The 24 planners will be sent to locations across the UK, including Hastings, the Scottish Highlands and the Isles of Scilly, as part of the project to give them new insights into the people that their advertising is trying to reach.
Known as Lowe Groundwork, the project launched this month with a team of planners sent to Hastings in East Sussex -- a tourist and fishing community with high unemployment and a relatively low ethnic population.
Each fortnight, two planners will be relocated and shown around by a local guide. They will be free to do their own observation research, as well as being given tasks to complete that have been specifically designed for each location to give them a flavour of the town.
Russ Lidstone, planning director at Lowe, said that the scheme would address the issue of people who work in advertising being accused of being out of touch, as well as giving them a deeper and richer understanding of Britain and its communities.
"Groundwork is about ensuring our planners understand the Harrogate Volvo owner as much as the 18-year-old single mum living in Moss Side. We are pulling ourselves apart from other ad agencies and sprinkling an understanding of reality into everything we do, and using innovative research to complement standard techniques such as focus groups," he said.
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