I work in an industry that spends billions of dollars per year looking for insight.
You’d think for all that cash you’d discover some absolute corkers – but we don’t.
There’s a whole host of reasons for that.
Part of it is because this industry still mistakes insight for what people do as opposed to why.
Part of it is because some clients believe some insights may stop sales opportunity rather than open it up. [Hence the rise of ‘global human truths’ despite their fatal flaw of ignoring the importance of local context]
Part of it is because some believe that unless an insight is positive, the work will be negative. [Which is obviously bollocks, unless you use insights literally rather than laterally and even then, that doesn’t mean the work has to come out like that]
Part of it is because some in the research industry act like the legal industry and realize there is more money in keeping the question going than actually answering the question.
There’s a whole bunch of reasons, and while I believe insights can come from anywhere – I still believe those that reveal people’s beliefs, motivations and behaviours are often the most powerful of them all.
As anyone who has ever worked with/for me will know, I call these ‘dirty little secrets’, because in my experience, they tend to reveal far more than just why people do things, but the circumstances that led to this belief.
It’s not easy … it’s not always perfect … it always requires other work to validate, explore or exclude it … but I will continually push my lovely colleagues to investigate and discover, because when you reveal a dirty little secret, you are already on the road to making work that will be different and powerful.
The reason I say this is because I recently read about Ponzi-scheme King, Bernie Madoff.
While he comes across as a cold, calculated, sociopath … his intellect can’t be disputed.
When asked how he pulled off the biggest financial fraud in history, he said this …
“I succeeded because when you offer people a deal that’s too good to be true, they never want to look too hard into the facts. They say it’s because of trust. I say it’s because of greed.”
There’s a lot of truth in those 2 sentences.
There’s a lot of creative opportunity in those 2 sentences.
I don’t mean to make work that exploits even more people, but to make work for [say, a bank] that can build the sort of conversation that gives them a real chance to prove they have their customers best interests at heart.
But it won’t happen because too many clients think ‘negative insights’ leads to negative work [which is utter bullshit] and most banks already know what Mr Maddoff said, because that’s how they continue to screw the taxpayer out of cash to line their own pockets.
Shame, because a financial institution that decided to be utterly transparent and then communicated, “the reason we tell you everything is we don’t want you to blame us for anything” might be quite a refreshing change.