http://www.enemybook.org/

Slimsight (n) = a small but relevant insight.

The proportion of time someone spends telling you how senior they are is inversely correlated with the reality.

This is a fantastic TED talk

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”

brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

“The more you shout the less people hear you.”  Worked on my 2 year old this am.  Need to find out who said it. Maybe there are more gems where this one came from.

Journalist friends lament the declining value of their words, both in terms of eyeballs reached and $ paid.  The bald truth is that long-form writing is under threat.  I find it deeply ironic that traditional brand consultancies continue to churn out deck upon deck of join-the-dots, consensus-building research that more often than not ends in some positioning gem like “Quick and easy, everyday.”  At 1M per engagement that’s $250,000 per word not 25c.  Yet whose words are worth more?

Am fortunate enough to be at TED right now,  and my personal realization is that we are on the edge of a vast age of exploration. All the world’s oceans may be mapped, but we are not done. With nano-technology and the exponential brain power the Internet brings us all we are on the brink of a new frontier. Very excited for everyone, especially my daughters.

As a planner I love the business of insights.  But this wonderful word – a powerful, short descriptive word that should be used at the end of some very long thinking – is an over used one.  Every research debrief has a page titled ‘Target Insight’ but in my experience is often anything but.  So this blog is dedicated to the celebration and cataloging of true insights, large and small, from the ad world and beyond.  Insights are analogue, insights are digital.   But true insights are all too rare.  Planners – let’s re-claim the noun.