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Summary: Truth, Lies and Advertising...Ad Students take note...I did!
Review: Intrusive, obnoxious, impersonal, insincere and arrogant are all adjectives, which have been attached to the world of advertising. However, in Truth, Lies and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning author Jon Steel looks to dispel these characteristics in a unique manner. Through conversational, descriptive, humorous, and entertaining examples Steel seeks not to convince the public that advertising is undeserving of its rap, but to convince those in the biz that by focusing on building relationship with consumers the negative personality of advertising could quite possibly be changed. In Steel's eyes, the most effective advertising involves consumers in two critical areas; one, consumers must take part in the development of communication and two, consumers must be involved in the communication itself. Simply put, creating dialogue with consumers will allow advertisers to know exactly what consumers actually want in a brand and product, and consumers should not be told what to think, but they should be given persuasive facts and allowed to make up their own minds. As Director of Account Planning and Vice Chairman for by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, Steel has helped create several consumer-centric campaigns such as the "Got Milk" campaign for the California Fluid Milk Processors Advisory Board and the "See What Develops" campaign for the Polaroid Corporation. Steel has also planned successful campaigns for the Northern California Honda Dealers Advertising Association, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Chevy's Mexican Restaurants. Each of these advertising campaigns are described in great detail and serve as wonderful examples of how Steel's consumer focused philosophy of performing comprehensive research or even "eaves-dropping" on consumers helps breed advertising success. Steel also makes excellent points by including the opinions of some of the most influential fathers of modern advertising. Ad pioneers such as Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Rich Silverstein, Stanley Pollet, and Jay Chiat each appear throughout the book via quotes or clever anecdotes Although these admen's opinions may not be considered entirely precise and applicable by today's standards, Steel uses each person's suggestions to clearly illustrate points related to successful account planning. Lastly, the four keys to what makes a successful account planner are absolutely classic. Steel's advice that great account planners should be able to provide important information necessary to make informed decisions, should be able to spend more time listening than talking, should possess a chameleonesque quality that fosters unique relationships with different types of people, and in true humorous Steel fashion he sums up the characteristics with, great account planners should simply "have something weird about them!" So even if we don't all dream of planning the next award winning ad campaign, at least we know in some "weird" way we're one-quarter of the way there.
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Summary: Brilliant
Review: It is worth the buying just for the chapter on creative briefs. Put an end to those 12 pagers, and start writing/reading helpful briefs!
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Summary: A terrific book on advertising from Goodby Silverstein
Review: Jon Steel is Director of Account Planning and Vice Chairman at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the ad agency that created the witty and memorable "Got Milk?" campaign for the California Milk Processors, as well as great ads for Polaroid, Porshe, Nike, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, and Hewlett-Packard. This book shows how account planners have become a key component to campaign development...account planning is the most significant change in the advertising industry in the last 30 years. Account planning requires equal part researcher, account executive, creative, and surrogate customer. Planners can get into consumers' minds and discover how they relate to particular brands, products, and categories. This book describes some of the techniques of finding real consumer insights and suggests that simplicity, creativity, and common sense are the most important ingredients for success.
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Summary: HighlyRecommended!
Review: Successful ad campaigns are not linear developments where a business need meshes straightforwardly with an effective creative approach and actually produces successful tangible results. Instead, building memorable, provocative advertising campaigns is such a complex, political task, both rational and emotional, that a successful campaign is a wonder. Veteran advertising expert Jon Steel contends that building a good campaign is the common sense responsibility of the account planner - the new nexus of the consumer, agency creative staff, client and researchers. Steel shows the pitfalls of misguided research and creative arrogance as he explains that a good business-oriented account planner can help produce wonderfully effective, often simple, ad campaigns. His witty, erudite book concludes with its best case study: a look inside the successful "Got Milk" campaign for the California milk industry. We recommend this book to those who buy and sell advertising and to anyone working at an ad agency.
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Summary: Maximum Return On Marketing Investment
Review: This book is an answer to those false pundits who cry out that advertising is dead. This book shows why BAD advertising fails, yet it also shows how GREAT advertising can be strategically conceived and employed to generate measurable, quantifiable results. Consequently, Truth, Lies & Advertising is an essential, must-read for anyone who wants to maximize their return on the money invested in advertising... and it's a must-own addition to any advertising, marketing or business library. Forget that Steel is writing about an advertising agency discipline called 'account' planning. The lessons herein are much more important than that! A more descriptive term, and one that might gain Steel's ideas more universal acceptance, would be, 'brand' planning, which is exactly what Jon Steel describes. In other words, Steel advocates a strategic process for planning how you listen and communicate with customers...thereby profiting from a mutually beneficial relationship. In the process, Steel debunks many myths including the infallibility of "research". In fact he demonstrates that ill-conceived research, or research that's poorly conducted can lead us to absolutely wrong conclusions. The book is filled with humorous, but true misadventures of qualitative and quantitative research that's gone terribly wrong. More than anything, this book makes the case for quality listening. If you ask the right questions, in the correct environment and at the right time, customers will tell you exactly what will positively motivate them. And if you use, but don't abuse, that information you will be able to deliver genuine value and prosper as a result.
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Summary: Very insightful
Review: This is a book about a discipline that is still considered to be somewhat mysterious in advertising. However, for those who do understand it, it is THE competitive strategic advantage in advertising and marketing thinking. Steel is obviously very seasoned and knows the discipline and the business. In fact, he's probably the foremost expert in the field. The one thing that he teaches here is the you must peel back all assumptions and ask consumers some very root-level questions to find the real barrier to purchase, or real value of a product. He is incredibly right. Overall, the book is much longer than it needs to be, but the insight is worth the time.
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Summary: Very insightful
Review: This is a book about a discipline that is still considered to be somewhat mysterious in advertising. However, for those who do understand it, it is THE competitive strategic advantage in advertising and marketing thinking. Steel is obviously very seasoned and knows the discipline and the business. In fact, he's probably the foremost expert in the field. The one thing that he teaches here is the you must peel back all assumptions and ask consumers some very root-level questions to find the real barrier to purchase, or real value of a product. He is incredibly right. Overall, the book is much longer than it needs to be, but the insight is worth the time.
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Summary: The only book on account planning
Review: This was pretty good. I was annoyed with the first half of the book because the author wastes time with irrelevent tangents and self-indulgent anecdotes. But by the end, I'd gleamed a lot of general wisdom on the account planning. If you're looking into account planning, this is the only book on the subject... and it's definitely worth a read. If you're trying to learn more about advertising in general, read "Hey Whipple, Squeeze This". It's cuttingly insightful and perhaps the easiest-to-read non-fiction I've ever picked up.
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Summary: Excellent Introduction But Too Consumer Focussed
Review: Without a doubt, this is the difinitive book on the art of account planning. Having been an account planner myself, I can assure you that no other book comes close in terms of providing 1) an overview of the discipline 2) a realistic account of how planning functions in everday situations within the agency 3) is done in an extremely readable and clear format unlike many other advertising strategy/research books which are more strategic textbook. Steel's book reads like a biography which is a testiment to his skill as a writer and as a planner.
However, I do have a few issues with this book in that it places too much emphasis on the power of the consumer in the planning process. I have known many non-planners who have read this book and come away with the idea that everything the consumer says and does is the word of God and planning is nothing more than a glorified consumer tape recorder. This in turn makes the planner's job more difficult in some respects as they in turn must justify all of their work with,"the consumer said this." Often, agency personal new to planning desperately want to strictly classify this multi-faceted discipline and often put it in in a smaller box (consumer) than it is suited for (incidentally, this often says something about the quality or lack thereof of those who you are working with).
The reality (for me anyway) is that account planning encompases many different skills and functions of which listening and interpreting what the consumer says is just one. Consumers are only a rear view mirror in that they can tell you what happened in the past but cannot predict the future. They are also extremely literal and what they say is not always what they mean or feel which is why instinct (a dirty word in many advertising circles) is so essential. Many great brands and briefs utliize a strong point of view rather than direct and literal consumer insight which is counter to the case studies that Steel uses to explain the 'planning process.'
Overall, this is an excellent 'introduction' into account planning. In a sense, the dilema that this book creates though, is also why planning is such a wonderful discipline. A planner's job cannot be easily classified in a sentence because there are so many diverse skills required of a first-rate planner.
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