Writing about Insights - 5 Strategies

What's an insight anyway?

If you've worked in market research for several years as I have, this word is everywhere. Everybody wants the best insights. Everybody wants the latest insights. Everybody wants to impress their readers with them.

Okay great, but what are insights anyway?

Insights are a story of how things work. How they truly work. A profound and deep description of the mechanism behind a phenomenon. It is the understanding of the foundational mechanism of things. The true, bare view of the cause and effect.

That is all great, but insights alone aren't what makes an article interesting. The best insights can be a really boring read - just recall when was the last time you read an academic article.

So, what makes an insight article interesting?

Here I am going to give you 5 practical strategies to write about insights. You can use them even if you have never written before.

1 - This thing everybody believes, it's wrong

This is a classic. Humans love to be right, but they hate even more to be wrong. For this reason, this first strategy often generates interest in the readers. In fact, this strategy is powerful in the same way that judo is powerful: it uses the strength of its adversary. It takes a story that has already gathered interest and beliefs and flips it onto its head.

The New York Times often leverages this strategy, sadly as do conspiracy theories and tabloids. Nonetheless if the insight is true it is a great strategy. We hate to be wrong, but our brains also notice change and disruption more than consistency. If everybody talks about the same thing, yourself included, you'll struggle to get readers to pay attention to your words.

Examples of this strategy could include: Self-driving cars will change the way we walk more than the way we drive; It is not what we find on the Mars that matters, it is what we bring back; No, your air-fryer isn't saving you energy.

2 - This tiny presumably unrelated fact explains this big trend

Not every insight is going to contradict a common-held belief. Another strategy is to find evidence of your insight in a seemingly insignificant event and to link it back to the bigger trend that truly epitomises your insight. The attractiveness of this strategy is in its suspense. The reader is questioning why we're talking about something seemingly insignificant, what's the catch or coup de théatre?

Popular science books will rely heavily on this strategy. They will start by talking about a tiny insect or bacteria. Then they will zoom in on a particular behaviour, or a feature that appears strange, hard to explain or make sense of. Then, the insight is unravelled, and the discovery is scaled back to the whole category or insect species. Psychology and economics books do this with humans.

Examples of this strategy could include: Cat ownership is the best inflation tracker we have; Ants always start searching for food by turning left, blame cognitive networks; Sharks started swimming upside down, yet another evidence of climate change.

3 - This change you're expecting is already happening

This strategy is a mixture between the first two. In this strategy you are correct, but you just didn't expect to be THAT correct, so in a way you're partially wrong. This is the element of the first strategy. The second element, is that you demonstrate the change by putting the spotlight on details or facts that were previously ignored or out of the picture.

You might find this strategy used in short documentaries, but also in opinion pieces in newspapers. When a big change is expected - say climate change, economic recession, impact of pandemic - it is usually accompanied with timelines or probabilities. It is in the future, or it is uncertain to happen. This strategy is saying: it is already there.

Examples of this strategy could include: Regions where climate change is already over the two degrees target; As the economics of barbie dolls demonstrates, we're already in a recession; Research on human hair highlights that the impact of the pandemic is already in our bodies.

4 - These two opposite things, they're the same

Insights are a lot about connecting. Indeed one of the strategies for discovering insights, as explained by psychologist?Gary Klein, is to pursue new connections. This type of insight tends to be sought after, as it is essentially two insights in one. It could mean that we're wrong on two topics, making it particularly interesting and attractive.

You will find this strategy across the board, when it is available. This strategy is harder to come by, as it requires two pieces to the puzzle. It is also very popular and therefore competitive. The powerful attractiveness in this type of insight is how it unearths common links between seemingly opposite things or phenomenon. It is highly satisfying as it reframes our understanding and vision of the world.

Examples of this strategy could include: The reason why gorillas and ants have the same food habits; Turns out computers and whales have the same communication system; People bought air-fryers and new mattresses during the pandemic, for the same reason.

This thing is true, sort of

The world is complicated and enigmatic. The discovery of insights itself can be messy, navigating wrong assumptions, rabbit holes, and setbacks. This strategy is interesting because it includes the ambiguity of the process of discovery. It doesn't give you the answer straight up, but takes you on a journey, a messy journey, that makes the final discovery even more appreciable.

This strategy is often found in the social sciences. That is because rarely is anything completely and always true for humans. There are always exceptions. This strategy allows to still catch attention with bold statements, while retaining the scientific accuracy of the statement. It also begs the question of which part makes the statement doubtful, setting the scene for a stimulating and complicated insight discovery story, which might be unfinished.

Examples of this strategy could include: Oxygen is bad for you, sort of; Should we stop opening our eyes when we wake up? Maybe; What is causing us to be obsessed with air-fryers? It's probably our cars.

Insights are stories

Insights are stories. What make good stories? Coup de theatres, unexpected turns and twists. But that's not all! You can write a story with as many plot twists as you want and still fail to engage your audience.

Your audience must be able to identify with your story.

That's why they would care.

As Gary Klein explains, insights tend to demonstrate four issues blocking the way of discovering these insights: wrong beliefs, lack of experience, lack of imagination, or lack of interest.

It is therefore likely that your insights will talk about at least one of these points, especially if you explain the discovery of the insight. To engage your audience, they must be related to one of the four issues. Either you point the finger on them (challenge their beliefs) or you help them point the finger on others (demonstrate the importance of experience to an audience from a society that truly values experience and hierarchy).

To truly resonate your insight story must make a point.

A point connected to your audience.

A point they care about.