One word: insights.
Jon Steel made everyone insight crazy.
In Truth, Lies and Advertising he talked about the power of insights in GS&P's great work.
For example (if I remember correctly, my copy is in storage):
* Got Milk?
* Porsche
* Sega
All these insights are brilliant. They're also proper insights, not statements of the bleeding obvious.
In responsible hands it could have been OK. People could have taken 'insights' to mean 'a statement that sheds new light'.
But they didn't.
They took them at face value.
So because they're all 'human insights', the marketing and advertising world decided that the only interesting place to look for insights is in human behaviour.
Then they went insight crazy. "We need more human insights" became a boardroom cry.
The trouble with human insights is that it's very hard to find new and interesting ones.
There are lots of human insights, but most aren't really insights. They're just statements.
The place to find 'real' insights is elsewhere.
It's in the uncomfortable and unexpected:
In the client's business. In culture. In the economic climate. In future trends. In old behaviours. In the product. Where ever.
I'll leave you with this from the old but very wise Jeremy Bullmore:
"An insight has to be interesting. It can't just be a statement of fact that is then made interesting through creative interpretation. It has to be based in fact, but have gaps to be filled in, that beg to be filled in, by the reader."
Influence without logic 