Naked founder John Harlow joins The Brand Agency as director of comms planning
WA can now boast of being home to two of the world’s biggest names in planning thinking after The Brand Agency announced this evening that John Harlow has joined as director of communications planning.
Harlow – along with Will Colin and Jon Wilkins – founded Naked Communications in London. The agency went on to become a global brand which they eventually sold to Photon Group for $36.7m.
The Brand Agency’s MD Steve Harris said: “John’s reputation precedes him. He’s credited with having helped to change the global media planning landscape.”
Harlow has family connections with WA.
Another globally respected communications planning thinker based in WA is former WPP worldwide head of planning Jon Steel who now works for GPY&R after moving to Australia for lifestyle reasons.
Naked Communications was the first agency to build a large business around the idea that clients could be persuaded to pay for smart media thinking without needing media buying to go with it. Its founders were former PHD staff.
Harris said: “Naked Communications basically created communications planning as a discipline in its own right. We’re excited to have him coming on-board and helping us to put together even better campaign strategies for our clients. He has a rare talent of being able to come up with innovative and engaging ways to reach people.”
Harlow said: “When I was talking to Steve Harris and Paul Yole, I was taken by their vision and their goals for The Brand Agency, it really gelled with me and matched what my thoughts are about the future of the advertising industry.
“I’ve also been really impressed by the calibre of the people and the original creative thinking in Perth, I think the city’s isolation breeds a desire to do things differently.”
Harlow’s appointment is the latest big move by the STW-aligned Brand Agency which bought digital agency Market United last month.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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good on Naked and John Harlow but it beggars belief to little old clients like me that independent ‘communications planning’ was regarded as revolutionary and terribly clever
it can only be regarded as such in a structurally conflicted industry where the client’s interests aren’t paramount
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