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.)
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
There’s a big difference between ‘creative’ and ‘creating’ – bit like arts and crafts…just sayin’
User ID not verified.
Seriously, why would you allow this stuff to appear on Mumbrella. Totally pointless and self centred. Wouldn’t have happened in Ferrier’s day.
User ID not verified.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz fart zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
User ID not verified.
Is this that new-fangled native advertising? How much to run my agency advertorial on Mumbrella?
User ID not verified.
Great! Glad that’s sorted then.
User ID not verified.
…and in other news, creative agencies bring media in-house and call themselves comms agencies?
User ID not verified.
So with all that navel gazing and soul searching you come up with something that, pretty much, the whole industry is using? Doesn’t sound very creative to me…
User ID not verified.
There is something terribly tragic and futile in the way this Industry and its people take themselves so seriously. It is so far from aesthetics and creativity to be laughable.
User ID not verified.
RIP Naked. Just not differentiated anymore.
Not that reading this article caused me to realise this. But that’s how it should be. No innovative agency can stay that way forever, just how it is. Agency names can live forever, but the original brand doesn’t. Unless it was pretty dull to begin with…
User ID not verified.
So….after reading all of that – are they still called Naked Communications?!
Or is it just ‘N’ for ‘navel-gazing’….
User ID not verified.
Paid advertorial perhaps?
User ID not verified.
Will, you’re going to cop some heat and it’s to do with your company’s history.
From an observer’s perspective you entered a space that didn’t exist – a no-man’s land between ATL agencies and Media buyers. Your ‘channel agnostic’ and ‘we can work with any agency \ client’ approach got some big wins early on. The ‘everything communicates’ message you guys pushed out resounded really well client side. I was working customer side when I was privy to some the work you did – and it was great.
New thinking, employing psychologists and the like manoeuvred you and solidified Naked into a niche. At the time, everyone wanted Naked to augment their existing ATL agency and Media Buying rosters.
It was like Naked took the existing creative process and supercharged it \ gave it a bullshit filter that hadn’t existed before.
But then you changed. You started producing creative concepts and stealing share from those you could supposedly work with comfortably and sustainably. You got some wins, and everyone hated you for it. You were ‘pissing on their turf’. You were called hypocrites – at least in the circles in which I moved.
My take on it – you ‘trojan horsed’ your way into the traditional ATL space and you lost that special something that made Naked, ‘Naked’.
I think that how Naked is now perceived – you’re now no different from every other ATL.
Despite well-written, rallying opinion pieces like the above, I’m unsure you’re going to be able to shift that perception amongst your industry peers. Perhaps with clients you’ll have more luck.
User ID not verified.
I would have to say that the coldly logical disciplines of science and maths, led by such luminaries as Da Vinci, Newton, Faraday, Einstein, Planck, Bohrs, Darwin, Maxwell, von Neumann, Berners-Lee, et. al, have shown breathtakingly amazing creativity in explaining and understanding things like Universal Gravitation, Magnetism, Electricity, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Evolution etc.
Time to park that age-old shibboleth methinks.
User ID not verified.
Perhaps he can tackle the conundrum as to why “creative” is a male-only domain in AdLand (with a few exceptions). Some self-reflexivity by all agencies would be a good starting point.
User ID not verified.
Does anyone else think ‘Channel 4 logo’?
User ID not verified.
whoa tough crowd …. come on … really … isn’t everyone struggling a bit these days to define what we do and offer? Economics and agencies pulling so many services “in house” has diluted most agencies (creative, advertising, communications) offering and created such an identity crisis with many a “creative” business.
Lines are blurred … differentation … where? or better question yet … what?
Unbundling seemed so smart back in the 90s…. bringing production services in house seemed so economically smart … but like the modern family now … there is no average family with mum and dad and 2.2 kids …
I”m not sure that anyone likes labels anymore because most of the time that’s considered “politically incorrect” and yet we are always trying to label ourselves so we can sell ourselves and our many services to the clients. Good luck with that.
I don’t buy Guess clothing because it’s labelled … chic rock-chick fashion …. I buy it because of how it looks and feels.
I don’t have the answers … I just think we’re all in the same boat… in an industry trying to stay abreast of quickly shifting trends and “label of the month”.
User ID not verified.
Mark L you pretty much nail it. Except you didn’t touch on why. Simply there is no money in what naked were offering. Powerpoint presos on behavior change don’t pay the bills. Hence they have re-branded as a ‘creative agency’, except from what I hear they no longer have their own creative department and all the work is being done by big brother upstairs -bmf.
User ID not verified.
Nothing in this article tells me that Naked is any different to the dozens and dozens of agencies out there.
Having experienced their work on both client-side and via an agency, I found their thinking to be increasingly undifferentiated from the agencies they were seeking to complement. Perhaps that’s the true reason Naked’s moved into the “all things to all people” space – they’re unable to attract business for what they they used to do, because everyone offers alternative, media-neutral thinking as a matter of course.
User ID not verified.
Having worked client side with Naked in the early days, I think they were the first agency to provide truly strategic rationale around the (then) emerging areas of experiential and digital. I am personally sad that the days of Mike, and Adam, and Naked as I knew it, are gone.
User ID not verified.
One of the best strategic agencies in town – now doing more creative work. It’s not that much of a Whopper Freakout is it?
User ID not verified.
LB
you’re not the only one.
User ID not verified.
The “old” Naked model was unprofitable. Starving artists pave way for gentrification and stimulate the economy, don’t they? Hopefully they will stimulate the creative economy. God knows we need it. That’s their challenge (along with everyone else who isn’t Clemenger’s, right?)
And, just quietly, are you all really that shocked that agencies use Mumbrella as a PR forum? Quelle horreur!
Get back to work and support our industry, won’t ya?
User ID not verified.