Lets play, guess the insight!

Everything has an insight, your advertisement, branding, positioning, product et all. If you get the insight right, everything else is spun beautifully around it. The insight comes out of your market research, observation of your environment, trends, even your personal needs. Some one in the shop floor had a need for a portable, personal audio device, the walkman was born. Hence insight is everything. If the sources of insight are so obvious, why do we have failed products, boring advertisements and wrong positioning?

The million dollar questions are, how trained are your eyes and senses to spot the obvious? Can you pick it up intuitively? Can your gut feel guide you to the insight?

Somewhere in our career or studies, someone might have asked us to guess the insight for a product, advertisement or positioning. We might have done it with a grudge or with lots of interest for the first time. I request you to ask yourself why haven’t I continued doing it (i.e. if you have done it with enthusiasm)? Or why was I asked to do it (if it was a torture)?

The answer to the question will vary from person to person. I believe the exercise has a lot of meaning in it. To put it in a nut shell, it will help you give a confident and positive answer to each of the million dollar question. If you do this continuously, insights will jump at you, from financial statements to the way a child laughs.

I believe the PCRA ad that is titled “pump”( where the petrol station helper tells a customer that he is eligible for a 20% discount in price) is a great advertisement. If you refer to my earlier blog on great advertisement, it satisfies most of the criteria’s. The most interesting part is that, it has the right mix of recognition and surprise.

So lets play, guess the insight!

The problem: Right from green peace to the environment conscious person staying next door, everyone knows that petrol and petroleum product is drying up fast. Hence we should make a conscious effort to save petrol. But we don’t do it.

The insight: people are worried about petrol and LPG prices. Everything related to money is of interest to us. People love to hear the word free, discount and sale.

The solution: communicate to people that not wasting something is as good as getting something for free, or on a discount.

Just recollect how often we would have seen the word sale and petrol conservation in the same page? How often we would have come across advertisements emphasising energy conservation followed by a sale advertisement? But why did it take such a long time to correlate (at least in India) both?

Neither the problem nor the insight is new to us. But the way this person spotted it is new.

SO LET’S PLAY, GUESS THE INSIGHT! J