{"id":502030,"date":"2026-06-30T02:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/502030\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T02:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:57:10","slug":"50-years-forward-insight-creative-on-what-matters-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/502030\/","title":{"rendered":"50 years forward: Insight Creative on what matters most"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">After 50 years in business, <a href=\"https:\/\/stoppress.co.nz\/tag\/insight-creative\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Insight Creative<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/nzmarketingmag.co.nz\/50-years-on-insight-creative-stays-true-to-its-core-philosophy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">founder Mike Tisdall<\/a>\u2019s advice is simple: do the right work for the right reasons and keep learning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you\u2019ve been in business long enough, you stop being surprised by trends. You start recognising patterns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I founded Insight in 1976. Since then, I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n<p>Clarity beats cleverness. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first is that clarity matters more than cleverness. Every time. Work doesn\u2019t fail because it isn\u2019t creative enough. It fails because the thinking isn\u2019t right, or because it isn\u2019t aligned with what the organisation is actually trying to achieve.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p>People matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another lesson is that how you work with people matters just as much as what you produce.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over time, clients don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Being easy to work with isn\u2019t accidental. It\u2019s a choice you make, project after project.<\/p>\n<p>Ego is expensive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p>Experience is a tangible advantage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps the biggest lesson is that experience doesn\u2019t make you conservative. It makes you selective. You get better at spotting what\u2019s useful, what\u2019s noise and what\u2019s genuinely worth investing in. You move faster because you\u2019ve already seen the dead ends.<\/p>\n<p>Do it for the right reasons<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And while the tools keep changing, people don\u2019t change nearly as much as we like to think.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Attention still has to be earned. Trust still has to be built. And clarity still has to lead to action.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s why I\u2019ve never believed that staying relevant means constantly reinventing who you are. The core beliefs that shaped the business haven\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What has changed is how those beliefs are applied. The tools, channels and expectations may change, but the curiosity to keep learning has always been part of the job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looking back, I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If 50 years has taught me anything, it\u2019s this: do the right work for the right reasons, and stay open to learning. Everything else tends to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 50 years in business, Insight Creative founder Mike Tisdall\u2019s advice is simple: do the right work for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,20962],"class_list":["post-502030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-online-exclusive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}