Insight: They exist. But a genuine insight—a non-obvious observation about consumer behavior that, acted upon, unlocks enormous growth—is a career exception, not a process; 99% of what gets stamped “insight” meets none of that definition. “Moms are busy.” “Gen Z values authenticity.” “People want convenience.” These are not insights. They aren’t even accurate. They are observations a moderately attentive 12-year-old could supply while playing a video game.
Full funnel: Advertising’s core concept is bandied around in a shotgun manner to suggest that A. we extract the whole customer journey, and B. get a firehose out and soak that puppy from top to bottom. That’s not what it should mean. It’s crucial to take in the full funnel during any initial diagnosis. But then you activate data and strategic thinking to work out where you want to apply resources to unlock growth.
Disruption: Clayton Christensen’s theory was a precise, narrow account of how low-end entrants displace incumbents: It’s usually slow and initially ignored by incumbents who don’t see the threat. Yet the word now means literally anything. Every Series A deck describes a disruption play. Every challenger brand pitches itself as disruptive when it is, in fact, a slightly cheaper version of an existing thing. Real disruption—rare, hard, terrifying—gets buried under the marketing copy of a marginally cheaper razor delivered by mail.
Consumer: We call them that because consumption is the only part of their lives we are interested in. But consumption is, for almost every human alive, the least interesting thing they do. A “consumer portrait” is likely to be 900 words on what they think, feel, hope, and want from a brand’s product—which should be one sentence. The remaining 875 words should be about a human: their job, kids, fears, Saturday mornings. If we saw them as human first, ironically, we’d understand them better as consumers second.
And we’d make work that actually moves them.
