Getting insightful about agency insights for better brainstorming with Chris Kocek

Hey, everybody. Drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long, and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

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It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, PRR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ, will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. This is Drew McLellan, your jovial host. Happy Monday if you’re listening, real time. Happy February. If you’re listening real time, great to have you with us. I have a really great guest who’s written a book that I think all of you’re gonna wanna read. But first, just a quick couple quick reminders. Number one, it is springtime is right around the corner. So that means we have three or four big things coming up. We have some workshops. We have the running Your Agency for Growth and profit in April. We have Money Matters in March. We have the AE Bootcamp and the Advanced AE Bootcamp in March and April.

And of course, the big kahuna, the Build A Better Agency Summit in May. All of that information is on the website. So for the workshops, head over to agency management institute.com. And under the How We Help tab, you can scroll down and see the workshops, and you can find Running Your Agency for Growth and Profit and Money Matters. Those are really for agency owners and leaders. Money matters mostly for agency owners and maybe your CFO and running your agency for growth and profit agency owners and like COOs, folks like that. And then of course, the AE bootcamps, as you might guess by the name for your AEs. And then the Build A Better Agency Summit is for everybody, mostly leader level.

We don’t see a lot of entry level folks there. So it’s mostly agency owners and leaders. The, if you’re looking for information on the conference, including the list of keynote speakers, the agenda, all of that, head over to the same website I just gave you. And right in the upper left corner is A-B-A-B-A Summit tab. Click on that and you can look at the agenda. You can read about who’s gonna speak and you can register. All right, so I think one of the biggest challenges for agencies today is how do we keep showing up with big ideas? The reality is that’s what we’re being hired to do. Our clients expect us to come with ideas, otherwise, we’re just executing. And when we just execute, now, all of a sudden we become commoditized.

It’s harder to charge a fair price for our efforts, and it’s really easy to get stuck having to compete on price. So to avoid that conundrum, we have to show up with strategic insights and to help us do that. I have a guest today. His name is Chris Kocek, and Chris wrote a book. Chris owns an agency in Texas, and he wrote a book called Any Insights Yet. And it’s all about how we recognize insights, how we inspire insights, how we sell insights. It’s a really great book. It’s very hands-on practical. It’s not theoretical at all, so I highly recommend it.

But before you even rush off to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or wherever you buy your books, let’s first let you meet him, hear about how smart he is, and then I suspect he will go right off. Or maybe even during, while you’re listening, you’re gonna buy the book. So without further ado, let’s welcome Chris to the show. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

So tell the listeners a little bit about you, your background, how you came to write the book, and then I’ve got a ton of questions, so we’re gonna jump into those, but first give them a little bit of background.

Yeah. So I got my start at BBDO, New York as a behavioral planner out there. Had some great mentors, Tracy Lova, Brent Vartan, and learned a ton about the business. Then I got recruited out to GSD and M here in Austin, which is where I am today in Austin. And, and about 11 years ago, I started my own agency, Gallant branding. Around that time when I started Gallant, I wrote a book called The Practical Pocket Guide to Account Planning. Mm. And that book had a three page chapter about insights, and students and professors and professionals came up to me and said, you know, I really like that, that chapter, but I, I just wish it were a little longer.

Yeah, maybe four or five pages.

Yeah. So I started, I started working on an expanded edition for that and a few other things. And then that expanded chapter, or that expanded edition just kind of grew and grew and, and ended up becoming its own book.

So the book just came out. So just for the listeners, the title of the book is, any Insights Yet Connecting the Dots? Create, create New Categories, transform Your Business. So it just came out in September of 23, depending on when folks are listening to this. So if you’re listening real time, it’s only been out for a few months. So let’s talk a little bit about insight. I think insight is one of those words that we banty about, but I think a lot of people probably have different definition for it. So how do you, how do you define the word in the book and in your work, and why do you think, I also think it’s a word that we toss out quite a bit.

Why do you think that it gets used so frequently?

Yeah, those are great questions. I mean, you know, when I first started writing about it, I, I thought, okay, so how do I wanna define an insight? What is the definition? So I actually started by asking a bunch of people who I know, creative directors, strategists, chief strategy officers, futurists. I asked a whole bunch of different people, you know, what’s their definition of an insight? And there was, there was confusion around it. It’s banty about, there’s a lot of different ideas. There are some common threads. And insight is typically something that is deeper than what’s on the surface, right? The insight, right? So going deeper, getting underneath the thing that’s really going on. And so, so that depth is really important.

But to your other question in terms of why is it used so much? Well, I think it’s just because it’s, it’s, it’s sexier to say in a meeting, Hey, I’ve got an insight, versus I have a data point, right? Or I have an observation, or, Hey, I’ve got this trend report. Yeah. Everybody has the trend report,

Right?

Right. So, so what’s your insight? What’s gonna give us something deeper? And sometimes it can be a little misconstrued, because if you have a data point that nobody else has seen, well, that that’s gonna be news to other people, right? So that might be deeper than other people, you know, have access to at that point. But I think an insight is not any one of those things. It’s not a, a single data point. It’s not an observation, it’s not a human truth, it’s not a trend. It’s the combination of all of those things coming together to solve either your, your campaign challenge or a unique business problem.

Okay. And, you know, you and I were talking before we hit the record button, I think this is one of those things that a lot of agencies feel a lot of pressure to be super insightful. Do we always have to be insightful?

No. No. Not at all. In fact, one of the alternate titles to the book was gonna be no insights necessary.

Oh, nice. So,

So, but that didn’t have, that didn’t have as much sense of urgency.

Right? So, so when is an insight, maybe not necessary, but I, I guess what I’m getting to is how do I know if I’m working in an agency, whether I own the joint or I’m a department head, how do I know when I have to push for, or wait for, or search for an insight? Because, you know, again, I think like we use the word loosely. And so somebody, some folks, you know, I, I suspect there’s a lot of campaign briefs, right? That the last question on the brief is what’s the big insight? Or something like that, right? And, and maybe if it’s a campaign you’ve done 12 times for a client and you do it seasonally, maybe there isn’t a new insight.

So how do I know when, when there is cause for an insight?

Well, I think it’s, it’s always good to be on the lookout for insights, right? Or to be on the lookout for what I call the breadcrumb trail that leads you to an insight. So again, the insight is, is a combination of things. In the book I talk up, I use a metaphor that it’s a constellation. It’s a constellation of these different things. So you might have a data point that gets you started, you say, wow, that’s really interesting. That’s really counterintuitive. I didn’t expect that to be the case. Like, in the case of Old Spice, I think it’s something like 60 to 70% of all body washes are bought by women for men, right? Right. So women are the gatekeepers still of the grocery store, and they tend to buy things for the household.

So that data point is very interesting. What can we do with that now? Right? If you want to connect the dots with other data points or other things, you can do that and build out like a big old insight. Or you can say, Hey, that’s enough. Right? That’s enough for us to get started with this really cool creative hook that says, ladies, look at your man now back to me. Now back to your man, because we know that you’re the ones buying it.

Right? Right.

Right. So, so you don’t always have to have an insight. And, and the cause, I mean, the, the cause is differentiation. You’re always looking to, to make yourself your brand differentiated from anybody else. So, and insights gonna help you with that. But again, insights take a little bit of time to build, because you do have to connect the dots between different things. If it were that easy, if it was just, oh, I’ve got this one thing, I’m done, everybody could do that.

Right. So you identify three different kind of insights. Can you talk us through what those are and what the differentiation between them is?

Yeah. So as you mentioned the, in the subtitle of the book, it’s Connect the Dots, create new categories, transform Your Business. So, right. So there are category insights, right? And, and those are big category disrupting, business, building, you know, type insights, like the things that led to Airbnb, right? Or Netflix or Slack, right? Right. So it’s not just, Hey, people hate email, right? That’s right. There’s more to Slack than just people don’t like email. There were many different things happening in the marketplace. And, and then the creators of Slack came along and said, Hey, we think that there’s a, a new product that sits between email and text messages,

Right?

Right. There’s this interesting way that people are communicating in work, and it’s actually highly inefficient. People can’t keep track of the project, you know, and all these different modalities that people are communicating through. So let’s make this thing called Slack. Same thing with Airbnb, right? There were a number of converging trends, you know, millennials looking for, you know, more unique places to stay a sort of anti-corporate mentality to some extent. Don’t wanna stay in the same old same old hotels all the time. Yep. There was that, there was the, you know, peer-to-peer online review systems. And again, those things were all visible for everybody to see. And then people who ended up coming up with Airbnb and VRBO and HomeAway, they said, Hey, we’ve got an idea.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And so, have,

Have you ever read the book Becoming a Category of One by Joe Callaway?

No, but I’ve heard of it.

It’s a great book. So again, it really emphasizes this point that, that an insight could be big enough that it literally creates a whole new category of product or service, and that you can become basically a category of one, at least initially, right. Where you are the first one that does it the way you do it. Right? Absolutely. So I highly recommend it. It’s, it’s been around forever. Yeah. It’s probably the one book that I wish I had written. Like, every time I read it, I read it every couple years, and I’m like, damn, that Joe Callaway for writing this book. But

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I highly recommend it to my list for sure. Yep. Because I, it’s come up now in like, the past couple of conversations, so I guess, yeah. So something’s trying to tell me something. Yep.

Okay. So there’s category insights, then there’s

Category insights, then there’s brand Insights. Now, what’s the difference between, you know, category and a brand? You know, so, so Liquid Death, for example, right? Is a good example of

What a crazy product, right? Yes.

It’s a product. I love the, the story of how that came to be, at least according to Mike Cesario. He, he, he said that he saw Backstage, you know, a big, big concert. He saw, you know, performers would often pour out their Red Bull and then fill the can with water, because they gotta go out there and do a 90 minute set or a two hour set, right? And they’ve got a contractual obligation with the energy drinks of the world to, you know, have that can on stage.

Right.

But they’re filling it with water. That’s pretty amazing. Right, right,

Right.

That observation is pretty amazing. But then he connected the dots with some other things. So like, you know, the idea that water, all water messaging tends to be about purity, right? Fiji untouched by human hands. Isn’t that their tagline? Yep.

Yep.

Right. So, so Water is constantly talking about being pure, and, and, you know, and there’s certain marketing tropes or conventions that you see in water marketing, and then Liquid Death comes along and from the outset even with its name, right, right. Liquid Death. And I think the biggest challenge they’ve had really is just convincing people, Hey, it’s just water.

Right, right, right. When you look at the can too, and you can sort of see who the audience is, and Yeah. It was a, it was, it’s brilliantly branded. Yeah.

Yeah. So they came in with a point of view, and, and I, I kind of think that the subtext of everything Liquid Death is, is nothing we do or say should be taken seriously. Right? Right. Every single one of their campaigns is irreverent and making fun of marketing. That’s their platform. Let’s just make fun of all the marketing conventions.

Yeah.

Then you’ve also got, you know, brands like Blueland, if you’re familiar with them, or blueland, which is the, they’re like the little tablets that you can like drop into water for, for like cleaning solutions,

Huh.

Right. So, so they looked at the market and they said, everybody’s just transporting water.

Right? Right.

All these household cleaners, it’s just water, and it’s mostly water and bottles and a little bit of cleaning solution. Everybody’s got a tap at home.

Right.

So what if we, now that’s both a category insight and, and a brand insight, but the way that they’ve gone to market, similar to Liquid Death, is that they’re building this brand that, that has, you know, these different touch points and reinforces the category insight if you’ll

Yeah. Right.

That’s the second one, brand Insights. And then the third one is campaign insights. So you can have a brand, and then what are you gonna do to refresh that brand from a campaign standpoint? So you’ve got, I love or

Re or reinforce it, right?

Yeah. Or reinforce it.

Yeah.

So one of the examples in the book is Lay’s do us a flavor, right? Right. The do us a Flavor campaign.

Yep.

That campaign is based on so many counterintuitive elements, right? Because if you were just leaving it up to the r and d department, say, Hey, we got new chips called Chicken and Waffles, or Wasabi, or some other random flavor that you’d never expect on a potato chip, most people would be like, yeah, I don’t think so. I’m not interested in

That. Right? Right. So

They would steer clear of something like that. But on the other hand, and here’s the contradictory piece, new flavors are what get people talking. And in a social media driven world, you want that conversation to be happening. So if, and this is one of the techniques in the book is create conflict.

Yeah.

So a flavor like chicken and waffles or, or what, what’s the most disgusting flavor you can imagine from, oh,

You know what, when, when I was in Asia, they have like a salmon something flavor. Like if you travel abroad and you look at the potato chip bile, it’s fascinating, the flavor of chips, but it was salmon and something. I was like, you could not pay me to put that in my mouth. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So,

So, you know, here, here are these different ships now again, and you’re crowdsourcing, so you’re getting consumers to actually volunteer different ideas. You put a prize on the line, Hey, you know, these three flavors are, people are gonna win some money for it. Yep. So, so it takes some contradictory data points, and it, and it, they, they kind of turn them into a campaign. One of the things that we learned working with a snack brand, a chip brand at Gallant was, which I’m sure Lays probably knew this as well from all of their research, but there’s an interesting little thing that happens when you buy an unfamiliar chip flavor. You buy a safety bag.

So,

Because you don’t if you’re gonna be let down,

Right? Right. If this salmon chip is bad, I still need some potato chips.

That’s right. And so by doing that campaign, they automatically created a buy two bags each time.

Oh, that’s brilliant. Yeah.

You know, so that’s, that’s a really interesting, you know, brand, like a campaign example or activation. And that campaign, is it still going on? I i it went on for at least 10 years.

Yeah. Right. I haven’t seen it lately, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still going on somewhere, at least on social. Yeah. Yeah.

And then there’s campaigns like the Dove campaign for Real Beauty. Right? Right. So here’s Dove selling beauty products, and they see this cultural tension happening in the ether. We all know about it now, it’s been around for 20 years, is that, you know, standards, beauty standards. Right. They’re unrealistic. Right. And Dove comes along, and this is the great irony, right? They’re still selling beauty products,

Right.

But they created the big tent to talk about real beauty. What does beauty really mean?

Right? Right. And

That goes to one of the other techniques in the book, which is interrogate language. Hmm. So people are always talking about beauty, beauty, beauty. What does that mean to you? Does it mean photoshopped? Does it mean, you know, authentic? Just being yourself. There’s, and so then you can really start to dig in on a lot of different words, you know, what does it mean to be manly? Right. In today’s society, you know, so, so those are the three, the three different kinds of insights.

So I wanna talk a little bit about sort of the characteristics of an insight, and then I wanna talk a a little about sort of the methodology of getting there. But first, let’s take a quick break, and then when we come back, we’ll talk about what, what are the parts and pieces of an insight. All right. We’ll be right back everybody. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I go back to the interview, I just wanna remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops. And you can see the whole [email protected], on the navigation head to how we help scroll down, and you’ll see workshops, and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver, and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account execs, agency leaders, CFOs.

We have a little something for everybody, no matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check ’em out and come join us. All right. Let’s get back to the show. Alright. Welcome back. I am chatting with Chris and we are talking about, we’re talking about Insight and his new book called Any Insights yet. So before the break, I said that I, I know in the book you identify some characteristics of an insight. So give us a handful of those. I know you have 10, but give us what you think are maybe the top three or four.

Yeah. Well, first and foremost, it has to inspire action. That’s the i in the insight. And so if, if what you bring to the table and you say, Hey, I think I’ve got an insight, and, you know, it doesn’t get people thinking and like ready to move then, especially

In our world, right? I mean, there, there’s probably places in the world where an insight can just be an aha. But for us, given our work, you’re right, it has to inspire change or a trial or a conversation at least,

Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

So it’s, it’s, it definitely has to do all of those things. Yeah. Which is a fairly high bar, and that’s why insights Yeah. Lofty are somewhat rare. Yeah. Yeah. They’re not common. So, because again, and there’s so much content, there’s so many people, you know, racking their brains for how to stand out, how to be different. Yeah. That it, it does take some work. And to be able to protect that territory once you’ve carved it out. So that’s really important. So it has to inspire action, some sort of movement on the part of the creative team and, and the consumers who, who see the creative, right? Yeah. Another one is, is around reframing the, the problem.

So, but for, for an insight to really be, you know, beyond just the obvious, which again, is, is another characteristic, is it can’t be obvious, right? So if it’s obvious, everybody can see that. But it, you know, so, so you’re looking for those non-obvious moments and you have to, you have to dig to get there, right? So there’s a lot of things, oh, you know, people are time poor. Yep, that’s true. That’s

Right. That’s,

That’s an obvious truth. Everybody’s busy. But let’s, how do we reframe that into something that makes it a little bit more interesting? Right? So those are a few.

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, we all agree these are important. We certainly agree. In our world, it’s what clients pay us money to do, right? Is to bring them insights and at all three levels, right? The category of the brand and the campaign level. I mean, we’re in theory, that’s what differentiates us from, you know, somebody on Fiverr who can whip out a logo or a ad or whatever. So how do we, what is the methodology of actually creating insights? Because you know, I think for a lot of listeners, they’re, they’re the insightful person at their shop. They’re, they’re the ones who typically, they’ve been in the business for a long time.

You know, I was, I was saying to you when we were chatting, you know, I think for a lot of agency owners and leaders, they’re good at sort of doing that, connecting the dots that their brain just works that way. But when they go to teach other people how to do it, they struggle with finding sort of the method behind their madness, if you will. Yeah. So in the book, you sort of spell out a, a, a methodology, the techniques for building insights. Can you walk us through some of those?

Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s definitely, this was the exciting thing to me was like, I knew that there is a methodology, right? But a lot of people would be like, no, there’s no method. It’s just random. And so suddenly the insight arrives and it’s like a lightning bolt moment, right?

Right.

And again, that, that may be the aha moment, but the articulation of the insight is really critical, right? You’ve gotta be able to get it in as few words as possible. But, you know, one of the techniques, the first technique I talk about in the book is keep asking why, right?

Yeah. The toddler method, right?

The toddler method, yes. Yeah. So the year old, or the five-year-old that keeps asking why. And and unfortunately in society we kind of, we beat that out of them right? Over time, right. In school at first, you know, you raise your hand and, and, and then it’s just about getting the right answer, right? Yeah. Which is, which is kind of the problem is that which are different right. Answers depending on how you frame it.

Well, and, and the most right answer is probably the most obvious right answer. Right. So it it’s counterintuitive to actually having insight.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I mean, some of the examples, I think one of the examples in the book around keep asking why is, you know, the, the, the question that led to the Polaroid camera, why do we have to wait for a picture?

Yeah,

Right? It was just, well, you just have to, this is the way it’s always been done, or it just takes time. And, and so, you know, but, but when you ask that question, I think a lot of people think that, that question why? Because it is a toddler question. They say, look, we’re running a business, there’s no time for these whimsical, fun questions.

Right?

Right. But, but the thing is, it’s within those questions that some of the biggest innovations and some of the coolest campaigns have been born. So, you know, why do we have to physically go to a car dealership?

Right.

Get a car, you know, I mean, that was maybe at one point that was like, yeah, you’ve just gotta go to the lot to get the car. But now with the internet,

Yeah.

You know, it gives rise to brands like Carvana, which has this amazing, you know, what is it the car of vending machine that they used as a staple of their dealership, right? Yeah. So Warby Parker, you know, asked the question or, or challenged the convention, why do I have have to go to the eye doctor or, or, you know, to a physical store to try on a pair of glasses.

Yeah. Well,

You don’t, I mean, again, technology usually plays a role in breaking the, the why situation, but not always. It can sometimes start out as a, maybe not a joke isn’t the right word, but like, why don’t we treat teachers the same way we treat pro athletes?

Right.

You know?

Yeah. I’d love to see somebody solve that problem.

Yeah. Well, that was a, that was a key in Peel skit where they basically, you know, they, they showed the, the, the commentators talking about teachers, the way they talk about pro athletes. And it’s, it’s a funny bit, you watch it, but it, it has a deeper, you know, meaning to it, which is like, why don’t we do that? Right. What if we start doing

That? Right. Right.

You know, it, it came, someone asked me yesterday, I was talking with them about, about food and, and they said, you know, why do the variety packs, you know, that you get from Costco for like different chips? Why do they always have a certain couple of flavors that people never want?

Right.

I don’t have an answer for that.

Right,

Right. You know? Yeah. They,

They should have a Fab Five version, right? Yeah. Yeah. The most popular ones.

Yeah. I mean, I don’t even know why they keep putting those in the box in the first place ’cause they just sit around. Right. Maybe they’re just trying to get rid of them. I don’t know. It’s just kinda like, Hey, here’s the deal. You’ll get three of your favorites and two that you just don’t like. Right.

And,

You know,

Give those to your friends that you want to go home earlier or something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What, so what’s, what’s another technique for building insights?

Yeah, so creating conflict. I mentioned that earlier. So, you know, just in a, in a focus group setting or looking again for chatter on social media, you know, always trying to find the, the polarities. So, you know, one of the examples I give is, is about bean chips. And so we asked, you know, consumers are beans boring or exciting, but you could just as well ask, you know, New York style pizza or Chicago deep dish.

Right.

Elvis or the Beatles. Right. Biden or Trump, you know, I mean, I don’t wanna get political, but, but like, it’s just the, or question. When you ask, when you ask this or this, you’re gonna get people to start talking. They’re gonna reveal certain emotions, and when they start revealing emotions, that’s when you know you’re getting somewhere interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because you don’t want the canned answers.

Right. Well, and I would, and I would think too, the more vehemently they answer the question, the the deeper the emotion underneath it. Right.

Right. Yeah. And once you have that emotion and you’ve got these kind of polarities, then you can ask, you know, it’s classic debate style stuff, but it’s like, ask the other person to explain your point of view.

Right.

And if they can’t do that, or if they try to do that, and they, and you keep kind of taking notes, you’re just the moderator, you’re just watching and listening and taking notes. But if you notice like, like they, they keep misinterpreting X with y there may be something there Right. That you can tap into. Right. And there’s no shortage in society right now of strong opinions on any subject.

No, that’s for sure. That’s for sure.

So, so creating conflict, very easy. Just use the word or, and ask people to, you know, find the polarities.

Yeah. All right. Give us one more, I know there’s seven, but give us, yeah. What’s your, what’s your favorite

Interrogating language?

Hmm. Just

Really looking at specific words that people are using. You know, there’s, I mean, right now, the evolution of, of certain words, there are words. I, I made a post about this on social media recently, but there are words that didn’t exist 20 years ago that people are using all the time now. Yeah. Whether it’s Bitcoin or blockchain or sexting that didn’t exist, you know, 20 years ago. And there, there’s so many non-binary, there’s a lot of different words that people are using now and, and they indicate something that’s going on in the culture. Yeah. A lot of the words actually tie back to technology, but they also tie back to this idea of, of connection, trying to, trying to connect with each other, and then authenticity.

Yeah.

You know, what is true deep fake, that that wasn’t a word.

Right. It’s true.

You know, so deep fake, I think we’re dealing with a situation in society right now where people don’t know what is true or what to believe. Right.

No, I think that’s for sure. True. Yeah. Yeah,

Yeah. So what can, what can you do with that by interrogating that language and coming up with, you know, different ideas that, that tap into that. So the a, a good brand example is p and g and the way that they basically looked at the word black, they looked at the word white, and they said, you know, there’s a lot of associations with the word black that are pretty negative.

Right.

White doesn’t have any of those negative associations. And they said, let’s redefine the word black. And they came up with the My black is Beautiful campaign.

Right.

You know, so that was a, that was a pretty big campaign for them that got a lot of attention. But that all just started with looking at what certain words mean in society. Yeah.

Yeah. Words have such deep meaning. Okay. So we have an insight. We’ve done the work, we’ve, we’ve used the methodology. How do we sell it

Carefully?

Yeah. Very careful, I mean. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for chatting with us today. Yeah.

I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of ego in the business, and part of the thing is the pressure that any agency is under is you, you need to be. Right. There are millions of dollars on the line. Right. Right. And so, so you’ve got to, you know, be be careful in how you sell it, because there are plenty of people who’ll be like, that’s not an insight. You know, that’s not good enough. That’s not anything. So you have to, you know, I think the, there’s a process leading up to the selling of an insight that’s really important. And that’s the, the storytelling process. But it’s also the collaborative process. A lot of people don’t, they think of the insight, again, as that light bulb or lightning bolt moment.

But insight building is actually a really creative and collaborative and iterative process. So you wanna have at least one or two people who are in your circle of trust. Could be a family member, could be just a friend who’s not in the agency world, or it could be somebody in the agency world, and you wanna like, bounce it back and forth with them. Kinda like a writer’s room for SNL. You know, comedians often say, is this anything? Right? Is this a, you know, and so they have to be willing to, to help you and not just club it to death and, and be like, no, that’s, that’s, that’s not good. Right. Right. So it’s a very collaborative, iterative process then when you’re gonna, you know, go reveal the insider, sell the insight, you’ve gotta set it up.

If you just say, Hey guys, here’s the insight. You know, people might just look at you and you might get crickets. So you’ve gotta do a little bit of buildup. And again, I, I love comedy because com comedians are very keen observers of human behavior. The, the main difference is that they don’t have to usually sell a product Right. At the end. They can just point out all of our, our inconsistencies as humans. Our foibles. Right. Our foibles. Exactly. Yeah. So, so they, they stop with the punchline. They don’t have to go further. The agency has a harder job, which is, okay, we’ve pointed this little truth out about human behavior. What are we gonna do with it now? Yeah. Right. So Snickers did that with, you’re not you, when you’re hungry, when you’re hangry, you start to act like this.

Right. And they created countless different pieces of creative off of that, that particular idea. So I think you have to have a little bit of a buildup, which means you, you know, you do have to have some data points, or you do have to have some research or some observations. And it’s how you lead up to that, that’s going to, you know, when you then reveal the insight, it’s gonna make a, a big impact. So, you know, look at, look at storytelling techniques of some of the, the best stories out there. Especially those stories that use, they’re kind of like mystery movies, whether it’s like the Usual Suspects or Knives Out, or the sixth Sense there’s a reveal. Yeah. And the lead up to the reveal, all the clues are there.

And in a way, you, you kind of wanna have that interactivity with your audience. They’re kind of like, they’re along for the ride. Yeah. They’re kind of guessing, where’s this going? They’re very interested, they’re hooked in. And then you reveal it to them and they’re like, oh my gosh, it was right in front of me that whole time, but you articulated it so well. It’s just perfect. And then they’re excited and they’re taking notes, and that’s when you know you’ve got some momentum.

Yeah. Love that. Love that. Okay. I, I have a lot more questions, but we’re, we’re running outta time. So tell everybody how to, how to get the book, how to follow You on social, how to follow up if they have more questions. Because I suspect this has, this is like, I think for somebody who’s been in the business for a while, at least for me, these are the kind of questions, these are the kind of conversations. This, this is like candy, right? We can just dig into this. And this is, this is fun and it’s engaging and it’s, it’s also such a critical part of the work we do and how we differentiate ourselves and how we justify the fees that we charge as opposed to the, you know, kid freelancer with a laptop.

You know, this is, this is a critical skill for us in our world. And so I know folks are gonna wanna follow up. So what’s the best way for them to track you down or to keep track of you?

Yeah, so the book’s available on Amazon, burns and Noble Apple, lots of different platforms there. You can get it. Any of those places following up with me on, on LinkedIn, I’m, I’m on LinkedIn, Chris Kocek, last name is spelled K-O-C-E-K. And every Thursday I put out this newsletter that’s a companion to the book called The Light Bulb Newsletter. Hmm. It’s about ideas and inspiration. I’m not gonna guarantee you an insight because, because the thing is, you know, an insight, again, it’s gonna take a little bit of time and it’s gonna be context specific for your category, your consumers. That’s right. What, what the competition is doing. So, so, but it is ideas and inspiration. There are three things that come in the newsletter every, every week, which is a piece of creative that really got my attention, the thoughts and questions that it raised in me,

And then a quote

That’s made me a smarter or a better strategist. So it’s really, it’s two to three minutes very applicable. Sure. To inspire, you know, that’s been doing really well. A lot of people, you know, write in and say, man, I’d love this week’s, you know, example and, and the questions that it raised. ’cause again, it’s meant to inspire your work at the end of the day

Right.

As well. So light bulb newsletter is, is a good, good thing to follow up with. So

Where would someone go to sign up for that?

Oh yeah. Just go to chris Kocek dot com. Chris KC k.com. Okay. Go to the newsletter section and then you can also find both books there any insights yet. Which again, the, the inspiration for the title of the book is that’s the pressure that everybody’s under after a 20, 30 minute briefing. Right. You barely know anything about the brand or their problems yet. And then somebody says, so any insights yet?

Right.

And you’re like, well I’m, I’m still still thinking about it. Right,

Right. You know, I need another 20 minutes. Right.

Yeah. Just gimme another 20 minutes and I’ll, I’ll have all your problems solved.

Yep. Yep. This has been a great conversation. Thanks. Thanks for being on the show and, and sharing your insights about how we have insights. So I, I appreciate it. It’s a, it’s an important and ongoing topic I think, in our world. And, you know, I think we move so fast today to try and keep clients happy and all of that, that sometimes we don’t give ourselves the space to just let things cook until we can connect the dots. And so I think this conversation hopefully will inspire everybody to leave a little room to let their brains do their magic. Absolutely. Yeah. So the book is a great read. So I, I will tell you guys this, I purposely did not ask Chris this question ’cause I want you to go by the book.

But one of the things in the book, is it a, it’s, it has questions we should stop asking in brainstorm sessions and what to ask instead. So Chris, don’t say anything, but go grab the book. Any insights yet if you would like the answer to what you’re doing in brainstorming is that you could stop and some better suggestions of questions to ask. All right. All right, you guys, this wraps up another episode. Lots of food for thought. This, this would be a great, this would be a great topic for an all team meeting. You know, some of you are looking for ways to spice up some of your routine gatherings of your team. So stealing some of the, some of the ideas or the examples from the book and then talking about them and looking for com common threads where you can connect the dots between some of the examples Chris gave in the interview today or in the book to some of your clients.

Lots of fodder. I think one of the things we don’t do well enough is that we don’t give each other a lot of brain food and stuff just to kind of chew on. And so as a leader in an organization, I believe one of your responsibilities is to provide not only a place, but examples of how you guys can give each other. By the way doesn’t, you don’t have to always be the one supplying the brain food, but creating space for your team to sort of gnaw on that brain food and share it. And you setting the example of this is an appropriate meeting to bring an inspiration or something that was interesting or hey, did you guys read about, or whatever it is you setting the example for that will tee that up for your team members as well.

So this book would be great, a great sort of starter set for that sort of behavior. And I think it would be a great way to kick off 2024 is to do more of that inside your shop. So grab the book, put it to work. You know me, I don’t like us just to sit around and chat. I’d like you to do something with this stuff. So lots, lots of things for you to put into play, I think from today’s conversation and the book. So thanks for listening for sure. Want to thank our friends at White Label IQ. They’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. So I’ve known these folks for about 20 years, probably longer than that now. They were born out of an agency. They were trying to solve a problem, interestingly enough, speaking of insights.

And out of that came White, Label IQ, which is white Label, design dev and PPC for agencies. Great folks actually located here in Colorado. Been in part of a MI for as long as I have been a part of aami. So as you know, that’s quite a while. Good, good people. So go check them out at White Label IQ dot com slash aami and ask them how they create pricing that works for you in terms of being a profit center for them and honestly for the client as well. So I think you’ll find them delightful. Human beings, super smart and a great way for many of you who wanna outsource that stuff or need to outsource that stuff, maybe you’ve just got a flood of work.

They are a great resource. So White Label IQ dot com slash aami. All right, guess what? I’ll be back next week with another guest. Looking forward to it. Always love hanging out with you guys. I’m grateful that you spend the time with me. I know how crazy busy you are. So whether we’ve been on the treadmill together, the golf course, we went for a walk with the dog, whatever that is, I’m glad you took me along. So thanks for listening and I’ll see you next week.

Come back next week for another episode, designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development [email protected].