how to find insight: where the client's pains are hiding

Insight is an unsatisfied and unobvious need of a person, the solution of which will allow to influence his consumer behavior. On its basis, the communication of the consumer with the brand and the advertising message of the company are built. But is there any win-win way to find the very "pain" of the client?

The search for insight is similar to the work of an archaeologist. Grain after grain of sand, you go deeper into the client's motives, desires, fears, and values. Unexpected questions in an interview or unconventional observations allow you to get to the core of the consumer's mind. From dry data collection and standard questionnaires, you can easily get stuck in the sand: it will become much more difficult to find the right hook.

To make it easier to distinguish real and strong insight from ordinary fact, two important factors are distinguished:

Insight doesn't have to be harmless. For example, "I really like ice cream, but it's hard for me to choose between a variety of flavors" is not a problem, drama or pain.

Insight is not the same as ordinary observation. “All people love to be served by a friendly salesperson in a store” is a statement of the obvious, not a truthful and unexpected wow-discovery.

To speed up the search for that same consumer truth, you can use the following proven techniques.

Dig into yourself

If you are part of the target audience, then you can try to find insight by analyzing your own behavior. Pay special attention to everyday actions and try to ask yourself the question for each specific situation: “Why this way and not otherwise?”.

“Why am I buying a new diary if I have two more unstarted at home? Maybe I need it just for the sake of feeling some kind of life change? - try to answer honestly and dig deep into personal motives.

Puncture the information bubble

The social networks and search engines that we usually use monitor our activity, apply algorithms and filter information. As a result, we get "selected" data about what we are likely to be interested in: as if you surrounded yourself with friends who only say things that are pleasant to you. The bubble can lead to bias and swamp your comfort zones. But if you want to go beyond, to find something surprising and atypical, you have to act radically - burst the bubble.

Try opening a magazine you've never bought in your life, or chatting with a rare collector. Have you noticed how different their picture of the world is from yours?

Study social networks

Any of them is an ideal field for observing and searching for hidden and not very needs and motives of people. The main thing is not to forget that the opinion of a particular person is not always equal to the opinion of the target audience as a whole. Therefore, any hypothesis must be tested on a larger number of consumers.

Marketers of one of the Russian digital agencies came up with an advertising campaign for a ticketing service. So they found out that many people go to the theater to be a different person for a while: hence the Instagram trend for demonstrative photos in the foyer, with tickets in hand and against the background of the hall.

Monitor sites with reviews

A reliable source of insights is the weak points of products. What creates tension? Why is this product difficult to use? What kind of conflict between consumer and producer does this generate? The answers to these questions are easy to find in honest (sometimes too much) reviews. Do not be lazy to check the reputation of users and pay attention to the comments so as not to fall for custom work.

Conduct interviews with TA representatives

Think about whether one of your friends is a fan of the brand from the completed brief, or perhaps your parents have a lot in common with the target audience character. Ask a friend in more detail about his favorite brands, find out what he is guided by when making a purchase, ask what he lacks in existing products. But do not forget about the disadvantage of this method - again, insufficient sampling, which requires verification and confirmation.

To find the right insight, it is not enough just to identify the need. Focus on problems, conflicts, contradictions - barriers that prevent the consumer from satisfying desires. Kick deeper: what irritates, inspires, excites, touches a person? This is when your discovery will become a powerful platform for the creative team to work and develop a big idea.