I spent a decade in the advertising business as a brand strategist. Over that time, I developed the firm belief that companies can strengthen themselves by strengthening their knowledge about the people who buy from them. The best (and most difficult) part of my job was trying to help companies understand people just a little better, in an effort to bring brands closer to the people whose dollars ultimately keep them in business.
Working for some of America’s largest (and smallest) companies, I found it wasn’t always easy to convince organizations to value the thoughts, opinions, and needs of the people who purchased from them. Often, small truths were collected from people, while the bigger picture was missed– who they really were, what they really cared about, and what issues they struggled with.
Taking a step back from the day-to-day, I developed the belief that getting in touch with people and how they really think and feel should be a regular, not an occasional, undertaking. I held monthly ‘conversation groups’ with strangers that forced my perspective to widen a great deal, and forced me to truly listen to people without goal or agenda. For awhile, the value of these conversations remained among those who gathered, until I elected to try to bring that thinking forward in the form of a blog, created from my memory of these discussions.
For more on why and how I developed the Insight Inn premise, read the initial post here:
https://theinsightinn.com/2013/11/18/how-to-gain-insight-vs-gathering-insights-1-of-4-parts/
If you’d like to connect further, hit me up on LinkedIN or follow me on Twitter.
Thanks for reading.
— Megan
the Insight Inn 