What is an insight, then?

Something interesting happened to me few years ago: I realised I had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about insights. And yes, I owe it to Mark Pollard and "strategy is your words".

For years in marketing and communications, we've been using this word rather loosely. We call everything an insight: research findings, observations, statistics. We click "insightful" on LinkedIn posts that are simply interesting. We label data points as "key insights" in our presentations.

But here's what I've learned: there's no such thing as a data-driven insight. Numbers show us patterns and trends, yes. But they can't tell us why these patterns exist. When we say "Our data shows an insight that 64% of people check their phones within five minutes of waking up," we're actually just describing a statistic.

Real insights are different. They're those moments of understanding that make you see human behaviour in a completely new light. Take houseplants. A research finding might tell us that sales are increasing. An observation might note that younger people particularly favour them. But a genuine insight reveals that in our screen-dominated world, nurturing living things helps people feel more connected to their physical space.

Through my work, I've noticed that true insights share these qualities:

1. They reveal something non-obvious about human nature

2. They explain multiple behaviours at once

3. They make you see familiar situations differently

When someone shares what they call an insight now, I look for these qualities. Does this merely describe what people do, or does it explain why they do it? Does it connect seemingly unrelated behaviours? Does it change how we understand people?

I'm sharing this because understanding what makes a real insight matters. It changes how we approach our work in communications. It helps us dig deeper than data. Most importantly, it leads us to better solutions.