight
Communication insight, as we have just specified, directly benefits from marketing insight (by the SMT method for example) when the communication brief is sufficiently informed. On the other hand, such a structured formula (Subject/Motivation/Tension) is not in itself communicative and has very little chance of being used as is in the brand's communication discourse.
Indeed, if we consider a communication, like a film, there are many instruments to express insight:
the characters present and the situation: which allows us not to have to verbalize the Subject,
their attitude, their repartee and their expressions: which help to highlight Motivation,
the expression of a key benefit: which often implicitly illustrates the resolution of a Tension.
The communicator's creative exercise therefore obviously leads him not to express marketing insight in a literal way but rather to illustrate this truth in a captivating and striking way. Thus, a catchphrase or a slogan naturally takes on a particularly rich meaning when it is situated in the context of communication which provides different anchoring instruments (people, situations, etc.). And obviously communicational insight takes on an even more precise meaning for a given brand, because it refers to elements which structure this brand in the minds of the audiences to whom it is addressed.It is nevertheless key to master the precise issue of insight in advance and to have one or more structured marketing insights in the communication briefs.
Insight is therefore not a monolithic concept
We do not pretend to be ambiguous here, we simply wanted to illustrate that insight is not a monolithic concept and that it has different meanings or uses depending on the disciplines. Let’s think of it as a toolbox. But this variety of situations cannot be an excuse not to define insights differently. Particularly in marketing or communication, the notion of insight sometimes remains very nebulous in certain organizations precisely because the richness that we have just illustrated is interpreted - wrongly - to consider that everything is potentially "insight". Like in a toolbox, each instrument has a meaning and an appropriate use. Insight management involves defining and clarifying what is meant by insight at each stage. This is the guarantee of a value chain controlled at each milestone.
"You can't manage without measuring, and what is measured gets done. Measurement is the antidote to ambiguity. It forces you to impose clarity on vague concepts and to take action." Anders Wester, Vice President of Tetra Pak from 2006 to 2009