"Brands need to be able to go naked to their consumer": Will Collin

Speaking to afaqs! on the sidelines of Goafest 2010, Naked Communications' founding partner, Will Collin talks about the new age mantra of communication and Naked's common global culture

Naked Communications has set up shop in India; and going by founding partner, Will Collin's words, on the cards is work that promises to look different.

Collin was at Goafest 2010 addressing a seminar on the path to fresh communication. afaqs! got into an exclusive tête-à-tête, during which Collin elaborated on the idea behind Naked Communications, the work culture of the agency and how the agency could be seen as an "alternative to the normal way of doing things".

Excerpts from the conversation:

afaqs!: What was your vision when you started Naked Communications?

Collin:
There was soul to the vision, but it was a bit fuzzy around the edges, probably. We, the three founders, come from big agencies but different backgrounds. Originally, I was an account planner with BNP. The other two came from media planning and research backgrounds, respectively.

The concept of Naked was to be a hybrid of the strategic thinking that sits in different parts of the industry, and try to fuse, particularly media planning and account management. Back in 2000 was the time when the dotcom bubble was about to burst.

In many ways, the time was the last hurrah for the old-fashioned advertising model, where you had these companies that got a lot of venture capital from gullible investors. They were the ones to go to ad agencies and say, "Hey! We have 50 billion dollars. Make us famous!" The ad agencies would go, "Yeah! Let's do that." Then they would shoot a whacky film.

If you would look back at that time, there were some really famous campaigns. But almost without exception, the companies that did that have long since gone.

In hindsight, which of course is a wonderful thing, I think that was the last time that brands would ever really feel that they had the ability to simply send out a message to the public in a heavy way, and expect their audience to sit back and take it all on trust.

Many of those brands never survived, because they had an advertising strategy and not a communication strategy. Their advertising strategy created awareness. Unfortunately, what they really needed was a communication strategy, which would have understood that awareness is only one part of getting the consumer to become a profitable customer, which actually involves getting people to have a relationship.

The agencies that time made a lot of money from dotcom venture capital clients. What they were actually doing was spending the client's money to make their name famous. The client's problems were not being solved.

afaqs!: Did you ever have the perception that you were just another creative hotshop? Clearly, the strength here is planning.

Collin: The whole idea of Naked Communications embodies our belief about the way brands need to operate in the 21st century. Essentially, you can no longer dictate to the consumers what they should think and feel.

Consumers can check out what other people think; they can see where they can buy more cheaply; they can find out how a product is made -- all that stuff can be found out by just a click. So, brands need to be able to go naked to their consumer, because they can no longer expect the consumers to accept without questioning.

In the name (Naked), we are already trying to say that we are about objectivity. The pure focus is on problem solving. The job at hand is to fix the problem or resolve the issue or meet the challenge. It is not to do something cool.

Doing something cool may or may not be the answer to facing the problem and resolving the issue. But do not get side-tracked. Always focus on the problem and follow it wherever the logic takes you.

Naked has a strong culture, which is born from a belief that the traditional structure of the marketing communications industry stands in the way of providing clients with objective advice. Naked was created to address this lack of objectivity. This means we are driven by an unceasing quest to solve our clients' problems, not to sell them readymade solutions.

afaqs!: Tell us about your agency culture. How are you guys oriented? Do you have typical departments?

Collin: We are a small company and we take advantage of that. Being a small company, you do not need to have very regimented structures. You are able to be a little more flexible in how you deploy people on an account, or how you approach a problem.

Typically, if you were to come to Naked anywhere in the world, you would find a seemingly unstructured environment. It would be probably quite noisy. There would be lots of weird stuff around like odd toys, old-fashioned photographs or pieces of slightly crap looking furniture.

We are very low key. We are not an agency that believes in trying to impress clients through superficial signals of grandeur and self-importance. We would rather be known for the work we do.

afaqs!: Would you say you have the image of the underdog? Of David versus Goliath?

Collin: I suppose so. We are in the business of trying to change the way the marketing world operates. Not that we have a mission statement; but if we did, it would be something to do with changing the marketing model. That's because we genuinely think we are unfortunately saddled with a load of assumptions and structures, which were bequeathed to us and we stuck with them.

It is not that the people are not great. The people are fantastic. It is just that people's ability to do fantastic work is inhibited by these arbitrary structures that were determined by someone long since gone.

No one is actually saying, "Hang on a second! Just stop and go back to the first principles. Build it the way it needs to be built in the 21st century. Do not build on what has been inherited from 1950."

afaqs!: Do you have separate units in the agency?

Collin: It varies essentially how long an office is going. London, for example, is the longest lived office. There are people there with different kinds of skill sets. But we have always tried to have a blend of people with different backgrounds, different talents and different experiences; because we are in the business of communications in the whole, and not just specific. So, we try and have an eclectic blend of people.

We have this thing that we call the hiring policy of 'brilliant misfits'. Obviously 'brilliant' but 'misfits', because people who come to Naked often come from other jobs, agencies and industries, where they felt that they were not really fitting in. Their instincts were telling them something different, but their companies, job titles and job descriptions were forcing them to do something else.

Those tend to be the people that get to Naked 'at last' and finally get to do things the way it needs to be done. They do not have to follow the company line and do it the way they are told.

afaqs!: How long have you been eyeing India? The launch was due a while ago.

Collin: Yes, it was around two years ago. Then all that happened to Lehmann Brothers in September 2008 and the world changed. At that point, since more of our clients' income was based out of the UK, the US and Western Europe; we wanted to be cautious.

And then it turns out that the recession did not quite hit us in the same way as it hit other agencies. As an agency, I guess, we are positioned as the alternative to the normal way of doing things. That worked and that is quite a good positioning to have; because clients were looking at doing things profoundly differently, and we were an agency that potentially represented a profound difference. So, it was a good place to be.

However, some of our clients stopped marketing altogether. We got caught with that just like any other agency, but we continued to grow through the recession which, I think, many agencies in the West did not.

But it did mean that we got a little bit cautious about making more overseas investments.

afaqs!: So, when is the launch slated?

Collin: It is now! Gitanjali Sriram has just joined and she will soon be joined by other people. Hopefully, we will commence operations as soon as possible.

There are three categories of clients that we would like to work with. First of which are great Indian domestic brands; the second is great, successful international brands that market in India; and third, the successful Indian brands that are looking to go international and develop their business overseas.

afaqs!: Initially, would you expect most growth to come from your existing clients that are, perhaps, looking at entering India?

Collin: Not necessarily. I would be a bit disappointed if we do not get any client through that route; but equally, I would be pretty surprised if that is the only opportunity.

afaqs!: How do you battle the problem of scale when clients expect that from you? Or do you prefer to work with clients that do not have such requirements?

Collin: No. The Australian office began working with Telstro when there were just, I think, four people. Our service is not one that inherently requires scale to be delivered. It requires brains, experience and a particular way of looking at the world. That actually is not inherently a scale property. It is a personal quality.

We are never going to have an office with 700 people and five floors and a fleet of company cars parked. We are not that kind of agency.

afaqs!: During pitches, will you be leveraging on the same global strength of yours?

Collin: Essentially, we are an agency that offers objectivity. That has always been our service. The story gets better with every passing year and a new office that we open; because of the wealth of experience, and the track record gets extensive and bigger. The range of problems that we can handle becomes broader and the wealth of talent gets bigger as well.

Whenever agencies do meetings, the bit that clients want to see is the work you have done for other clients. That is the bit they are most interested in.