Universal Truths for campaign planning and insights

From ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ to ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ and ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ – humans have collected these sayings, idioms, morals and proverbs throughout our history, because they are truths.

Not truths like they are always true, truths like they are stored in our psyches from listening to fables, stories and songs since we were children. And because they are hard-wired, they give stories a recognizable pattern that belongs in the System 1 thinking that Daniel Kahneman writes about.

The exact words might never appear in any campaign execution, but thinking proverbially helps to make sure we are ‘making a point’, and our campaigns have purpose.

And because our campaigns (usually) have their own narrative – as well as an overarching brand meta-narrative, these can be either ready-made lessons and punchlines to the brand stories we tell.

We use our own, collected, list of these proverbials as a little reference tool – it helps to scan it, when you’re deep in the data and looking to zoom-back-out to an insight. Then – often re-written or even flipped on it’s head – that proverb can become the SMP (single-minded proposition) that springboards the creative brief.

Try it yourself – with a full list downloadable here