The Big Inquiry:What’s Next for Strategists in a Post-Insight Era?

How did strategists become so cynical of the insight?

You can hear it on strategy podcasts, conversations among planner peers, and totally unscientific surveys—like the informal poll I recently took of strategists from nine different agencies. 

Strategists have grown weary of endless debates over the definition of “insight.” When asked if most people at their agency shared their definition, only one of the strategists surveyed could confidently say yes. 

But the problem goes beyond definitions.

Strategists are exhausted by unrealistic expectations that every new potato chip peer into the human condition. And they’re concerned, professionally, at the trite, trivial truisms getting passed off as truths just to fill in the blank on a brief. 

This problem isn’t going away. Nearly half of the strategists admitted their attitude toward the insight had actually changed for the worse or that they never liked the concept of an insight at all. One said it had become “an empty word.”

Working out our kinks 

None of this will come as a surprise to strategists. Leading voices in our profession like Martin Weigel have been warning for years against the “fetishization” of the insight: “It encourages us to get our knickers into a twist debating whether something is ‘merely’ an observation or a piece of information or whether it is a bona fide Insight.”

So I understand why the Insight, with a capital “I,” has been disappearing from creative briefs—and why some strategists are abandoning the term altogether. Indeed, two thirds of the strategists I surveyed said their agency’s standard creative brief does not formally call for an insight. And fewer than half thought “uncovering the insight” should even be a big part of their team’s job.

I must confess: these results challenged me. Yes, the insight is often misunderstood. And sure, it’s seldom easy. Even the definition can be contentious. But what Mark Pollard defines in his book, “Strategy Is Your Words,” as “an unspoken human truth that sheds new light on a problem” is too tempting for some of us to resist. 

I just can’t help but think how unfortunate it is that our discipline feels the need to downplay what has been perhaps the most successful attempt to productize what we do—to make strategy sexy. Anyone reading this article who is not a strategist is probably perplexed: “isn’t the insight strategists’ thing?” If we’re being honest, how many of us became strategists precisely because we were attracted by the allure of an insight? 

The rise and fall of insight 

In the era before insight, the role of strategy in the creative process was difficult to define. The insight made the strategy department a destination rather than just a bridge between account and creative. It gave strategists a product of their own on par with the Big Idea. Sometimes it even became the idea, as in the case of every strategists’ favorite example: Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign. 

In retrospect, maybe that was the problem. Maybe the insight was too successful.

As a result, everything is now euphemistically labeled insight with a lowercase “i.” Too often it has devolved into merely a style of writing characterized by predictable parallelisms and mixed metaphors rather than a style of thinking. 

The question everyone’s asking

If planning really is to move boldly into a Post-Insight Era, strategists are going to need a new product to own, a new deliverable that makes the strategy our domain. But what else could be as big as the Big Idea? What could be as important as the Insight? It would have to be something so big it’s invisible. So important it’s inseparable. Like dark matter: physicists can see its effects on the movements of celestial bodies even if they can’t see it.

This brings us to the Big Inquiry.

Chances are you’ve never seen this written on a creative brief. But it was there all along. After the Objective. Past the Problem. Nestled somewhere between The Job to Be Done and the Insight or Human Truth or Whatever-It’s-Called that puts a new perspective on the Problem. 

The Big Inquiry is the question you asked yourself without even knowing you asked it; the question you were trying to answer when doing all that research. It tends to go something like this: 

“What would it take for x to y?” 

The x is who we need, i.e. the Audience, Consumer or Buying Target. The y is what we need them to do, i.e. the Objective, Desired Outcome or What Success Looks Like.

Here are some examples of Big Inquiries:

·       What would it take for families to buy an untraditional holiday meal?

·       What would it take for parents to get their children’s vision checked?

·       What would it take for road warriors to purchase an electric vehicle?

·       What would it take for investors to assess a company’s value higher?

At this point, you may be thinking, what’s so big about the Big Inquiry? It’s just a question, right? Aren’t strategists already doing this without even knowing we’re doing it? 

Yes. I think strategists are thinking this way, most of the time. But we’re often doing it unconsciously, invisibly, like dark matter. 

What I’m proposing is that we bring the Big Inquiry into the light. By articulating it, making it part of our process.

Insight in the age of inquiry 

The Big Inquiry does two important things. First, it directs our research with the single-minded ferocity we’re always seeking as strategists. It helps ensure we’re spending precious time and resources investigating the most consequential question rather than research for research’s sake, which merely crowds our thinking with more unnecessary knowledge to sort through.

Second, it provides a criterion to know when our research is complete. Because the Big Inquiry helps us recognize the insight when we see it. Maybe it is indeed something revelatory, an unspoken truth about the human condition. Or maybe it’s just an in-your-face fact (“these potato chips are crunchier”). 

Whether or not it’s the insight we wanted, the Big Inquiry identifies whether it’s the insight we need. The insight itself doesn’t have to be big; it’s big because it answers the Big Inquiry.

So, the Big Inquiry isn’t some kind of radically new way to think about strategy. But it could be a helpful way to arrive at the right insight for the strategy. 

Second guessing the strategy

The cleanest construct we have for a strategy is arguably Get/Who/To/By. If you can articulate the Big Inquiry (“what would it take for x to y?”), then you already know the Get (x) and the To (y). Once you answer the Big Inquiry, then you know the By, too.

But articulating a Big Inquiry isn’t as easy as it sounds. It requires getting crystal clear on the audience and objective. As we gain more clarity on these, the nature of the inquiry itself may change. 

That’s the beauty of the Big Inquiry: unlike an insight, it’s okay to second guess. It feels less heretical to alter a question than an answer, especially one that was supposed to take on near scriptural significance like an insight. How can you revise a revelation? The Big Inquiry, on the other hand, invites iteration.  

After all, should we not be able to revise the question we’re asking as we uncover new information? The answer to our Big Inquiry may lead to another Big(er) Inquiry.

Just take for example this COVID-19 vaccination campaign for rural communities in Texas, which recently won a Jay Chiat Award. When we began developing the strategy, our Big Inquiry was: what would it take for anti-vaxxers to get the shot? Asking the Big Inquiry led to a bona fide insight into the problem: people were more afraid of getting judged than getting sick. The problem in this particular community was not so much misinformation as peer pressure. Once we realized this, the Big Inquiry evolved. Ultimately, we had to figure out what it would take for people’s anti-vaxxer friends and family to stop pressuring them against vaccines—to “Attack the Virus, Not the Vaccinated.”

And therein lies the Big Irony: by emphasizing the question over the answer, we get better answers. By focusing on the Big Inquiry, we are more likely to arrive at something that actually rises to the level of Insight with a capital I.

Answering the call

What happens when strategists no longer always have to prove their insight (or their definition of “insight”) is right? We are able to spend more time arriving at the insight that’s best—that is, the most interesting answer to the Big Inquiry. We can collaborate with our creative partners to imagine an answer (or answers) that no one would have anticipated, but that no one doubts has what it takes for x to y. Because finding the most interesting way possible to answer the Big Inquiry may be the best way to make unexpected ideas probable. 

Does this mean we have to add yet another heading to already-too-long creative briefs? 

Thankfully, no. 

All the Big Inquiry asks of us is that we ask it. Next time you’re brought into a meeting, instead of trying to reaffirm everyone’s faith in your strategy smarts by referring to research you recently read (or an enlightening Working Paper from the 30-Minute University of Planning), start by simply asking a question:

What would it take for x to y?

Maybe the answer will be immediately apparent. 

Or maybe it will require more research.

But maybe, just maybe, if we focus on the Big Inquiry rather than the insight, it will make getting to the Big Idea less of a big deal.