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A quote that is important to me and is even more important to you, as a reader of this particular newsletter:
Young planners especially think that the only way to become great is to read books and follow people on Twitter, using the same templates and ideas. It's good to start your career, but after that, you have to find your voice, your inspiration, and your influence. Another approach must be found. You need to have your own thing that can be the basis of best practice. But you need to put another filter. Otherwise, we'll all be doing the same thing, which won't produce great or interesting work.
(emphasis mine)
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ASK THESE QUESTIONS, IN THIS ORDER":
Evidence: how do we know what’s true or false? What evidence counts
View point: how might this look from someone else’s perspective? Or looked at it from different direction
Connection: is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before?
Conjecture: what if it were different?
Relevance: why does this matter?
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This is an interesting way to approach insight hunting.
Just replace the items on the left with concepts relative to what you’re thinking about. Or don’t – it would still work. The point is that it forces you to think about what is changing.
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Speaking of Insights - two very good quotes from two very smart and very different people:
“Although there are many kinds of insights (a topic for next week), common among many of them is that they are incompatible with our current beliefs; they disrupt and disorganize. It is for this reason that they are, per the Cambridge definition, sudden and often take us by surprise. By contrast, organizations in general – and managers in particular – seek stability and predictability. Most insights gained are thus stifled; they die not because there is no flame, but because there is no oxygen. Only platitudes, safe in their reaffirmance of the status quo, remain.”
-JP Castlin
For me an insight is simply defined as understanding ‘why’ rather than the what. Why do people think the way they think or do the things they do...as opposed to what they actually end up doing. That said, I also don’t believe there is such a thing as one single insight – they can come from anywhere-but despite that, It's still about the why rather than the what.
-Rob Campbell
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And a good article from The Atlantic in which the headline itself is an Insight:
Social Media Is for Strangers Now
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One last thought on insights then I’ll leave the beehive alone…
If the definition of an insight is that it is a revelation, or changes the way you see / think about something…
…wouldn’t that make insights subjective?
(yes)
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The Chinese government has launched a crackdown on ‘ugly’ fonts. [Wu Peiyue]
finally, fascism I can get behind.
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I’m a huge believer that culture research should not be considered until the category/brand/consumption knowledge is collected.
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In the 1920s, new car sales were falling, so the industry promoted the term ‘jaywalking’ to blame accidents on pedestrians, rather than aggressive drivers. [Peter Norton via Clive Thompson]
When we talk about cultural change, this is the peak of what that means. I don’t know why it is assumed that cultural change driven by brands or advertising is going to be a positive change… Any cultural change driven by capitalism is going to most likely be net negative :/
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Good Creative Briefs be like:
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The problem with focus groups:
Researchers asked 100 people whether a reasonable person would unlock their phone and give it to an experimenter to search through.
Most said no.
Then the researchers asked 103 other people to unlock their phone and give it to them.
100 of them complied.
[Rob Henderson]
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Spot on.
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Every interaction with the world is an opportunity for research.
Check out Bones as an incredible example of what qualitative can look like.
Quote:
“I have so many women in the back of this car. They don’t talk about men anymore. They talk about other women.”
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Society is doomed.
WEEKLY MONSTER
I’ve been in a monster slump. Burn out / constantly sick from the day care bug of the week. But here is a drawing by my brother that I printed on the office plotter and framed:
