Why Naked is taking the creative back from creative agencies

There’s a big difference between ‘creative’ and ‘creating’ – bit like arts and crafts…just sayin’

Seriously, why would you allow this stuff to appear on Mumbrella. Totally pointless and self centred. Wouldn’t have happened in Ferrier’s day.

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Is this that new-fangled native advertising? How much to run my agency advertorial on Mumbrella?

Great! Glad that’s sorted then.

…and in other news, creative agencies bring media in-house and call themselves comms agencies?

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…

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.

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…

So….after reading all of that – are they still called Naked Communications?!

Or is it just ‘N’ for ‘navel-gazing’….

Paid advertorial perhaps?

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.

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.

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.

Does anyone else think ‘Channel 4 logo’?

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”.

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.

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.

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.

One of the best strategic agencies in town – now doing more creative work. It’s not that much of a Whopper Freakout is it?

LB

you’re not the only one.

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?