When you’ve been in business long enough, you stop being surprised by trends. You start recognising patterns.
I founded Insight in 1976. Since then, I’ve watched technologies come and go, fashions rise and fall, and countless creative agencies appear, reinvent themselves, sell out or disappear altogether. Through all of that, a few truths have proved remarkably consistent.
The first is that clarity matters more than cleverness. Every time. Work doesn’t fail because it isn’t creative enough. It fails because the thinking isn’t right, or because it isn’t aligned with what the organisation is actually trying to achieve.
“Clarity beats cleverness. Every time.”
That belief shaped how I approached the business from the beginning. Strategy first. Not as a slogan, but as a discipline. Understand the business. Understand the audience. Then create work that does a job.
“Strategy first. Not as a slogan, but as a discipline.”
Another lesson is that how you work with people matters just as much as what you produce. Over time, clients don’t remember every campaign, but they do remember whether you listened, whether you were straight with them, and whether you made their lives easier or harder. Being easy to work with isn’t accidental. It’s a choice you make, project after project.
I’ve also learned that ego is expensive. It clouds judgement, shortens horizons and makes businesses brittle. The agencies that last tend to be the ones that put stewardship ahead of self-promotion, and relationships ahead of recognition.
Perhaps the biggest lesson is that experience doesn’t make you conservative. It makes you selective. You get better at spotting what’s useful, what’s noise, and what’s genuinely worth investing in. You move faster because you’ve already seen the dead ends.
“Ego is expensive. It clouds judgement and makes businesses brittle.”
And while the tools keep changing, people don’t change nearly as much as we like to think. Attention still has to be earned. Trust still has to be built. And clarity still has to lead to action.
That’s why I’ve never believed that staying relevant means constantly reinventing who you are. The core beliefs that shaped the business haven’t changed. What has changed is how those beliefs are applied. New tools. New channels. New expectations. The curiosity to keep learning has always been part of the job.
Looking back, I don’t think the goal was ever longevity for its own sake. The goal was to do work that mattered, with people we respected, in a way that felt honest. Longevity turned out to be a by-product of that approach.
If fifty years has taught me anything, it’s this: do the right work for the right reasons, and stay open to learning. Everything else tends to follow.
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50 years forward
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Lesson from 50 years
The work succeeds when the thinking is right, and relationships are built on trust. -
What that means for you today
Proven experience reduces false starts. It keeps attention on what works, and helps you deliver with confidence
