Truth, Lies and Advertising : The Art of Account Planning Review

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(More customer reviews)Goodby-Berlin may well be the best advertising agency in world at this time. Jon Steele's introduction of account planning there may well be the main reason. The proven formula: original consumer insights help create more powerful ads for greater results. Steele's work has consistently produced successes like the "Got Milk?" campaign.
Steele's approach is rare in the advertising world for several reasons: it shows humility and common sense, honors listening to the consumer with imagination, acknowledges the importance of creative quality, is mercifully free of self-promotion, and states the limits of account planning (sometimes there are simply no insights to be found).
While this is not a "how-to" book, I particularly enjoyed some of the tools and tactics: asking focus group participants to go weeks without milk and report back on what they had missed; asking drivers to fill in a thought balloon when they see the driver of a particular brand of car.
When I was done reading the book I felt as if I had just had a witty and interesting conversation with an intelligent and insightful person. I have been sharing the book with my advertising partners ever since.

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"Account planning exists for the sole purpose of creating advertising that truly connects with consumers. While many in the industry are still dissecting consumer behavior, extrapolating demographic trends, developing complex behavioral models, and measuring Pavlovian salivary responses, Steel advocates an approach to consumer research that is based on simplicity, common sense, and creativity--an approach that gains access to consumers' hearts and minds, develops ongoing relationships with them, and, most important, embraces them as partners in the process of developing and advertising.
A witty, erudite raconteur and teacher, Steel describes how successful account planners work in partnership with clients, consumer, and agency creatives. He criticizes research practices that, far from creating relationships, drive a wedge between agencies and the people they aim to persuade; he suggests new ways of approaching research to cut through the BS and get people to show their true selves; and he shows how the right research, when translated into a motivating and inspiring brief, can be the catalyst for great creative ideas. He draws upon his own experiences and those of colleagues in the United States and abroad to illustrate those points, and includes examples of some of the most successful campaigns in recent years, including Polaroid, Norwegian Cruise Line, Porsche, Isuzu, "got milk?" and others.
The message of this book is that well-thought-out account planning results in better, more effective marketing and advertising for both agencies and clients. And also makes an evening in front of the television easier to bear for the population at large."

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