The Flasher

2009 Naked party pictures at Queen st studios

Naked turned 5 last Friday and we celebrated our birthday with our clients and industry friends. The highlight of the evening was the Photo Spoof that Adam and Paul MC built with their bare hands! What is a Photo Spoof I hear you ask? It's constructed like an old school photo booth, however instead of taking photos we had an artists draw peoples' caricatures.  The luminous ultra-violet painted ping pong tables were a hit too!

Frequently Asked Question

This week marks six months since I joined the Naked family here in Sydney. With Naked usually being one of the more prominent companies spoken about in the trade media, a lot of my old media agency buddies are always keen to hear my opinion on the difference between my old agencies and Naked.

These are the main things I tell them:

Everything at a media agency usually feels the same. No matter what the client problem the same sort of stuff usually comes up as the solution. The reason this happens is because of the process, tools and capabilities that most media agencies have. If you always use the same stuff, you get the same answers. I find at Naked there is a huge amount of focus on client problems and not simply going through the motions of answering a brief. At media agencies the focus is usually on talking up a great TV deal or magazine advertorial as the answer.

The second big difference is the way that some clients treat media agencies; like what they do is a commodity.  The reason they do this is not because they're not nice people or they don’t understand what media agencies do. It’s simply because they get the same answer to their different problems each time, so it’s understandable they only see it as ‘media buying’. I’m yet to come across a client that doesn’t treat Naked like a business partner.

The third major difference is the ability to execute interesting ideas. Media agencies will claim to be able to do many different things, but at the end of the day if a media owner is not doing it on their behalf then it can’t really be done. They can come up with all the ideas in the world, but they never see the light of day because they can’t make them happen. It’s one of the more depressing parts of working at a media agency and one of the more exciting parts of working at Naked.

Not everyone agrees with me, but so far about nine out of ten of my mates usually say something like “yeah… I know what you mean…”

Vodafone and the Epoch Times

The suggestion that basically any Telco in Australia sends mixed messages to their customers through advertising and service is not a new one. Take Vodafone for example. Their advertising tells me that I should live everyday to the fullest, but their service people usually cast cloud of fury over my day. This is not restricted to Telco’s either, they’re just the lowest hanging fruit.

The usual formula is that the service provided does not live up to the lofty heights that the brand sets. I know everyone who reads this can think of at least one personally frustrating example of this. However, for this to be true there must be products and services that are underused because their initial appearance is well below the quality of their actual product or service.

For the last five years I’ve casually walked past the elderly Chinese people handing out copies of the Epoch Times (a free newspaper) at varying train stations in the city. Each time thinking to myself “I can’t read Chinese, that’s not for me”. The other day my iPod was out of batteries so I decided to pick up a copy… to my surprise the Epoch Times is basically a bite sized version of all the Australian news. The latest issue covered the recent rate reduction from the RBA, the Wallabies form in the Tri-nations and an opinion piece on the future of the electric car in Australia. It was founded in China, but now prints local editions in over 30 countries around the world. It’s not a bad read, and certainly a better option than MX.

The problem for the Epoch Times is that the elderly Chinese people in no way reflect the content of the newspaper. Now, I’m not suggesting that the Epoch Times call all the old people in to be fired, but maybe they could think about the way they’re dressed, what they say, even the time of day they hand the paper out. A few simple changes would change the public’s impression and get a few more people to grab a copy on their way past…

If anyone knows of anything that I might be missing out on because of a poor first impression please be sure to let me know.

- Cam