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.

Account Planners Gone Wild

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

The article was about how Volvo's agency developed the idea for its new campaign. Apparently, 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 what planning genius came up with this idea.

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 clients actually believe 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.

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Just The Facts

Just The Facts

Social media maniacs are very long on assertions and very short on facts. For a nice, reasonable, non-hysterical (not my style at all) look at some of the facts undermining the preposterous claims of many social media zealots, here's a link to a piece called Social Media: How Much Is Too Much? from Stoltz Marketing Group, in Boise, Idaho.

Volvo

A year and a half ago we said...

..."They have relinquished their unique reason for being. ...I haven't seen any other work from this campaign, but if it's like this thing, these people are in trouble."

We were talking about Volvo. We wrote 2 pieces called Smelly Volvo Families and Account Planners Gone Wild about Volvo advertising.

Now the stupidity of these people is coming home to roost. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ford, which owns Volvo, is trying to unload this money-losing albatross to a Chinese company called Geely.

Engagement Leads To Sales. Not. 

Here's one that the social media crowd will ignore. According to Media Post's Online Media Daily, a study by a company called Psychster indicates that the form of social media advertising that is most engaging is also least effective in generating sales.

"Now that social networks devour about a fifth of Web users' time, you might be wondering which ad formats are most effective on Facebook and its rivals...Well, among the seven most common formats, sponsored content ads -- in which consumers viewed a page that was "brought to you by" a leading brand -- were the most engaging, yet produced the least purchase intent, according to a new study conducted by research firm Psychster..."

Volvos and Bozos

According to Monday's Wall Street Journal, Volvo's management are at each others' throats over strategy for the brand.

This should be no surprise.

Almost 4 years ago, on Sept, 7, 2007, in a post called "Smelly Volvo Families," we had the following to say about Volvo...

"Volvo is making a classic marketing mistake. They are trying to be someone else... they are aiming to be the second best BMW. ... TAC predicts that they will learn this the hard way. They have relinquished their unique reason for being."

A few days later I wrote a post called "Account Planners Gone Wild" on the idiocy of Volvo's strategy. I wrote...

"I know agencies are brilliant at coming up with this bullshit, but what kind of nitwit clients actually believe it?"

Since then, a lot has happened.

In 2008 Volvo sales in the US dropped over 30%. In 2009, they dropped another 22%.

In 2010, Ford, who had bought Volvo and was hemorrhaging money from the acquisition, sold Volvo to a Chinese company called Geely.

Now Geely's ceo and Volvo's top European executive are in a pissing match over -- guess what -- Volvo marketing strategy.

The Whole Foods crowd have already abandoned their Volvos for Subarus and Priuses. It's hard to see how Volvo is going to get those people back, regardless of their strategy.

Volvo has screwed up the US market pretty comprehensively. Their best hope may be to find a strategy that can work for them in their new home country -- China.