Opinion

Why Naked is taking the creative back from creative agencies

Naked Communications has undergone a brand overhaul, rebadging as a creative agency. Here the last remaining founder Will Collin explains why.

Recently, while working on a new version of our company credentials presentation, we ran up against a question of definition. What kind of agency are we?

Historically we have always called ourselves a ‘communications agency’, mainly because back in 2000 when we launched we felt that the traditional industry definitions ‘media’, ‘digital’, ‘advertising’ and so on – were hopelessly restrictive and placed unnecessary boundaries on the scope of the solutions we might create for clients. (Or at least they might lead potential clients to wrongly assume that we could only apply our thinking to one specific sort of problem.)

Naked Communications

Naked’s updated logo

And yet, the term ‘communications agency’ does little to capture the value of what we do for our clients. It’s a category descriptor – we work in the field of communications – not a promise or a benefit. As we looked to craft and hone our credentials, it was natural to revisit that question of definition and to consider whether we could describe ourselves better.

This line of thinking led us to consider whether a better way to describe ourselves would be as a ‘creative agency’. Not that this term itself is free of baggage; in common industry parlance it’s used pretty much interchangeably with ‘advertising agency’ and is generally understood to mean the kind of place that employs copywriters and art directors, and produces TV ads, billboards and so on. The kind of place where Don Draper would feel at home.

The issue with the term ‘creative agency’ is that, true to form, the industry lazily misuses and casually debases its meaning. In this simplistic view, a creative agency is one that employs creatives, and creatives are the people who produce ‘creative work’ in response to a creative brief.

Yet the reason why we were drawn to the term ‘creative agency’ is because, taken at face value, it is a perfect statement of what we do. We create. We create innovative strategies for achieving our clients’ marketing objectives. We create original ideas – on digital platforms, within more traditional media, or in the wider physical world – that influence people and instigate action. We create compelling content that attracts an audience.

It’s interesting that in the wider world there is a similarly narrow-minded view of what constitutes creativity. It’s typically seen as the province of ‘the arts’; as something that is practised by painters, musicians and choreographers. Not in the coldly logical disciplines of science and maths.

The renowned educationalist Sir Ken Robinson, who promotes the view that formal education systematically trains us to unlearn our capacity for creativity, believes that this ability cuts across every discipline: “Of course you can be very creative in music and dance and theatre and literature; but this isn’t just about the arts. You can be creative in sciences, in mathematics – in any field where human intelligence is active there’s an opportunity for creative thinking.”

So we decided that yes, we will describe ourselves as a creative agency. Creative in the wider strategic problem-solving sense as well as in the narrower idea-crafting sense. And while we’re at it, let’s try to reclaim the word creativity for all original thinkers, not just those with Magic Markers.

Will Collin is a co-founder of Naked Communications

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