Let me tell you upfront, Insight is not a Hidden Truth. It is not.
Insight is what is pushing people to hide the truth, run away from the truth or simply try to change the truth. It is the conflict between reality and dream.
So look beyond cross tabs, try to see the correlations between the truth, its result and its desirability. If your consumer could tell you everything, then clients don’t need you, clients need you to tell them what consumer cant.
I will not quote some generic examples, let me give you some insights about myself
- I want to enjoy big pack of lays chips & a large can of Coke without getting fat
- I want you to share this post with the world but I don’t want to sound desperate
- I want to travel around the world and still manage to keep my day job
You knew it already, didnt you. Or nope you couldn’t see my point. If not, then let me give you an insight about you
- You want to discover the secret of success, but you don’t want your Boss to know it
Do you know why people doesn’t pay attention to marketing studies because Truth is boring; and mostly we all know what the truth is. News channel have mastered this art of telling the truth that can drive masses. Because they don’t discover truth alone, they discover why people are playing games with the truth.
Learn from them, this is what their formula is, my friend
Insight = [Truth + (Outcome of the truth x Desirability of the outcome)]
How to Discover Insight through a Formula
Have you heard insights like guilt free food, A Monk who sold his Ferrari, One Minute Manager all of these are benefiting from the eternal truth and the negative desirability of their outcomes. (I want to be rich enough to have Ferrari with a peace of mind of a Monk)
I can’t share any data set here with you, I still want to have my day job :). But I am sharing the post about new consumer truth and I am adding the insights in blue for illustration.
New Consumer Truths & Insights
Best of luck in your insight quests, in case you feel you are stuck somewhere in your search. You can always contact me, I will try to help. If you are targeting Muslim Market, I have done some work on it which might be of use to you.
By the way, some time ago I also wrote something about marketing research presentation formulas that can work for consumer insight manager, business intelligence executives, and marketing research personnel.
Consumer Insights with Ayesha Saeed 
Definitely a light way of looking at insights but of course, far from the profound meaning of insights for businesses. 🙂
Thanks Nimesh, Why dont you help me improve myself. Share any thoughts/process etc that you use to discover insights. The more the thoughts the merrier.
Its easy to criticize and often, to end up sounding unjust in doing so, especially for someone like you who was nice enough to share your thoughts. My humble view on insight is that its much wider than simply a tension or a crisscrossing of what I (can) have and what I want or the two extremes of my needs. Its a complex element of human behaviour (made up of motives, beliefs and emotions – like fear, merriment, infatuation etc) that presents us an opportunity to build a bridge between human beings and a commercial objective. In a Jungian stream of thinking, it can go as deep as your subconscious(eg, do we always know what we want or seek?) or even, to metaphysical aspects of reality or existence (I. Insights are at work everywhere, arent they? In movies, books, comic strips, govt policies, education and so on – not just in marketing, you know what I mean. And it has been around even before we recognized its existence. e.g. The pigments invented for wall paintings to express aesthetics (invented 400k BC) was based on a very intricate insight that humans would find it easier to see with their senses than in their head/imagination. So from that perspective, your above write up has limited scope and a formula cannot crack something as complex as insight… can it? but then I could be wrong. I don’t know.
PS: My comment was strictly related to this article. It wasn’t personal at all – it would so unfair if I did. My sincere apologies!
Nimesh, First of all thank you for your sharing your thoughts. Really at any given point in time two brains are better than one. I see what you are saying, and i agree with you. The point mentioned in the article is restricted only to insights related to marketing. And yes, one formula alone can not cover the scope of entire insight discovery process, but it certainly gives us a starting point. The idea is to articulate the method to madness, insight discovery is not a random process it is like any other business process very structured and objective driven and i feel we all should work on chalk it out. Why don’t you consider writing a guest post for this site, articulating the process that you usually follow to identify jaw-dropping insights from your data. Reading what you said, I can tell it will be an interesting piece.
I love feedback, infact when the feedback is critical and identifies weak spots it helps me to see the bigger picture and in my life feedback has always helped me evolve. So thanks again, and keep sharing your thoughts. Have a great day
Agree on the 2 brain theory!That would be a great honour! I can do an honest try, of course. Let me know how do I do that and you can review perhaps before posting! 🙂
and I’ve requested to connect with you on LinkedIn so you’re always welcome for any interesting conversations such as this! 🙂
😛 Thanks.