How the Pentagon’s pizza order shows how to transform data into insights

When the bot flagged a late-night surge just days ago, they didn’t wait for a press release. They loaded up on “Will the US strike Venezuela?” shares on Polymarket. They made $80,000 overnight.

Geopolitics aside, this is aspirational sleuthing. It’s simple, ingenious, and deeply insightful.

It’s also exactly the kind of thinking we need to survive the commoditization of insight.

The “first-base AI” trap

In 2026, we have no shortage of tools. Every strategy department on the planet has access to the same platforms, the same publicly available datasets, and the same “First-Base AI.”

If you ask AI to analyse a market, it will give you a standard answer. It’s competent, but it’s “average” by definition. It’s first base. If your strategy is rooted purely in the same resources your competitors use, you don’t have an advantage—you just have a receipt.

It’s Mintel planning on crack.

And also, a reminder that in advertising it is more important to be interesting than intelligent, and a great source of edge comes from lateral, unconventional data hunting—finding the unexpected connections that shed light on human behaviour that others never get to.

It’s the ability to look at a Domino’s and see a geopolitical forecast.

The orangina approach

It reminds me of Harry Guild’s 2020 BBH Labs post. Among a lot of other gems, he found that Orangina drinkers actually have more in common with each other—in terms of values and behaviours—than “Gen Z” does as a demographic.

Harry found this by hooking up different databases with the curiosity of Percy Fawcett searching for a lost city in the Amazon. He used this insight to anchor Gen Z presentations, moving the conversation from the general to the specific.

The Pentagon Pizza Sleuth and The Orangina Approach share the same DNA. Their success isn’t defined by the size of the tool, but by the creative attitude of the person using it. It’s about building an “insight edge” that’s hard to beat because it’s rooted in curiosity, ingenuity and bravado, not just a subscription or first base AI.

How to build your insight edge

In a world obsessed with broad buckets and massive datasets, we need to lean into “Creative Data Strategy” more. Here is what I am encouraging our strategists to do:

1. Be Creative Data Hunters: Before you flex your creative muscles on the proposition, spare some energy for the hunt. Stop looking at the dashboard and start looking at the “shadows” cast by human behaviour. What are the secondary effects? What are the “footprints in the snow”? Summon your inner Sherlock.

2. Embrace Lateral Leaps: Before you commission the formal research, take a beat to explore other ways of discovering something fascinating. Connecting dots is easy when they are lined up for you. The skill is in connecting a drink preference to a lifestyle choice, or a pizza order to a policy. Courage helps.

3. Quick, Dirty Experiments: Don’t wait for a six-month research cycle. Vibe-code a solution. Test a hypothesis. Scrape public data and connect pipes across platforms and your own silos. Find the signal before it becomes “common knowledge.” It’s never been easier.

The bottom line

Insight ‘that AI could never’ is not a resource you buy; it’s a habit you cultivate.

By approaching the ocean of data out there with an unconventional mindset, you can create refreshing insight “First-Base AI” simply cannot reach. You’ll feel it in the work.

Let’s stop playing it safe at the first prompt. Let’s go hunting for our own pizza signals.

Will Lion is chief strategy officer at BBH London.