What the heck is ‘insight’: industry expert provides simple approach to complex topic

What the heck is ‘insight’: industry expert provides simple approach to complex topic

What the heck is insight and how do we find it?

Written by RMIT University alumni Tran Thanh Lam, ‘What the heck is INSIGHT & how to find it’ provides practical frameworks, principles and methods on insight to beginners and practitioners. Written by RMIT University alumni Tran Thanh Lam, ‘What the heck is INSIGHT & how to find it’ provides practical frameworks, principles and methods on insight to beginners and practitioners.

That’s the question Strategic Planning Manager Tran Thanh Lam couldn’t quite grasp at the beginning of his career in marketing and communication.

“While participating in extracurricular competitions during my undergraduate degree, I quickly recognised the importance of insight, but really struggled to understand the concept comprehensively,” Mr Lam said.

“The discussions that touch on insight in the marketing and communication industry are often either abstract or complicated.”

It was only once Mr Lam began his career in strategic planning for big agencies including Dentsu, Ogilvy, and DSquare that he realised he wasn’t the only one who’d experienced difficulty understanding and applying ‘insight’ into his work; he recognised others in his industry struggling with it too.

Over a seven year period, Mr Lam gathered examples, practical frameworks, principles and methods, and explored different approaches to answer the fundamental questions about insights, to published a book to help beginners – “What the heck is INSIGHT & how to find it”.

“It provides the problem-digging framework, an insight construction guide, principles and methods of finding insight… all that a beginner or practitioner in the field can apply straight away,” Mr Lam said. 

RMIT Bachelor of Commerce graduate, Tran Thanh Lam. RMIT Bachelor of Commerce graduate, Tran Thanh Lam.

Available as an eBook on Amazon, readers are describing it as the perfect solution for anyone “creative or struggling with what insight is”.

Bringing different characters to the industry

“I always wanted to become a planner, even though I knew it was a highly competitive position, particularly for a fresh graduate,” Mr Lam said.

So he decided to take a slight detour and apply for an internship at Dentsu, but with a rather unique and creative CV. 

“Instead of submitting a CV that listed all my skills and achievements, I chose to send a why-did-I-fail CV together with a regular one. It covered all the jobs I’d applied for and failed to get, with a clear explanation of what I had learnt and why it mattered to the intern planner position that I was applying for.”

RMIT Employment and Industry Relations Manager Melvin Fernando managed the Marketing Communications course at the time Mr Lam was studying and described him as a "true strategic thinker".

Mr Fernando recalled: “Lam listens carefully to information, analyses it and comes back. He is a very down-to-earth, persistent and resilient guy who delivers great outcomes. He can be calm and creative at the same time. It is hard to find that kind of unique character in this industry.” 

“Ever since he graduated, Lam has taken on an active advisory role for students in many marketing challenge competitions, and run student training sessions.”

Recently, together with the Alumni team at RMIT in Vietnam, Mr Lam ran a workshop about Consumer Understanding for nearly a hundred RMIT students. 

Currently working as a Strategic Planning Manager at DSquare, a digitally-led integrated agency and as an insight instructor at AIM Academy Vietnam, Mr Lam admits now his career dreams have come true. 

Story: Ha Hoang

06 August 2020

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