New Book Challenges the Meaning of Insight

The Insight Book, written by leading brand strategist Anthony ‘Tas’ Tasgal, sets out on a mission to debunk the myths and misconceptions about insight. The author argues that insight is in danger of becoming a hollow buzzword, reduced to ‘staring long and longingly at data’. But it needs to be re-framed as an unconscious output of creativity, serendipity and playfulness.

Data, data, data…. we’re obsessed with collecting it, but we don’t know how to use it to our advantage. Insight has become one of the hottest tools and techniques in marketing and creativity today and yet is so poorly misunderstood and underused.

The Insight Book is an entertaining and enlightening guide to understanding and deploying insight to see things differently and to build a culture of insight. The author achieves this through an eclectic mix of theory and many examples of brand case studies and a variety of definitions and perspectives from art, science and marketing.

Anthony Tasgal says why he wrote The Insight Book: “Insight remains one of the hottest and most hotly debated topics in marketing, communications and research. Everywhere you look in the business world, insight has taken on the aura of an elusive Holy Grail. Research departments have re-branded themselves as insight departments, marketing teams insistently demand it, and comms agencies fervently promise it. There’s been an even greater focus on insight with the advent of Big Data. Shouldn’t that, in and of itself, give us insight by the bucketload? Well, no, it hasn’t: but why not? And why do data creators assume they have the monopoly on unearthing it?”

The book reinforces the message that we can understand insight better by realising that it is a culture and process, not a thing.

Justin Holloway, Head of Client Strategy, Syneos Health, says about The Insight Book: “Tas reminds us of the free-thinking mental environment required to arrive at true insight and how it’s invariably serendipity and play, not process, that gets one there. It is full of interesting observations, stimulating anecdotes and quotes. These, plus the creative examples enthusiastically relayed, helped put the joy back into the insight / being insightful, the greatest pleasure of our job latterly rendered sterile and lifeless by its formal adoption as the holy grail by The Man.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

• For all media enquiries, please contact Teya Ucherdzhieva; M: +44 (0) 7928 666131; E: teya.ucherdzhieva@lidbusinessmedia.com
• The Insight Book will be published on 23^rd March 2023 by LID Publishing
• Anthony ‘Tas’ Tasgal can be found on LinkedIn