My gut is okay, too.
On trusting (and building) my instincts
A few months ago, I read a great article by Heidi Hackemer called “All hail the gut.” The phrase stuck in my head like a song lyric. The gut. It was almost haunting: something I’d been told to rely on time and time again, but could never quite understand.
These past few years, I struggled with my gut. I drowned everything resembling an instinct in circular justification: an attempt to understand what I couldn’t explain. I over-thought and over-wrote and doubted, doubted, doubted.
And then finally, I learned.
My battle with my gut isn’t over, but I see it more clearly now, particularly through the lens of my career in brand and communication strategy. Recently, I had the sort of unexpected ‘aha’ moment that only comes when you finally understand something that’s been told to you a million times.
As the strategy director of my school’s team for a national student advertising competition, I felt a lot of pressure to ‘get it right.’ For three long months, I dragged my team through the weeds of every research platform and strategy framework I could find.
What we created wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t brilliant either. In trying to find the theory of everything (about cranberries, no less) we created a sort of Frankenstein strategy that at its heart was very similar to an idea we’d thrown around just days after reading the brief.
So when a judge at competition told us that our strategy needed a stronger, more powerful insight, I understood what she meant. The insight was in there, but it was buried under rationalization and complexity. In trying to solve for everything, we solved for nothing.
Had I trusted our first few thoughts, I could have helped my whole team craft a stronger campaign. Strategy is storytelling — not a series of rubric requirements. At its best, it’s quick, iterative, simple and bold.
So here are two things that I’ve been thinking about:
- Strategy in advertising isn’t always about what’s most correct. It’s about what feels the most true. Rational ways forward are formed in consulting firms, not creative meetings. Here, strategy is insight-driven inspiration — it’s smart structure and direction for creative ideas.
- Your gut instinct doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This isn’t about sheer luck or empty posturing — it’s a craft. Every book I read, every class I’ve taken, and every minute of eavesdropping on the subway contribute to my worldview and shape my sense of what’s right. Over time, research builds good instincts. That’s why I can trust mine.
In a way, strategy could learn a lot from the rapid prototyping methods of tech startups and UX designers. Our gut instincts are the hypothesis and our research is the experiment. We can test and support simple ideas with data, research and rigor…until we get something useful and compelling.
This is easier said than done, and I’m curious to see how my new perspective holds up in the real world. But my best strategy might just happen when I trust my gut, then back it up.
