Once upon a time in a place called the Lagos Strategy Unit, a question was raised about what troubles strategists the most. In simple terms, when preparing strategy , what gives you the hardest time?
The results were interesting, with most people settling on the banks of river insight and river big idea. I want you to picture people at the edge of two rivers separated by a small patch of land, each with a laptop in one hand and their hearts in the other. What’s interesting is that this same spot however is where the seniors before them have stood, and quite often do they return upon its banks.
While some come to drink from the waters, others come to drown in its depths and the rest, they come to stare at it. Hoping the daughters of direction will guide them to a second nature where they breathe under the water or walk on it-- to become Poseidon or Peter, they did not mind.
During the conversation, two key questions stood out from the answers everyone gave that day:
What is an insight?
What is a big idea?
The definition we all agreed with is this:
An insight is a trigger that inspires your big idea; your aha! moment.
A big idea is the big picture that inspires your creativity.
To further expand on this, we used the Airtel “Data is Life” campaign as a random case study. Since we know the campaign’s big idea to be Data is Life, what could be the insight and what ad from them has clearly depicted this?
The insight:
The Ad:
When you watch the ad and take a look at the insight stated above, everything makes so much sense. You get to see how the insight gives you an aha! moment and how this projects the picture that data is life, which in turn presents itself in the ad.
Now like all good things go, our eureka moment came apart when people began asking how do they both fit and how do they figure it all out.
So the question became, “what makes a good strategy?”.
A good strategy is one where the insight and the big idea are in agreement as the mind and heart, respectively.
Think of it like two open ended but leading questions:
What did/do we discover?
What does it mean?
At the end of the session, we had five key takeouts:
Strategists do struggle to find what their big idea is
A solid strategy is one where your insight inspires your big idea; they must be in agreement.
To create something special, you just need a big idea. So all your creativity starts when you have a big picture in mind.
"What do I want these people to feel?"
It'll be wise to watch more ads, so you'll attempt to crack the insight on the spot. Good for the brain
You discover insights from research. It could mean using the web or social media. It could mean doing a survey. It could mean going out to observe behavior. You can even run experiments!
It all depends on the complexity of the problem or how deeply you want to inspire your BIG IDEA.
The image below will give you an idea of how your insight, if true, impacts other elements involved directly or indirectly in your strategic planning.
We may be wrong at LSU with these findings. If so do tell and if not, please share.
Cheers!