In the fall of 2013, a finance major intern walked into the agency world with exactly two things: what he'd read in Principles of Marketing and volunteer experience in a student organization. Everything felt fresh and exciting.
One of those new ideas was the notion of insight (in brand communication).
Insight was almost always preached as an “underlying truth” that makes or breaks a campaign. The test? If saying it out loud gives you an “aha,” it's real. To 21-year-old intern me, this felt like gospel. I was fueled to dig for the deepest, most “underlying” insights—mostly to prove myself, and only secondarily for the work.
Fast forward to late 2025 while typing this: that belief has been challenged repeatedly. Do insights really have to be “underlying”?
Here are a few examples from Vietnam and abroad so you can reflect and decide for yourself.
#1 melanoma likes me (2015)
Melanoma Patients Australia (mpa) wanted to drive awareness of skin cancer from overexposure to the sun and prompt people to self-check. If they just repeated “Skin cancer is deadly, taking 1,500 Australian lives a year; check your skin regularly,” no one would care. Instead, they took a guerilla route with a simple insight: Australians love posting sunbathing photos on social with hashtags and location check-ins (e.g., #beach, #sunbake, #poolside). They created a social account named melanoma (ungthuda) and started liking/commenting on those hashtagged posts. Imagine posting a bikini pic with “Anyone want to hit the beach with us? 🌊☀️” and a random account called ungthuda likes it and comments, “I'll be there soon, see you!” Of course you'd stalk the profile—and boom, you see the message. The “melanoma likes me” campaign boosted traffic to the skin self-check site by 1,371%.
#2 Adidas Green Light Run (2017)
That year, Adidas opened its first running-focused flagship in Tokyo (Brand Core Store Harajuku) and wanted awareness plus foot traffic. What's unique about runners in Tokyo? They love city runs and hate stopping at red lights, and Tokyo has 15,772 traffic lights—more than New York or London. Runners in HCMC or Hanoi will relate: you're holding your pace for that Strava PR screenshot, then a red light kills the flow. From that insight, Adidas created the “Green Light Run,” a full city marathon with one rule: “Get Stopped, Get Dropped”—get caught at a red light and you're out. Everyone was tracked and warned about upcoming green lights via an app, using data provided by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. The campaign reached 53 million people and lifted Facebook engagement by 151%.
#3 Pepsi Muối (Tet 2018)
Mid-2017, I was at BBDO working on Pepsi's Tet campaign. My boss Mic Nguyễn led the team to a killer insight in just two words: “Tết nhạt” (Tet feels bland). I vividly remember consumer interviews with 18–24-year-olds. Asked how they felt about Tet, they replied instantly: “boring,” “repetitive,” “meh.” The insight was obvious, uncontested—and it powered Pepsi Muối, putting Pepsi in the top three Tet top-of-mind brands in 2018.
Now, were those insights obvious or deeply “underlying”? You probably have your own answer to the mystery already.
From my experience, whether obvious or profound, an insight just needs to be actionable—able to translate into strategy, creative ideas, and activities. An insight can be just a truth, a motivation, or a tension; it doesn't have to be the intersection of all three, as I mentioned in “Things I Wish I Hadn't Done When I Started as a Planner” (see point #5).
May your head, heart, and intuition stay sharp for insights—and whichever you pick, make sure it's actionable.
