The campaigns I’ve been part of that worked — in the sense of achieving something real, not just delivering activity — have had something in common.
They started with a question that wasn’t answered yet.
Not a rhetorical question. Not a question the team already knew the answer to and was using as a framing device. An actual open question: What is the consumer thinking right now that we don’t fully understand? What moment in their life does this product genuinely belong in? What’s keeping someone who should want this product from wanting it?
The campaigns that started with an answer — where the brief arrived with the insight pre-loaded and the creative concept half-formed — were often the ones that felt predetermined. They executed competently. They reached the right audiences on the right channels with technically correct messages. And they usually didn’t move anything.
The difference, I’ve come to think, is that a genuine question creates an investigation. It makes everyone involved in the campaign curious about something. That curiosity produces thinking that wouldn’t have happened if the answer was already there.
The best insight I’ve encountered came from a question I asked after reading customer reviews for thirty minutes. Not from a research report. Not from a focus group summary. From sitting with what real people were actually saying about a product category and trying to understand what was underneath the words.
The question: why do people in this category say durability is the most important factor when their behaviour suggests aesthetics influence the decision significantly?
That gap — between the stated preference and the observed behaviour — was more interesting than anything in the brief.
What question are you not asking that might matter most?