How insight fuels creativity

What exactly is ‘insight’? According to the dictionary, it’s defined as ‘the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something.’ Which means that, in creative terms, insight is invaluable in making sure whatever we do is more effective.

The power of understanding people.

Insight begins with the researching process, giving you an opportunity to find out about your target audience, their likes, dislikes, any issues they may face and what drives them.

That gives you the power to create campaigns that look and feel like you’ve physically put yourself in someone else’s shoes, even perhaps walked a short mile in them. And with a deeper understanding of your market through insight, your creative work will stand out from the competition, be better understood by the audience and make a lasting impression on them.

Improving creativity.

‘4% of advertising is remembered positively, 7% is remembered negatively, but a whopping 89% isn’t noticed or remembered.’*

It’s a shocking statistic, but it simply highlights how much marketing budget is wasted. That’s why it’s more important than ever to use insight, coupled with creative ideas and execution, to cut through and resonate with your audience. Knowing your creative is based on a great truthful insight means you can be brave, bold and confident with your approach, in turn increasing memorability. With creativity fuelled from insight there’s always a clear rationale to back it up, which in turn makes it easier to expand and roll out as a campaign.

More relatable.

Deeply tuning into insight and taking an empathetic approach should be a key influence on the creative process, as it improves the relatability and receptiveness of your audience to your message, as demonstrated in this example.

A study by Helen Demetriou and Bill Nicholl observed teenage creative Design & Technology students at two inner London Schools over two years. The students were taught in a way that helps them empathise with their target audience and were shown videos of young children who had asthma, struggling to use their inhalers. By encouraging the students to acknowledge how that would make them feel, they created animal inhaler masks which were pitched to and later rolled out across the NHS, as a playful and age-relevant way to help young children manage their own health.

Effective creative work is always based on insight.

The animal inhaler masks showed the value of spending time gathering deep insights at the beginning of the creative process. Not only does it lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness, it also produces stronger ideas and lessens the need for research later on.

INSIGHT + CREATIVITY = EFFECTIVENESS

In short, meaningful insight is the gold behind any creative idea – and that’s why, at Thrive, it’s how we approach every one of our projects.

Want to create a campaign based on meaningful insight? Then get in touch.

 * Source: https://davetrott.co.uk/2008/04/why-do-we-assume-people-have-to-like-adverts/