wal-mart swaps shops – wanna’ go for a ride?

“Always low prices” bites the dust. So how did the newly formed agency DraftFCB and partnering Carat win the nearly $600-mil plus account away from agency of 32-year record Bernstein Rein? According to Ad Age, agency head Howard Draft, up-to-date on Wal-Mart’s senior vp-mar com Julie Roehm’s penchant for really expensive cars, invited her for a spin around the block in his spiffy econo-car Aston Martin.

The expensive and cantankerous import wouldn’t light and had to be towed – towed! – but his spanking new shop gets the account anyway. Other behind the scenes strategies that apparantly paid off? Actual shopping trips to selected Wal-Marts by agency execs with, get this, real Wal-Mart shoppers! And they actually brought in one of their experience guides to run the focus group gauntlet.

So I guess if they’d been after Disney, it would have meant a walk down Main Street with a Disney obsessive adult in denial as their ersatz seeing eye dog metaphor. Anyway, it’s going to be clever campaign that convinces Target afficienados to switch allegence and park out by the RV patch for a less subtle selection in a less swell environment.

What’s the point? Nothing much. But the fact that Wal-Mart’s going through a rough patch on a couple of really sensative points, and that their core audience is pretty well defined, still has me stumped as to what in their previous behavior, brief that it is, gave DraftFCB a boost over the bar. Data management expertise is cited, but what does the car thing have to do with it, other than status? And if so, isn’t that rather oxymoronic for this ultimate anti-status behemoth?

Wal-Mart is what it is – huge, lumbering, and with a very narrowly defined sex appeal. One thing’s for certain, probably. “Always low prices” is history.