Davidson: It’s time for Naked 2.0
Tumbleturn Marketing Advisory managing partner and Mumbrella columnist Jen Davidson argues the time is ripe for Naked 2.0, where unbundling strategy from execution could upend the traditional agency model.
The author Jen Davidson
The economics of media are changing faster than the commercial models that govern them. AI and automation are collapsing the cost of execution. Machine-driven campaign management, optimisation, and reporting, work that once required significant human resources is becoming faster, cheaper, and more scalable.
That is genuinely good news. But it raises an uncomfortable question for the traditional agency model: if the cost of doing is falling rapidly, what exactly are clients paying for?
The honest answer is that most clients are still paying for a bundled model designed for a different era, one that doesn’t distinguish between the value of thinking and the cost of doing and has no mechanism built in for passing on the efficiency gains that automation delivers.
Two very different things, priced the same way
The traditional agency retainer bundles two fundamentally different kinds of work into a single fee: thinking and doing. Strategic planning and channel recommendation on one side. Campaign execution, platform management, optimisation and reporting on the other. Both valuable. Both necessary. But not the same thing and increasingly, not worth the same money.
No one will build this as no one will pay for it. We have all at one point wanted this sort of idea in theory to return, but for it to happen someone has to be willing to approve the invoices and sell up the line they’ve approved another set of costs on top of their “media buying” for ‘strategy’.
Naked was built at a time where there was a token “smart guy” (or guys – almost exclusively guys) who could posture their way to have their ideas made. It was never data driven, it was never agnostic. It was a cult of charisma that was magnetic for clients who hoped it would rub off on them. Ice sculpture as a smart investment for a media company – sure! Ultimately the main people who got rich from Naked were the people who owned the company, who got a pay day and also could trade off it for the next two decades.
When we reminisce for Naked we are ultimately reminiscing for a time when the industry was more fun, more free and not everyone was judged on their ability to sell their clients arbitraged junk.
Could agree more. Just say the word and we’ll reassemble the old crew.
😳
Jen just reinvented fixed fee pricing