The insight gap nobody talks about

Hi again, Ellie here. And yes, I know what you’re thinking – another article from my Gen Z unfiltered series. No actually. This time it’s an event reflection from the most insightful event of the year which truly just makes sense (if you know you know).

The IPA Insight Summit isn’t just another morning of slides and polite applause. It’s one of those events where you leave with no pages left to write on in your notebook, and all your assumptions are slightly rattled. This year was no exception.

The theme was ‘telling human stories with data.’ Simple enough on the surface, right? And definitely something I try to channel in my writing. But session after session, it became clear that’s actually one of the hardest things we do and one of the things we most often get wrong.

The beginning

Zehra Chatoo from Code for Good Now opened with a keynote on overcoming bias in AI, and one line stayed with me:

“Ideas don’t go wrong at the end. They go wrong at the beginning.”

She was talking about AI and the assumptions we feed into it. But honestly, it applies to everything. When insight is built on the wrong foundation, wrong question, wrong assumption about who the audience is, and (you guessed it!) the wrong shortcut – no amount of great execution will save it.

Her framework was clear: resist, reveal, exercise judgement. And the point about AI tools like Claude (being the most accurate), ChatGPT, and Gemini was sharp. Because they may actually be better at identifying gender stereotypes than we give them credit for.

As a result, the problem isn’t always the tool – It’s the hands it’s in. Powerful tools in the wrong hands is a risk, and it’s a risk that starts with us.

What people say vs. how they behave

This came up multiple times across the morning, in different sessions and different contexts. And it’s one of those things that sounds obvious until you realise how rarely we actually act on it.

Strong insight requires depth – not just a survey, prompt, or some quick desk research. The 5 why model was mentioned where you keep asking until you get to something real. It requires:

1. Judgement
2. A culture where people feel safe enough to question the brief
3. The discipline to sit with a problem rather than rush to solve it

This only means two things: Less representation, greater responsibility. That tension came up again and again. Because the more powerful your insight tools become, the more important human judgement becomes alongside them. Not instead of them.

The right ad in the wrong environment

Andy Cross from The Guardian and Paul Rieger from Differentology presented the FAME (Fewer Ads More Effective) findings, and the headline speaks for itself.

What I found most interesting was the framing: what’s good for the reader is good for the advertiser. Context matters. The Guardian’s research looked at trust, receptivity, levels of frustration, attention, and the relationship between all of these and how ads perform in different environments.

The principles they landed on were discreet and discrete, harmony, and clarity. Firstly, like me you might be asking yourself what’s the difference between the first two. Discreet means careful and cautious, whereas discrete means separate or distinct.

Therefore, you can have most certainly have the right ad. But if it’s sitting in the wrong environment, creating friction rather than harmony, it isn’t doing its job. And that’s not an effectiveness problem, it’s an insight problem.

Living in the anticipation economy

PHD’s Eva Grimmett and Louise Twycross-Lewis asked: do good things come to those who wait? Their Culture Currents work was one of the sessions I found most thought-provoking.

The idea of the ‘anticipation economy’ – that we’re living in an era of eventification, where we’ve never had access to so much but anticipation has become part of the product itself, felt genuinely fresh. The stat that stuck with me: 85% of the emotional experience lives in the anticipation, not the event. And in the marshmallow test, participants were 2.8x more engaged in the build-up than the moment itself.

Brands that understand this, that generate and harness anticipation rather than just show up at the point of purchase, are playing a different game. Both collectively and individually in the short and long term.

The opportunity

The Shattered Britain report and the myth-busting mid-life fireside chat with Sophie Dimond and Shehnaz Hansraj was one of the most commercial conversations of the morning, and probably the most frustrating even for me as a Gen Z.

The over-50s hold £319B of wealth. They are the most untapped audience in UK marketing. And yet only 10% of brand spend is directed at them. Only 10%.

The mindset shift that was argued for: ageing doesn’t mean slowing down. It’s actually quite the opposite. Over-65s are on social media. They are not just print audiences. They want clear, well-structured communication that treats them as the active, intentional consumers they actually are. And yet so much of what we produce assumes otherwise. That’s not a data problem but an assumptions problem. Which takes us straight back to Zehra’s opening line.

Gen X, Gen Z, and the audiences in between

Leona Coupar from Leith talked about Generation X – the lost generation. Why? Peak earning, high loyalty, deliberate buyers, and underrepresented almost everywhere in advertising. A real opportunity for UK brands that most are still not taking seriously.

Reece Carpenter from The Walt Disney Company brought the Generation Stream global findings. Audiences have become more intentional – 53% are what was described as ‘culturetainment’ seekers, blending culture and entertainment in how they engage. And five distinct audience types emerged: social shapers, comfort connectors, reflective explorers, empatheners, and escapists (me!). 82% want a mix of human and tech touch and 83% value content that feels made for them.

What struck me across both sessions was how specific the data was. These aren’t broad generational labels anymore, they’re behavioural profiles. And behaviour is where real insight lives.

Friendship, young men and the cultural undercurrents

Two sessions towards the end of the morning stayed with me in a different way, but were undoubtedly my favourite.

Saul Parker from The Good Side and Sarah Sternberg from Movember presented research on young men’s health in a digital world – something I had no idea about before. The observation that landed hardest: manosphere creators know exactly what young men want to see. They’re doing insight work, deep, behavioural, emotionally intelligent insight work, and using it in ways that aren’t always healthy. That’s a challenge for our industry that goes beyond targeting.

And the IPA’s own research on friendship presented by Caris Brett and Eric Kreis surfaced something I hadn’t considered before. Gen Z friendships look different to older generations. With less ability to socialise in the traditional sense, because friends who live outside cities have a different relationship with friendship altogether. These aren’t small cultural details, they change what connection means, and therefore what brands need to understand about belonging.

So what does all this mean for how we work?

Rob McLaren and Tara Watkins from the7stars closed the event with 10 years of tracking the British public. A decade of data on what’s changed, and crucially, what hasn’t. Because some things change slowly. The national psyche shifts, but it has a long memory.

And that felt like the right note to end on. Brand growth – how you make a brand grow in the wider picture, requires accessibility, a genuine understanding of need states, and increasingly, a new value model. One built not just on what consumers want to buy, but on who they are, what they’re waiting for, and how they’re changing.

That’s the insight function at its best. Not a service bureau or data pipeline. A genuine attempt to understand people fully, carefully, and with the confidence to act on what you find.

“Always about how your audience feels. Have full confidence in it.” Simon Frazier, Head of Marketing & Data Innovation, IPA

That was the note I wrote at the top of my notebook as Simon Frazier and Molly Bruce set the tone for the event. And two weeks later, I still think it’s the most important line from the day.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.