Why not? The credits show you all the work that went into building the movie. They lay out every step and every detail and every person involved.

They entirely and completely skip over the story but all of the information is there! With painstaking detail!

Unfortunately, we are seeing a high volume of insights work that follows this pattern. And it hurts us. And, frankly, it’s why we had to build a frameworks our clients should never need.

Since our consultancy is built on people and narratives, we maintain a strong connection to the insights world, where we’ve built frameworks to leverage stories and build strategies and architectures. Segmentation, Innovation, Brand Distinction – all incredibly valuable frameworks we’ve refined over the years.

But there’s one that is maddening every time we need to use it – Demand Space Illumination.

We love the projects, and they’re a great use of our expertise, but it’s always frustrating to see a client who has gone through the rigorous process of Demand Space work with a high-profile and high dollar consultant and has been left with a ton of data – and very little understanding. A lot of detail, but no story to get engage with or get excited about. Just the credits.

It’s an unfair position, which is why we built the framework – and a better approach to Demand Space creation.