snark_selects.py

snark1 = ["...a relaxed environment far, far away from incomprehensible Planners, useless brainstorming sessions and noisy agency birthday parties.",


"...before the planners and account people got hold of it, it said \"damn\" not \"darn.\" ",


"...panicked Account people and planners left the room crying.",


	"Strategies, like everything else in the corporate world, start at the bottom. They\'re jammed out by junior clients sitting down with junior planners and junior account executives.",


	"About two months. We had initial research. Data Analysis. Loop backs. Deep dive. More research. Oh and then the CMO went to Machu Pichu. So really only 6 weeks,\" the planner replies, with not a hint of guilt.\" ",


"The senior planner, with all his various degrees in demographics, psychographics and social media metric confabulation, could push back and contest the point, but he and his wife just bought a new town home. And the formica counters in the kitchen need to be replaced with granite.",


"I can have ten headlines written before the planner has read the entire brief to me verbatim.",


"Pink Slip The Planners -- You show me a creative team that can\'t figure out a distinctive market insight and I\'ll show you a team that doesn't deserve a Cannes Lion. Or a job for that matter.",

"Burn the Community Table -- Writers and art directors need offices. Real offices. Give them the ones formerly occupied by the Planners.",


"...our MBA-enhanced Planner with the grating British accent graced us with his business acumen and told us the strategy was all about \"Blue.\" ",

"...unnamed ad agency eavesdropping -- thank you open office plan -- in on a group of unnamed account planners and unnamed account executives talking about a unnamed brand of tortilla chips.",

"...there are conference rooms chock full of creatives who have just presented their ideas to a bunch of over-critical, over-thinking Planners, who are over-zealously picking it apart and measuring the work against some insipid set-in-stone briefing document.",

"As sure as the mustache under my nose, some 26-year old ex-sorority girl with a certificate in planning and two years of real world living, is chiming in with the ubiquitous: \"I like it. And I don't want to split hairs, maybe it\'s in the semantics, but (and here comes the phrase that kills all good ideas) I\'m not sure it's on-strategy.\" ",

"Maybe, the strategy is off-strategy.",


"...a knowing planner will look over to the client, \"...that\'s what I was saying in the briefing session last week.\" ",


"If we were smart, and I am implying that we are not, briefing would not be conducted by planners or digital strategists or chief innovation officers. And there would never be a gathering of 10 or more people to sit in a room and watch an \"expert\" read verbatim from a brief.",


"Necessity isn't the mother of invention, brevity is.",


"...The CEO would have no time for a \"deep dive\" or a \"metric analysis\" and a \"loop back session.\" He or she would simply spit out the ONE overriding thought that needs to be conveyed in the commercial or the website or the banner ad or, god forbid, the viral film.",


"Now that the planner has left the room, can you tell me what he does?",


"...And then the planner tells me the campaign doesn\'t seem to capture the voice of the brand! Voice of the brand? As if people sitting in their living room can tell a god damn difference between the Triscuit voice of the brand and the Wheat Thin voice of the brand. They\'re fuckin\' crackers!!!!",


"And I know several folks who have done the sweat lodge thing. I don\'t need to sit in a lodge made of twigs and sealed with lichen moss to fire up a sweat, I work in advertising and have clueless planners, indecisive creative directors and cowering clients to do the trick.",


"The best time to save money isn\'t when a key grip is taking the lens cap off a 35mm camera. The best time to save money is when a planner cracks open a new marker pen to discuss the strategy.",


"...the all-knowing, all-insightful junior planner -- whose scant two years in the business world has magically yielded the ability to shoot down ideas with the steely efficiency of a Messerschmidt 262.",


"Cambridge-schooled ex-pat planners are in heated battles with reluctant clients who just don\'t get the color orange. And its relevance in today\'s saturated media marketplace.",


"Since the late 90\'s we have witnessed the ascent of the planners/strategists. Not only have they been rising, they've been multiplying. Today\'s typical BDA (Big Dumb Agency) now has Communication Strategists, Brand Strategists, Media Strategists and Digital Content Strategists. If I told you I knew what they did, I\'d be lying.",


"If we are to go back to the cake analogy, the planners are the creamy vanilla filling.",


"I\'m getting a ton of private emails from advertising planners who can\'t thank me enough for publishing this tome of useless, uninformed rants.",


"People know what luxury is and the minute they sit in the driver\'s seat they know, the car either has it or it doesn't. And no planner-speak or wave of the copywriter magic wand is going to change that.",


"Planners are not happy to do their job and find for us the single unique selling proposition, they\'ve taken the extra step to find two. Sometimes three.",


"Tonight, when the Assistant Associate Planner comes sniffing around to see whether you\'d like Pizza or Pad Thai Noodles, take a pass. Tell him or her, you have other plans for the evening. Plans that don't involve banner ads, brand engagement units or content generation.",


"...sitting in a conference room with some account folks and planners, carefully dissecting the behavior of tortilla chip consumers and the intricacies of the tortilla chip purchase funnel.",


"...You want the ones who are willing put their foot down, look a planner or a client or a CEO in the eye and say, \"we can spend 100 million dollars on this, or 100 billion, but people are not going to eat their pizza backwards. They're just not.",


"We sell ourselves to clients as experts in the human condition. We tell them we examine all the data, we produce magical insights and change the business landscape with our disruptive inescapable truths.",


"Well, digging for game changing truths requires the ability to sort through the spin, discarding the hubris and calling out the bullcockery.",


"...naturally, the idea died. It went straight to the advertising slaughterhouse, a highly efficient abattoir run by small minded planners, account people and committee think.",


"This was before computers, so writers and art directors had more than a day to work on an assignment. We also didn\'t have planners. We didn\'t need them.",


"But that\'s the beauty of satirizing the ad industry -- it\'s a target rich environment. Like shooting flatfish in a barrel.",

"Whether it\'s fat, drunk CEO\'s pawing the underlings or complaining about \"Those Fuckin\' Jews\". Or it\'s double-talking planners who couldn\'t strategize their way out of a paper bag. Or, it\'s just Pepsi. This deep well of nonsense, incompetence and monumental greed will never run dry.",

"...if you are a Planner or you are involved with Strategy or the construction of briefs with their many triangles, trapezoids and parallelograms, not to mention bullet points, asterisks, and run on sentences, today is your lucky day.",


"If you find yourself getting excited and want to board the bus for the 2016 Planning-Ness Conference  --Oh yeah that\'s a real thing -- well, don\'t. The 2016 Planning-Ness Conference, God, I love saying that, was last week.",


"An account, even a difficult account, does not require a legion of Planners. We already have too many cooks in the kitchen. Do we need too many recipes as well? One planner, on one account, should suffice. And if you\'ve been reading RoundSeventeen for any length of time you know that even one, may be one too many.",


"An agency can never have enough Planners.... Wink.",


"Because God knows creatives, even seasoned 44 year olds like myself, don\'t have the wherewithal to move forward and develop an advertising campaign without the daily watchful guidance and skilled expertise of a professional Planner with degrees in...what is it they have degrees in?",


"Point being, I\'ve heard some awful stupid stuff from the Planning department.",


"...to the credit of the crack research team and the careful analysis of all the big data, the Planner had successfully reduced the strategy down to its barest minimum. Not one page mind you, one word. BLUE.",


"And this one my fellow copywriters can savor for years. A planner was heard to say... \"If we get this brief just right, the spots will literally write themselves.\" ",


"With rare exception, we\'re not Creatives anymore. We\'re box-checkers. We\'re imaginative strategy regurgitaters. We\'re planner pleasers. We\'re manifesto makers. We\'re 24-hour brand turnaraound specialists. We\'re the crafters of Frivolous Fuckwadian Digital Knick Knacks.",


"I thought I\'d do something equally rare. And spread a heaping helping of praise on my favorite people-- the Planners. But don't get too far ahead of yourselves. Because the three best Planners I've ever worked with aren\'t really Planners.",


"My second favorite Planner was an Art Director by trade. But is also vocationally ambidextrous. We\'ve done a few projects together and I\'ve never ceased to be amazed by his ability to analyze a business challenge, break down all its components and construct an original plan of attack.",

"He\'s fond of saying, \"we need to find a unique position that defines the client\'s brand and leaves the competitor\'s debilitated by jealousy.\" ",


"...the third best Planner I\'ve ever worked with is Lee Clow. In this context, I should also include Steve Hayden. I\'ve had the pleasure of working for both of them. Neither are Planners. But both have the reductionist instinct to cut through all the bullshit, to dispense with all the Venn diagrams, and to spit out a piercing strategy based on an assessment of the cultural landscape and the vision of where great creative advertising can go.",
]