Ideas, insights and delusions

We researchers used to work a lot with advertising planners. We used to have a common purpose, looking for ideas and insights which help to explain a market or a brand. To adapt the line used by Dave Trott to describe planners and creatives, we used to drink from the same well of inspiration – although planners got to piss in it first. (Pic by lulidesigns)

 

But what has happened to planners that they now feel they have to sneer at qualitative research? It’s a bit like your outgoing and stylish younger sibling, who you got on so well with, now saying that you are so-o boring and predictable. You spoil the fun. You don’t have any imagination.

 

When account planning started, planners did not feel the need to put down research, or act as if research and ideas were somehow opposed. They used research to help to generate insights (cf JWT's 'planning begins at 40' event). Planning co-founder Stephen King said "you cannot know the facts until you've had an idea". He was a keen supporter of research, advocating 'occasionally beautiful' research and calling for more imaginative solutions and processes.

 

Is research any less beautiful now, or are planners getting more and more desperate? You might think the latter, to judge from two recent posts from Adliterate.

 

In ‘Great ideas can come from anywhere, my arse’ Richard goes on about whether or not anyone but a planner can have a decent idea. What?? It is patently obvious that anyone CAN have a good idea and to suggest otherwise is paranoid, arrogant nonsense. It’s like saying that only an athlete can touch their toes. What he probably meant is that ideas professionals are best equipped to recognise and to develop good ideas – which is a different argument, as Mark spotted.

 

The post, ‘new year’s revelations’, claims that there are four sources of insights and none of these is research (obviously).  They are, a planner’s own instinct and experiences, spending time with ‘real people’, academics and ‘weird shit’. And what we call an insight should really be a ‘revelation’.

 

The revelation idea, taken from Simon Law, is quite a revealing projection. To call an idea a revelation implies a superior intelligence. It suggests that planners (or some planners at least) are getting a bit delusional. Only planners can have good ideas. Only planners can access ‘revelations’ about humankind.

 

So your younger sibling has run off with cousin creative, grown a beard and joined a cult that believes they have the ear of God. Let’s hope it doesn’t end in tears, or in some kind of siege of

Charlotte St.

 

The great thing about ‘Adliterant’ is that it sets out to be provocative and is a great read. The only thing that is missing from the idea/insight/revelation debate, we humbly suggest, is a little humility.

Comments

[Simon]

Well, Richard Huntingdon just seems to have a problem with focus groups. He calls for ethnography and immersion sessions - that sounds like research to me.

While provocative, he and others do have a point. There is plenty of bad research out there, and if you experience it first hand then it sours your judgement. Unfortunately, in a crowded market it is very difficult to find research partners (and for me, the individuals working on projects are much more important than the company) that match one's vision and expectations.

Clients are a demanding bunch :)

[kevin]

Clients?! cuhhh...

Good points, there probably is bad research out there (and bad planning, presumably). Maybe it is better to switch research partners, rather than to dismiss all research and pretend that ethnography and immersion etc are something else.

I wonder too if planners need a different kind of insight (revelation etc) than do clients, more dramatic and ownable as it is to create ads to win gongs, rather than to find 'the truth' about a market or people?

So, I agree! Thanks for the perceptive comment

[richard huntington]

Guys I just think you may have to come to terms with the idea that qual' is running out of road. It was a wonderful idea that flourished in the late twentieth century but is simply not delivering the real insight that we now need. This doesn't diminish the power of the information that qual delivers but it does suggest that is is losing its potency. Time to think about a future beyond qual' for you researchers. Or are you scared to kill the cash cow?

[kevin]

Ouch! It would be interesting to ponder the respective lengths of the roads of account planning and qualitative research ...

... but you seem to conflate qual research with focus groups? And this is Head of Planning talking?? We have plenty of issues with focus groups - to the extent that we don't do them! And are you not doing qual research by talking to academics and real people etc?

And the insight thing, I think you do have a good point about how difficult it is to find/achieve, but I also think (as mentioned above) that the 'insights' you want are partly about looking good, the insights clients want are mainly about selling more snibbo

[John Griffiths]

So Saatchis doesn't run groups any more? Well there's a Wily Coyote over the edge of the cliff moment. Only I'm trying to decide who is looking into the void: researchers clinging to a cashcow or planners doing it for themselves

[kevin]

Wily Coyote Planner wants to impress clients with their latest box of ACME tricks and show up that pesky Roadrunner Researcher at the same time ... it's just not going to work out, is it? (meep meep)

[Mike]

I hesitate greatly to say that focus groups are dead. If anything new life is being breathed into them by technology. Gone are the days of recruiting locally and large budgets to accommodate first-class airfares for observers and moderators however. It's really just too much of a hassle for the participants as well. Over at Rockhopper, we still get tons of qual work requests from our clients, probably because we are able to provide quality research on a global scale for considerably lower costs. The "traditional" methods are not dying, they are just changing, and if you can't change with the times, you get left behind and irrelevant. Simple as that really.