I was in an agency internal client team meeting recently, talking about some stuff I’d been working on, when someone else in the room piped up with “and the Insight Team have come up with this document that…”.  I was taken aback for a moment – after all, traditionally Planning and Insight are normally pretty inseparable and Planning stuff for this client usually falls to me.  Then I remembered they were talking about what The Maths Department had come up with.

Yep, data is so important to this Northern, mid-sized integrated agency that they have an in-house department of post-grad mathematicians, or Numerical Analysts.  Not just one, a team of them.

It’s a bit scary from a fairly traditional Planner’s point of view to be reminded that Insight is now so firmly routed in data analysis – for this agency I’m strictly their go-to girl for Soft and Fluffy forms of insight.  My stuff does fit in neatly for this agency’s client alongside the more numerical side of things, but will Planners soon need to start reassessing who owns or leads Insight?  And what Insight really is exactly?

Because if Planning doesn’t have ownership of Insight, we’re going to have to either find a territory we can own, or learn to share – and be prepared to be second fiddle.

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