Last week I was sent the 9 best papers from the most recent project completed by 350 students taking the intro to Advertising class at The University of Texas. Each student had to recruit a participant, interview them about a specific fast food, car or airline brand that they either loved or hated, construct a mind-map like the one pictured, find an insight in that map and come up with a quick advertising theme that would capitalize on the insight. Then I got to pick the winning paper. Here’s what I decided, and in the process my views on finding insights.
Credit for the Arthur Schopenhauer quote goes to Earl Cox. He has it up in his office and I swiped it off of him!
Heather LeFevre 
Succinctly put Heather! Love the Schopenhauer quote. I agree that a good insight is something that isn’t immediately obvious. I think that they should be holistic as well – an understanding that you arrive at because you know your way around a subject (be that a brand, market, group of people, academic discipline whatever).
Great job Heather! Very eloquent and well put together presentation. You should post videos more often. Keep up the good work.
~ Frank
Great stuff!
But the question still remain. I.E. HOW TO find/discover an insight!
What is your preferred/favorite research vendors and tips? Please share some examples that you might experienced or that you know about. Have you ever found something through crowdsourcing, netnography or ethnographic studies? And how did you evaluated the info?
Any thoughts would be very appreciated on this subjects. It is often a discussion on how to define an insight, rather than how to actually discover them.
Like the example you had with Burger King. But more on how to, and how, you actually discovered the consumer, brand, market truth/insight, etc etc! Great blog however.
: )