You have car insurance, your Volvo is protected by an excellent new car warranty, and if a group of male activists have anything to do with it, your male image as a Volvo driver will be protected too.

“In what appears to be a first, a male activist group is petitioning Volvo not to choose Arnold Worldwide of Boston as its new global agency of record, claiming that the shop has created ads for other clients that denigrate fathers.

National newspaper columnist and talk-show host Glenn Sacks is behind the push that started Tuesday, Feb. 27. His Web site, glennsacks.com, has a form letter to Volvo urging the Ford Motor Co.-owned brand “not to award the contract to Arnold Worldwide and instead award it to one of the other agencies, preferably Euro RSCG.”

The Web site lists names and contact information for Volvo officials in the United States and Sweden.

Sacks told Advertising Age on Wednesday, Feb. 28, tha 1,000-plus e-mails and faxes on the matter were sent to Volvo in the previous 24 hours. Other male groups, including HusbandsandFathers.org and Fathers and Families, are supporting the effort.

Sacks said “a lot of us in the fathers’ movement are upset” that dads are portrayed in advertising as “idiots, clowns,” while “the wife is always right.”

His site criticizes Arnold’s purported anti-father work for Fidelity — for example, a spot showing a man going to great lengths to parallel park in an empty parking lot — while praising a TV ad that Euro RSCG did for Volvo.

Sacks discusses his 2004 blitz against Verizon on the site, claiming success for getting the telecom giant to pull a TV commercial showing a bumbling father trying to help his daughter with her homework.

Richard Smaglick, co-founder of HusbandsandFathers.com, said Verizon pulled the commercial, although he added the advertiser explained at the time the campaign had run its course.

A spokesman for Volvo Cars of North America confirmed the arrival of an undisclosed number of e-mails, faxes and a “handful of voice mails” on the matter. “All were very polite,” he said.”
continue reading at Automotive News.com