Naked: The numbers prove we were right to do the Witchery jacket hoax
The agency behind last week’s fake jacket furore has released the findings of a fast-tracked survey that it says demonstrate the success of the controversial campaign.
Naked Communications last week won itself the condemnation of a large portion of the Australian marketing industry over its stunt for the launch of men’s stores by fashion brand Witchery. The agency was behind a fake video that appeared on YouTube featuring “Heidi”, a girl who claimed to be trying to find the man who left his jacket in a cafe.
The video was swiftly outed as a fake, with Naked and Witchery at the centre of a deception storm. But today, Naked has come out fighting after commissioning independent research at its own expense to measure the views of Witchery’s target audience for the campaign. Survey company edentify carried out an online survey of 1000 men aged between 28 and 35, with an interest in fashion.
The key findings included:
- When asked if they were aware of Witchery Man, 17% responded that they were.
- 486 of the 1000 said they had seen the video.
- After viewing, 26% had told a friend; 14% had forwarded a link; 4% had responded to “Heidi” by email and 33% said they had continued to follow the story. 40% said they did nothing more.
- 32% said they are likely to visit the store; 15% are very likely; 31% said they were unlikely.
- In terms of brand perception, 23% said the result made it “more exciting and interesting”; 12% said they didn’t respect it any more; 35% said it was cooler as a result; 16% said they were less positive about the brand.
- Asked how they felt about the media being fooled, 47% felt it was funny; 24% didn’t care; 24% were disappointed and 6% didn’t know.
- Asked to describe the stunt, 40% said it was lighthearted and entertaining, 39% said it was interesting or different; 21% said it was deceptive or offensive.
(Because the respondents could answer yes to more than one option, the numbers in some of the points above do not add up to 100%.)
Naked’s chief executive Mat Baxter told Mumbrella the results were “bloody good”. He added: “At the end of the day, we’re opening a store and want people to go there.”
Conceding that it was “extraordinary” to commission such an expensive piece of research so early in a campaign, he said: “A lot of people are professing to speak for the consumer, but they are speaking from their own agenda or opinion.”
Baxter said: “Social media is about starting conversations. So it was as good for us that there were sceptics as there were people who were positive. That’s what starts conversations and gets people talking. We knew that what we were doing was probably going to polarise people but we wanted to make sure we got more positive than negative, which is what we achieved.”
Naked's Baxter
And he insisted that the fact that many people were suspicious of the video from the start was part of the plan. He said: “We expected a large number of people to know this was a marketing campaign. People know that a large percentage of what goes on YouTube is delivered with a level of intrigue.It’s an open and free market that allows visitors to decide what’s real and not real.”
However, he admitted that things went awry with the high levels of coverage leading to early exposure, meaning a planned “episodic” approach had to be dropped, including a series of print ads.
And he insisted that other than uploading the original video, Naked had done no further media manipulation. He said: “The media jumped on this. There was absolutely nothing we did to propogate this. The media circus loved it because it was a great story. They did not fact check. We never said to anyone to put this as national news and that’s a decision they made.”
But he conceded : “It’s very hard to absolutely waterproof plans for a campaign like this.”
Baxter said Naked had briefed its client about the risks beforehand. He said: “It just went nuts overnight. it’s very strange when you’re managing your client because they’re at the eye of the storm and they are freaking out.” But he added: ” “Witchery is thrilled.”
Baxter said that the media atmosphere had turned “hostile” because of revolutions a few days before over a video entry for Tourism Queensland’s “best job in the world” promotion featured a member of staff from Cummins Nitro, the ad agency behind that campaign, pretending to get a tattoo. He said: “I think that’s very different. That was a structured competition that had a set of rules in place. It was a registered, organised competition involving the government.”
Meanwhile, he refused to be drawn on what the advice of Naked’s sister agency, social media specialists The Population, had been before the campaiogn began. He said: “We sought their advice in the early stages of the campaign. Their advice was interesting and we took it on board.”
And he had a message for the many marketing commentators who criticised the campaign. He said: “We’re aware of the hypothetical rules in this sphere – there are a lot of people out there who claim to have the rule book. But the reality is that it will be shaped by what the consumer will tolerate.” He added:
“They are not rules; they are theories. We care about delivering for the client. If the industry is not happy, guess what? That is not a concern to us. I’m used to us being slagged as an agency. I was disappointed but not surprised.”
“If this is what the industry does when things don’t conform to the cookie cutter approach, taking swipes from the sideline, then that’s very disappointing. But the one thing missign from the commentary was what would they have done? What problems have they solved for a client? I feel like we’ve been pulled over the coals. But in the long run, it’s going to scare the industry. People are going to become more risk averse, and I think that’s a negative for clients.”
Meanwhile, because Heidi was outed so speedily, the agency has had to come up with a new plan to maintain awareness in the run up to the March launch of the stores. Partner Adam Ferrier refused to discuss what is coming next, but he said: “It will be interesting.”
Baxter said that as a result of the publicity, the agency had already taken three calls from potential clients, with two of them already converted into formal proposals.
(Update: The SMH’s take on Naked’s stats is available here)
2.30pm update: Iain Naim, Witchery’s CEO, told Mumbrella this afternoon: “I’ve never know anything like this with any of the brands I’ve worked with before. We’re really very pleased.
“It was a very different approach for us, as we’ve normally been quite conservative in our approach to advertising. We worked with Naked through the whole process and did a lot of consumer research prior to launch.
“We assumed this had the potential to be huge but we did not believe it would move so quickly. It’s been quite phenomenal.”
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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“Naked Communications last week won itself the condemnation of a large portion of the Australian marketing industry”…
Large? Are you serious? You mean the echo chamber of Australian Social Media experts? That is not a ‘large portion of the Australian marketing industry’ but a relatively small group of people with vested interests in making sure that “trad” marketers know their place.
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That’s a fair point, Kelpenhagen. When I was writing the piece, I nearly included the caveat “large portion of those who expressed a view…”
Hmm. Maybe I should build a poll…
This one all boils down to the quality of creative execution – or lackthereof.
LonelyGirl15 dragged it out for weeks before getting rumbled in the US.
This one managed about two days…
Oooops.
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pretty accurate comments from Baxter
“But the one thing missin from the commentary was what would they have done? gWhat problems have they solved for a client?”
Easy to haul someone over the coals when you don’t really work in the business of helping marketers solve problems.
Have to admit I have no idea what this campaign is about – haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere aside here!
Armchair Critic sounds a tad bitter to me: It’s a good story for both Witchery and Naked; self-perpetuating storytelling is what all brands should be aiming for.
If they had tried to build a following for Heidi a la LonelyGirl15 before the over-the-top product placement kicked in, that would be proper ‘duping’ of the masses. This way it’s tongue-in-cheek effrontery rather than being an offensive marketing push. Evidently, punters enjoyed being taken along for the ride.
And Naked is using its client-stories to build its own brand too. Nice.
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Actually, it doesn’t matter one bit how many people have heard of the campaign or the brand. What matters is whether SALES increase as a result of the campaign. But if ad campaigns started being measured like that, it would be a lot harder for ad shops to put out preening media releases. Anyone foolish enough to hire an agency based on “awareness” instead of sales deserves what they get.
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I may sound a tad bitter James DW, but you sound a tad partisan.
Come on mate, in among all of this chatter about rights and wrongs, lies or otherwise, rests the fundamental point that the campaign came off the rails way way faster than the agency planned because it wasn’t acted / scripted well enough, and was too heavy handed in its execution.
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Any loss of trust is bad, whether you have a self manufactured set of numbers to prove otherwise. Revenue is all that matters, it is the outcome of all advertising believe it or not. Loss of trust will impact revenue significantly, lets not kid ourselves otherwise.
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Hi Justin,
While the debate is live on the drawbacks of any loss of trust, it’s not entirely fair to describe the numbers as “self manufactured”.
Naked could easily have used a fellow Photon company to do the research for them, and instead they went outside and paid real money for it – because they knew they would have been open to cynicism from the likes of you and me otherwise. Make what you will of the numbers, but the methodology does appear to me to be clean.
Cheers,
Tim – mumbrella
Oh, and Armchair Critic: James@DW is known to me.
By “partisan”, I think you’re implying he has an allegiance to Naked. He doesn’t. He just happens to disagree with you.
He might be right or wrong, but, please, let’s not start implying sinister motives in anyone who disagrees with us.
Ta
Tim – Mumbrella
Baxter blames the media for not fact checking!?
From what I recall of the original SMH story, the journo visited the cafe and spoke with the waiter, who ‘verified’ the story; and when ‘Heidi’ was asked outright on The Today Show if it was a hoax, she denied it – a barefaced lie on national television. How else should the media have checked facts?
It is not a clever campaign to pretend NOT to be a campaign and to simply lie about it when caught out too early.
And a bit half-baked to not have contingency in place.
Good on them for trying to use social media and do something different, but they just weren’t good enough.
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I think this has been a great success for Brand Naked. But has anyone in the trade press received comment from a Witchery representative with their thoughts on it all?
Tim – do you know if this is a pro bono job for Witchery by Naked? – it would make sense.
It seems to me that Naked have received as much if not more publicity than their actual client (who is probably, but not necessarily, paying them for this work).
The validity of Naked’s research should be questioned too, was awareness of Witchery prompted or unprompted, etc.
S
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Hi Sam,
Ask and you shall receive… I’ve just chatted to Witchery’s CEO – I’ll add his comments to the bottom of the story in a few minutes.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Personally, I trust consumers in their natural environment, more than in focus groups. Its a bit like attempting to understand the behaviour of lions in the wild by observing their actions in the zoo – good way to lose an arm.
That being said, the 1,000 men who “enjoyed” the stunt via surveys seems to be in sharp contrast to the 1,045 comments on Youtube that rate the piece of communications with 2 stars out of 5.
Quite possibly the most popularly disliked video I’ve ever seen on the site.
At the end of the day, the real proof is sales. If they still have the Witchery client in 6 months time, I will personally be very surprised.
There IS such a thing as bad press, just ask Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton or Brittany Spears. Things have changed.
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I agree with the above points made by rlh. The industry analysis of this event has omitted comment on the deception upon which this campaign was developed. The story was false, the media were actively decieved as were the public.
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Tickled, it’s funny you should use the examples of Britney Spears and Bill Clinton. Bill, who was impeached and then aquitted by the Senate – seems to be the case here, and left with a 65% approval rating. Britney Spears, who currently has a number 1 single in the States, and is as popular now as when she released her first album.
Research and numbers aside, which we can all argue until the cows come home, I do suspect a whole bunch of people would not have even been bothered rating the video, and it’s always the people who are the angriest will always scream loudest which gives us a distorted view of what popular opinion really is.
My point is, there’s examples of good and bad publicity; but at the end of the day; my feeling is it’s a storm in a tea cup. There’s been a hella lot of media and online publicity, talk and banter about Witchery (which even we are all part of) I suspect over time any bad feelings will be glossed over as much as Britney’s anatomy and Bill’s cigar.
Witchery has been cemented in the public domain infamously for a long time to come.
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The hyper-defensiveness is almost as shocking as the bold faced lie to the media. Sales will give us the answer. period.
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One figure in the SMH article caught my eye. Naked and Witchery maintain that the campaign has been a roaring success with the consumer, with “only a quarter saying they had lost respect for the brand”.
Pardon?
25% of consumers losing respect for your brand is a good thing? If Witchery gave me the account I bet I could lose the respect of only 10% of consumers. Spare me!!!
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I feel really torn on this. Having done a lot of work in social media my immediate reaction was to scream how wrong it was to try and dupe the audience, but I think this is a little different.
Sure the audience was duped, but by god it has kept us all entertained. It didn’t make falsehoods about the brand or product in question, it wasn’t pretending to be an independent endorsing the brand or product. It was simply the first part in a campaign that I am guessing would have become more overt and less interesting as the brand came to the forefront.
As has been stated above, the true worth will be whether this has a positive impact on sales. The CEO certainly seems happy, the focus groups seem pleased, it generated international awareness (I read about here in London), but are stunts like this a long term strategy?
In my mind Witchery will always have this hanging over its head and may struggle with trust in the online arena from now on – the process of building back that trust will likely be difficult.
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Not sure if it’s kept anyone else entertained than all of us lot who crossed the campaign’s path for work reasons.
It’s not the sort of content you’d sit there and watch and think ‘wow’… quite the opposite in my opinion.
Also, the best online/viral content is good enough to transcend whether it was truth or lies.
It’s ‘apples & pears’ I know, but Air Force One, Ronaldinho and the crossbar, that’s the stuff that really goes viral and works hard for the brands. Fact or fiction.
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35% of me thinks Witchery is cooler for trying something different, 23% of me thinks it’s interesting and 100% of me will think twice before trusting their, (or Naked’s) marketing communications again. The idea was unoriginal, they just got lucky by being stupid. Yawn.
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client sounds happy – win.
naked again getting press and showing their point of difference – win.
standing out in a sea of vanilla is vital in this day and age.
only question is who did the survey that baxter is quoting … getting 1000 people in a sample and asking them questions that detailed so soon after it all happened … it normally takes weeks to get a sample that size unless you go to an existing panel like pureprofile …
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client sounds happy – win.
naked again getting press and showing their point of difference – win.
standing out in a sea of vanilla is vital in this day and age.
only question is who did the survey that baxter is quoting … getting 1000 people in a sample and asking them questions that detailed so soon after it all happened … it normally takes weeks to get a sample that size unless you go to an existing panel like pureprofile …
Hi Ben,
They used a research firm called edentify. The sample was 1000, and it was an online survey.
Cheers,
Tim
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The agency trying their hardest to tell the CEO “on no this is good see look at the ‘numbers’ bla bla” The reason why lots of people have seen it is because it was in pathetic (people like to cringe) and nothing else. Witchery looks silly for dabbling in this social media thing and trusting people who weren’t the experts.
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Another thing – don’t you want the ‘conversation’ to be about your product and not about how bad your campaign was to have any kind of impact on sales in the long run?
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