Insights, Ideas & Commitment

Before I begin, I want to be transparent in that I previously worked on Coors Light. I also worked with Pat Edson on a couple of projects. I'm very happy to see how successful both he and the Coors Light brand team have been with this work. With that, here we go...

I'm sharing this video for a few reasons. First, it's because there are some great thoughts here as they pertain to insights and ideas. A lot of this ties to the thoughts I shared as a part of Leon's wonderful Advice for the Next-Generation Planner series. Especially the importance of insights.

If I had to pick between insights, inspiration and ideas for an area for planners to focus on right now, it's without a doubt, insights. As the media and marketing landscapes continue to shift, proliferate and increase in complexity, we must have stronger and deeper insights into human behaviors.

As for great ideas, everyone in this industry needs to be able to identify and believe in them. You don't have to be able to come up with great ideas. You just have to be able to spot them, support them, and hopefully, make them even better. But if you can't make them better, at least believe in them. It's the only way they'll ever see the light of day and grow to reach their full potential.

The second reason I wanted to share this is to get to what I really feel was and is the important thing about Coors Light's idea of "cold refreshment." For me, the thing that works most for Coors Light with this idea is not necessarily the way they have executed against it, but their commitment to the idea and their executing upon it in every possible way—from their advertising down to the product packaging and serving itself.

They believe in it without a doubt and they've stuck with this idea for the past four-plus years. I think that's why it has been working for them—helping drive 14 consecutive quarters of growth. Had they not believed in it and not convinced others in the organization and distributor network to believe in it, I'm certain they wouldn't be where they are today.

Commitment is rare these days. Ideas and insights are given up on before they've had time to actually take hold. If you take anything away from this, I'd say take away that once you have an idea or insight you truly believe in, don't give up on it. Fight for it. Make other people believe in it with you. And once you've got that, make it all it can be. Give it all you have and then some. It will be well worth it, I promise you.

Comments

[Claire]

fantastic, paul. i think we often forget in our fast-paced industry that we have to stick to our guns and wait for the results. great to be reminded that they will indeed come.

[Herb]

-- after re-reading my comment, need to preface it with 'free-thinking' tag --

I've been thinking/having conversations along the similar lines... and one thing that I think I would like your thoughts on is - is the way you dig for insight cause the type of insight that gets delivered? And are those methods hindering/helping the current state of delivering insights?

What I mean by this is, I've noticed that some people (planners) are more journalistic in their exploration, asking questions to peel and peel the onion for insight.

Others intuitively assimilate pieces of the information (more empathic) to digest and then discover insight.

While writing this out, may have answered my own question. There is insight for communciation and insight for idea... and maybe what we (those who work for insights) need a better understanding of what the insight is trying to feed upfront.

Or... maybe this is rambling on too much coffee. I may need to re-visit this comment.

[nguyen duong]

ohh, interesting thought Herb. are we trying uncover insights for communication (what we have the client buy-off on in the brief?) or for an idea (what we get the creatives to buy off on?)