Account Planners Gone Wild

TAC is off the grid for a week. To keep the blog-addicted entertained, I will be re-posting some oldies but goodies. This post originally appeared on September 17, 2007

The same day I posted "Smelly Volvo Families" an article appeared in Ad Age about the new Volvo campaign.

The article focused on how Volvo's agency developed the idea for its new campaign. According to the article, the agency interviewed valet car parkers to find out what Volvo owners are like. I swear this is not a joke. Valet car parkers.

I wonder which planning genius came up with this idea.

According to the article, they enjoyed many deep insights about Volvo owners from this exercise.

"They are users not havers; they use what they have," says the agency's account director.

Apparently the rest of us don't use what we have. I know I haven't been using what I have lately.

Their director-global advertising added,

"Safety is about enhancing the quality of life for people inside and outside the car."

Uh...excuse me, moron. Safety is about saving your childrens' fucking lives, okay?

According to the article,

"The results were enough to build a campaign showing Volvo drivers as 'we' people as opposed to 'me' people."

To this I would just like to add, Give Me A Fucking Break! I know agencies are brilliant at coming up with this bullshit, but what kind of nitwit client actually believes it?

This account planning thing has gotten way out of control (see Salesmen and Sociologists). We've got to kill them all and start over.

Real Time Update...
Looks like one of our posts from last week has gone semi-viral. 5 Fashionable Myths About Advertising has been excerpted in the British ad pub Campaign (June 12, "Best of the Blogs, P.5) and also featured in the Aussie online news website Crikey.