What you think doesn’t matter.
It’s what you know that counts. That’s the core of Point 6’s insight-led approach. ‘What we know’ beats ‘What we think’ every time.
Naturally, heading into a project, it makes sense to have a methodology. Otherwise (clear and incisive briefing aside) you’re often left to personal opinions and ‘best guesses’ when it comes to what will work and which creative route to choose.
Any design agency worth its salt will talk about its ‘discovery process’ – often a four-step process comprising ‘explore’, ‘define’, ‘develop’, ‘deliver’ or similar. We are no exception. These steps are of course intended to reassure clients that there is a solid process behind their design agency’s proposals. So far, so standard.
The Point 6 difference? Our research isn’t done by researchers. Key stakeholder interviews are conducted by the creative team working on the project. This may sound like we’re splitting hairs—what does it matter who’s doing the research so long as the research gets done? Well, so far as we see it, it makes all the difference. Our creative work resonates because it’s informed directly by qualitative source material gathered first-hand by the people doing the work.
With Point 6’s approach, value can’t help but seep into every second of the research process. Each conversation, every chance the creative team gets to hear from our clients first-hand—and, vitally, our clients’ customers first-hand, too—is building their brand knowledge and igniting the creative juices. Which all feeds back into the final product.
One seasoned marketeer who has seen first-hand the benefit of such an approach is Chief Commercial Officer Jan Willem Beijer from breast cancer surgery innovator Sirius Medical.
Point 6 worked with Jan and the Sirius team in 2019, before the launch of their game-changing tumour location system Sirius Pintuition. At the time Sirius Medical was six staff strong; that number has since grown to 30. The company is going from strength to strength, having broken into the US market in 2021. Hear from Jan about the wisdom of ‘investing as much as possible’ in your brand below.
Sirius Medical chose Point 6 as a branding partner because we said that, before lifting a marker pen, we’d interview the company founders about their vision and values, as well as the development team about the system and surgeons (their key audience) to learn about their attitudes and key priorities. No creative guesswork at pitch stage. Not ‘what we thought was right’. Simply a methodology we knew would work.
The result? A successful insight-gathering phase and ‘fail-fast’ concept testing, followed by clear brand and system propositions. All paired with targeted messaging—so essential to cutting through in a crowded market, which any new brand needs to get right first time if it wants to succeed.
Our insight-led approach led us to solutions third-party research never could. The proof is in the pudding.
Read more about the Point 6 and Sirius Medical partnership here.
This all begs the question, then: how good is the groundwork that goes into most agency proposals – especially at pitch stage, when hastily gathered research plays a part?
For agencies keen to land a new client it’s often a Catch 22: do you stick to your guns and insist on ‘no creative work’ until the research is done, knowing many clients will reject you? Why wait when you can see some cool creative now? Or do you bite the bullet and produce work that can only be built on guesswork, just so you’re in with a chance of the contract?
We can’t promise we’ve never done ‘sample creative’ for a client project we really wanted to win, but if we do this it will always come with a caveat – it’s what we know so far… and will need proper testing and evaluation before rollout. This may not sound very sexy, but it’s sensible and helps ‘de-risk’ work, ultimately saving clients and agencies both time and, crucially, budget. To be clear, we’re not talking ‘death by focus group’ here– skill, judgment and expertise are still elemental. As is making active choices based on genuine insights.
We know Point 6’s insight-led approach helps our clients create relevant on-brand work. Get in touch with us to learn more about it here.