IDEAS / POST
The Non-Obvious-Brilliant-Transformational Things Your Customers Tell Me
This post is based on a Victoria Tech Week presentation I delivered September 21st, 2026.
I got my start as a writer, then creative director in advertising. Truth be told, I was a bit insecure in those days, which didn’t do me any favours.
You see, ‘Creatives’ are tasked with coming up with original selling ideas for their clients. Being insecure, I always thought it was my job to deliver scintillating concepts as quickly as possible. Often without waiting for a brief. And virtually never waiting for consumer research.
Truth is, research was partly to blame. Most of it was bloodless and banal, formed in countless focus groups and mall intercepts. 73% of 25-40 year olds prefer orange cheese, and the like. Eye-roll stuff.
So in my early years, I skipped it.
What I didn’t skip was stress. Coming up with ideas out of the blue (and under deadline) is stressful. Betting your client’s budget on an idea, even more so.
Even worse, selling an idea based on your hunch to a skeptical client was an exercise in frustration. It was my 23-year old word against theirs. Not a snowball’s chance.
A mentor of mine changed all that. Ron Woodall was the creative visionary who turned Palmer Jarvis Advertising into a North American force. What he did best was listen.
I still recall him toodling around the agency halls and gathering our feedback on what the great-PJ-of-the-future should be. Then he took that feedback to the founder, and told him that all of us wanted this. And if the founder didn’t agree, he’d be outgunned.
Ron’s approach was brilliant. It combined excellent listening skills (led by an incredible talent for saying nothing until the interviewee started to squirm) and a creative brain.
Ron knew that, with customer validation in his pocket, his ideas were nearly impossible to shoot down.
I adopted his approach. Apart from making my life easier, it’s served up some of the darndest insights from your customers.
Here are a few examples.
The blue mulcher
One of my clients builds $36,000 roadside mulchers.
Why do operators love them? Sure, they’re tough and reliable. But the one thing everyone kept coming back to was they’re hot rod blue.
No rational human buys a machine for its paint job. But that’s the beauty of this – none of us are rational humans. We fall in love with something, then use sensible attributes to justify our decision.
Best part is, this irrational benefit lends itself beautifully to marketing communications. The juxtapose between heavy machinery and blue sparkly hot rod paint? The ads wrote themselves.
The uber-uncaring bank
People don’t like banks. And back before the shift to online banking, they used to like banks even less.
Richmond Savings, a credit union, was my client. As a credit union, they didn’t have products that could compete with the banks. All they had was folksy customer service. Their clients loved that.
To reinforce that sentiment, drive loyalty, and perhaps even lure some bank customers over, we invented the most uncaring bank imaginable. Humungous Bank. Their tagline: “Your money is our money.”
The big banks would roll out an ad on Monday with a smiling stock photo family and the headline We aren’t just interested in money. We’re interested in people. By Friday, we’d have a Humungous Bank ad out with a smiling stock photo executive and the headline We aren’t just interested in money. We’re interested in people with money.
At the bottom of the ad, much like a warning label on a cigarette carton, was Richmond Saving’s pitch, closing with the tagline “We’re not a bank. We’re better.”
It was the gift that kept on giving.
The banks weren’t impressed. In fact, they sued… and lost. Which turned this all into a David and Goliath story, and fed right into Richmond Savings’ narrative.
Long story short: Membership grew 55% to 80,000 in about two years. Assets nearly doubled to $2.8 billion.
The product everyone loved, but nobody could buy
eGlass was a game-changing COVID-era teaching tool that would literally allow teachers on a Zoom class to bring their computer screen to life.
It looked like a slam dunk for engaging listless students, especially considering school boards were awash in COVID cash.
Early signs were extremely encouraging. One California school board bought 2,500 units out of the gate.
Then, sales stopped.
It was only from digging into the decision tree of education procurement (thanks to many impromptu interviews with teachers and principals) that the truth came out. Teachers, principals, school boards, government, parents each had a veto vote when it came to buying edtech. They had conflicting agendas. And none of them could green light a project without buy in from the others.
The result wasn’t good.
Moral of the story: its not enough to ask if someone loves the product. You need to ask who else needs to love the product in order to get an order.
Enough customer insight stories, let’s talk learnings
In my Victoria Tech Week presentation, I outlined a number of other examples. Companies that either dug deep into research, then added creativity, to deliver outstanding results. Or didn’t. Space doesn’t permit me to go into all of them here.
However, I can leave you with a few helpful learnings.
Shut up and listen…longer
If I’d listened to contractors describe what they liked about the mulcher, I would’ve walked away with ‘tougher, better engineered.’ It was only by letting the silence extend that I got the gold – or in this case, the hot rod blue paint job.
Where customer insights hide
Customers who paid you twice. Customers who paid once and left. Whoever answers your customer complaints line. The people who will deliver unvarnished truth – even the stuff you don’t want to hear.
Nobody calls your baby ugly to your face
Walk into a playground with your baby and everyone says it’s beautiful, because they’re nice. Hand the baby to me, and they’ll mention all the baby’s flaws.
That’s why clients get me to do the interviews. I get the straight goods.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a customer insight?
A customer insight is a truth about why people buy that isn’t obvious from the product itself. Mulcher operators bought mulchers because they were tough and reliable, but what they loved was something irrational – a paint colour. A real insight is usually something the customer says in passing that you’d be tempted to dismiss.
Why is most customer research unhelpful?
Most research asks people to predict their own behaviour or rate options someone else wrote, which produces polite, tidy answers. The useful material comes out in conversation, when someone has run out of sensible answers and starts telling you what they actually feel. Surveys rarely get there.
How do you ask customers questions that get honest answers?
Ask about what they did, not what they would do. “Would you buy this?” gets a hopeful yes. “When did this last happen, and what did you do about it?” gets the truth. Keep the conversation on their life rather than your product, and keep asking why until the answers get uncomfortable.
Why does “we love it” not mean customers will buy?
Because people are kind. They protect your feelings, especially when you’re the one who built the product. eGlass heard “we love it” for eighteen months and then had to give up. The real signal is what customers volunteer to you: their time, an introduction to their boss, or money.
Who should you talk to for customer insights?
Start with customers who paid you twice, since the first purchase might be luck. Then talk to customers who bought once and left, because they know what went wrong. Finally, talk to whoever answers your support line. They hear what people hate, which is often more useful than what people love.