A Peloton class at the Hotel California.

For the last 25 years I’ve been watching planners have debates over what insights are, whether they’re useful, whether they exist and over where they can be found.

It’s been a quarter century of planner wank;?an endless cycle that generates heat, burns energy but ultimately goes nowhere.

A Peloton class at the Hotel California.

And I’m not going to add to the noise here.

Because frankly I don’t think insight is key to the job anyway.

Here’s my take

If you’re a planner your job isn’t to be insightful, it’s to be interesting.?

Your role as a planner is a find something (anything) that means your creative teams are starting from a different place to the creative teams working on the same category down the road.?

Your job is to avoid writing the category generic brief, against the category generic audience, on the agency generic brief template.?

And to write something more interesting instead?

That’s it. Give your teams an interesting place to start, a sense of direction and the belief that this might just lead to good work and you’re done.

And you don’t need an insight to do that.?

Interesting can come out of simple of data.

Check out Axe Wake Up Service, which fell out of a simple fact that most guys use their phones in bed - for porn at night, as an alarm in the morning.?

Brief : 85% of teen guys are woken up by their phones. The same phones that they watch porn on before bed. Let’s try to bring those two worlds together.

(Honestly, check out the case study on YouTube… Axe WakeUp Service, it’s mad)

Interesting can be in a data pattern.?

The stats on SEA vs Europe show longer working hours, worse air quality, poorer sleep, smaller living spaces, fewer social safety nets and a sandwich generation forced to work harder than ever to support 3 generations - and people struggling with mental health at record numbers (as a result)?

Given all of that data IKEA had the opportunity to be more than furniture brand, it could be a Mental Health brand – selling respite, calm, sanctuary, quiet, home - not just cheap sofas.?

Brief : “Ikea can help build a refuge from a world that’s trying to kill you” is a better brief than the time honored “Democratized Style.”?

It can be in embracing a product truth.?

I worked on a pasta sauce that was losing its battle with rivals due to the fact that on every measure that they thought mattered, they were a worse sauce. They were thinner, had fewer vegetables and tasted ‘sweet’ as a opposed to ‘healthy’?

When we embraced that, and started for looking at how we sold the worst sauce on the market we found that on one day of the week, a shit sauce was the best thing you could be. Because Thursday is the night that mom gives up on trying to cook, and just wants to serve up something fast and cheap that everyone says “yes” to... and no chunky veg meant less chance of someone saying “Ugh”?

The brief - “It’s Yes food”?

It can be an observation.?

One creative came back from Chinese New Year and told the story that after the hell of the journey (the 16 hr trip, the number of people, the buses and planes and trains he’d taken, carrying gifts, to get to his family in China) the first thing his mom did upon greeting him – was brush the dandruff from his shoulder and sigh.?

“You have enough on your shoulders” became the brief for his shampoo brand and that story became the first ad in the series.

It can come from a product truth.

An ad that we never quite got to make for Castrol GTX came from a product truth “It clings, like a magnet” – switch the last three words for “like your nightmare stalker ex” and you have a brief that takes you from ads about engine protection to ads about the unshakeable nature of the oil.?

“It clings, like your nightmare stalker ex”?

It can be an unvoiced truth.?

At the height of the Soccer Mom Minivan wave we used art therapy to get moms to show us what their lives would have been like if they’d not had the 3rd kid (usually the trigger for minivan purchase).. what they told us was that the kid had ruined the fantasy, their marriage and their hope of being interesting again during the next 20 years. Without that kid they weren’t in that van, at Costco, shopping for husband who often pointed out “You wanted another”?

The brief for our minivan became “Sell the fantasy of the front seats, not the reality of the back seats” – and the work sold moms on the idea of being without the kids that they resented for a moment, rather than on the practicality of layout.?

“A car for moms who sometimes secretly resent having their third kid.” Nobody else is briefing that.?

And you can go on forever…

A happy meal is how a divorced dad hides the depressed squalor of his new life from his 7 year old. We help recently divorced dads maintain the illusion of being okay?

At least a quarter of the people in the gym are fleeing middle age rather than embracing exercise. And every judgemental look reminds them that they’re too old and unfit to belong there... so they’re always on the verge of giving up. Make people more afraid of middle age than they are of the gym?

Food that comes out of a microwave has heat, not warmth. Happiness is still homemade.?

In a world where the toys and games you shared with your parents have become extinct, Disney movies are one of the few things that are still enjoyed across generations, Disney – it’s one of the few things you have in common?

Half of the sandwiches that people take during our 2 for 1 day end up in the trash, people can’t eat two of our sandwiches and feel weird handing the spare to somebody. Turn 2 for 1 day into “Your friend eats free” day?

People aren’t buying out $3,000 camera because they feel they’re not expert enough to get the best out of it. Reassure people that ‘i’ mode on a camera doesn’t stand for ‘idiot’ mode?

I’ll stop. The point is made. Or at least I hope it is.?

And no doubt some smart ass / fuck-wit will now point out in the comments that some of this stuff might be “based off an insight" - to whit I say that "it may well be."?

But really, who gives a fuck? Just get somewhere interesting. Then write something interesting. And support any work that feels interesting. Interest over insight. That really was all I had to say here.