By Naked’s latest eager-beaver intern, Steph Small

Where would you send Naked’s misfits for the day to celebrate the year’s end and the coming of Christmas?

You stick them on a remote harbour island and make them pretend they’re visiting an artist’s colony in the 1920s.

Two Fridays ago, the Naked Sydney office arrived at work knowing only one thing about our Christmas party- that there would be a strict 1920s dress code. Faithfully following instructions, we were dressed in a rich variety of classic fashion, from feathers and tassels to braces, flat caps with a  few croquet-sticks thrown in for good measure.  We were rounded up onto a bus and then transferred to water taxis, eventually ending up at Rodd Island, aka. Colonie d’ Artiste, circa 1922.

Surrounded by timeless 1920’s music, watered with a bountiful flow of Pimms and sparkling wine, and sustained by a delectable spread of Sydney seafood, we spent the day engaging in a series of artistic activities reminiscent of a simpler time. There was ‘au natural’ life drawing with a lovely French model (honorary Naked-ite for life), sculpturing, poetry reading and soap-box speaking (with not so 1920s topics – enquire within for further details). All the while we were invited to record musings, inspirations, drawings, etchings and whatever else our 1920s minds could ponder within our personal visual diaries.

There was also a range of  prizes on offer for the most creative Naked-ites on the day. With first prize being an all-expenses-paid trip to the MONA in Tasmania, the competition was hot. But not as hot as the smokin’ boat burnouts performed by Founding Partner Adam Ferrier, as he left the island for some 21^st century commitments.

At the end of the day Expression Assistant Larissa Rembisz took out the coveted first prize- with judges awarding her attention to detail in the wardrobe department and overall inspired visual diary. The dream team, including Communications Strategist Matt Furlong and Senior Designer Alex Lloyd, won combined second place, with a yearly pass to the NSW art gallery as well a colours course (we will be challenging them to list all the colours of the rainbow once they finish). Communication strategist Stu Carr walked away with third place, a year’s membership to the NSW art gallery. Judges say he won them over with his anatomically-inspired clay model as well as some beautiful portraiture.

Three cheers must go to our in-house superstars- Pauly, Ash, Alicia and Tory – who envisioned and created the entire event.  Needless to say they have set a high standard for future Naked Christmas parties. Just quietly, I hear that next year we’re renting out Jay Z’s pimping super yacht for a three day cruise along the Italian coast.

Last week we celebrated the culture of Japan and just like Godzilla, it was pretty impressive and at times a bit scary.

We dressed in cultrally relevant costumes (sorry for the hazmat suits), drank sake bombs, played crazy games reminiscent of those played on Japanese TV shows and smelt underwear (don’t ask).

A fantastic night was had by all and we just wanted to say arigato to the organisers who did a great job.

Until next time, wax on, wax off!

On Friday we won the B&T Best PR campaign award for SpeedKills, beating some great campaigns by One Green Bean, Maverick and The Hallway.

The ever so sharp Paul Swann, Managing Partner and Head of Ideas, and the lovely Louise Pogmore, Director of Expression (PR), graciously accepted the award, the sixth award for the SpeedKills campaign.

We would like to thank B&T for holding a great awards night and the judges for doing the right thing and choosing SpeedKills!

Any time you end an awards night by building a tower out of your trophies you’ve got to be happy with the result.

At last nights ADMA Awards our SpeedKills campaign for the TAC picked up 4 gongs, including the prestigious David Ogilvy Creative Award. The winning categories ranged from PR and Experiential to Social Media and Online Content.

In keeping with the theme of acceptance speeches we’d like to take this opportunity to thank; the good people at ADMA for putting on a splendid event, John, Shenagh and Sarah at the TAC  for being inspiring clients, the guys at Photoplay and last but not least to Bob and Fiona who we found in the lobby of the Hilton and joined us in the revelry.

By Adam Ferrier, Founding Partner and Global Head of Behavioural Science

I was in the fortunate position to host Mia Freedman at a dinner with 20 of Australia’s top marketers. Mia is the ex-editor of Cosmopolitan and Cleo, and now co-founder (with her husband Jason Lavigne) of Mamamia, one of Australia’s most popular blogs. Mia was imparting her knowledge about how to create, foster and monitise an online community. She is successfully following that process now with Mamamia, one of Australia’s true new media success stories. Mamamia is the 6th read online site in the lifestyle/women’s category in Australia and has a very clearly defined and engaged community – other AB women. What can brands learn from her experience? As I was listening to her speak I was actually thinking ‘not much’, until she showed a photo of herself.

The photo Mia showed was of her eating cereal whilst in the shower, looking disheveled, stressed and comical. This photo was juxtaposed with the images of her on the magazine covers she’s graced and curated in her previous life. It was the moment the audience truly warmed to her and understood what she was trying to achieve with Mamamia – a blog built around the authenticity of women trying to cope with, accept, balance, and maximise their lives. When Mia showed the untouched photo of herself in the shower (from the shoulders up), looking frazzled she truly connected with her audience.

This is the learning. Brands still think they are in the high gloss world of image creation, whilst the new world order is authenticity, and ‘reality’. Brands are to busy trying to portray themselves in a ‘perfect’ light, free of blemishes – whist the reality is often much more endearing.

Within the entertainment world we’ve caught onto this already; TV drama is being superseded with reality TV, movies have increasingly made way for documentaries, and even journalists are sharing column inches with their rawer blogger brethren.

So why is it that ‘brands’, especially the ones you’re likely to find in a supermarket or car yard, are so slow to realise that a bright glossy image is not what people want anymore? Why do shiny smiles on loveable rug rats, tugging at to-young-looking mums still appear in commercials when they’ve been banished from the content? Why does the packaging of most brands look so artificial and ‘manufactured? Why is it that so many brand manufacturers just don’t get that we are sick of living in a manufactured and overly contrived world.

This, so called ‘emotive’, high gloss, image led advertising has resulted in not brand creation, but brand disintegration. It has created what we call ‘donut brands’, that is, brands that are sugary and sweet, and look tempting, but there is nothing in the middle. No rationale to purchase, their reason for being has been lost in a sea of sickly sweet tone and personality. Built on carefully constructed values and personality they have a hole in the middle.

Social media is an opportunity to stop building image-led donut brands. It’s more than another channel for marketers to adopt too. Social media is a chance to change a brand’s behaviour, and how it relates to the world. Like Mia has found out, we can stop trying to construct an image in passive media, and start to live and act in an authentic way in social media that creates stronger relationships, builds stronger communities, and ultimately allows people to engage to a far deeper level than they would have in the old image-led brand building model. Brands now will be built on action not image.

The marketers in the room wrestled with the evidence of Mia’s talk, and wrestled with the relevance. It’s fine for a person to show their real side, but do consumers really want to know how their tinned hot dogs are actually made? This is the rub, how do we know when to change and go with the new model?

Doctors have a saying ‘Never be the first or the last to prescribe a new drug’. It’s interesting watching marketers grapple with the new rules, whilst others are happy talking reach and frequency and holding onto their media optimisation models.

So like Mia, the brands that win moving forward will understand the difference between legacy media and new media. They will build communities, and learn completely new ways to behave. Brands will be built on action not image.

Our very own Adam Ferrier talks to the Ten News team on the Sydney Soapbox about unions going too far.

I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for the results of Naked Melbourne’s biggest loser challenge.

I am proud to announce that, with a staggering weight loss total of 10% of her body weight, the winner of our challenge is ALIYA HASAN!

A valiant effort from our tiny Aliya, beating runner up Brooke Ward by 0.05%! Bad luck Brooke, beaten at the finish line but also an amazing effort!!

Although the rest of us fatties didn’t get close to Aliya or Brooke, special mention must go out to The Scrotes, Matt Scotton, who with the power of Shane Warne and his diet shakes lost a total of 2.6kgs.

Special mentions also goes out to Lach Hall, who in 2 months has put on a healthy 4kgs, and last but not least, Adam Ferrier, who maintained his weight throughout the competition.

Total weight lost for the office was 22.4kgs! A great group effort!

Check out how our misfits went by clicking on the graph below.

SpeedKills has already had a successful award year and it has again been shortlisted for some more great awards.

It has been shortlisted for the Festival of Media Asia Awards and the B&T Awards for Best PR Campaign.

It has also been shortlisted for 3 ADMA’s in the following categories:

Creative – PR and Experiential
Digital – Online Broadcast
Digital – Social Media

Naked Communications is also in the running for the B&T Specialist Agency of the Year!

Fingers crossed!

This time last year, we were visited by three executives from Dentsu Japan (Japan’s largest agency with about 7,000 people in their Tokyo office alone). They were on a fact-finding mission visiting agencies around the world.

About six months later they asked us to lecture at their New School program, an internal training scheme for the rising stars in their business. It would be a chance to share a bit about what we do and understand better how they work.

This weekend Brett Rolfe (Communications Director) and Paul Swann (Managing Partner/Head of Ideas) flew out to conduct the training and a truly fascinating experience it was. The main focus was team, something that is difficult in their massive and highly structured business.

The Naked side took a lot out of the experience too, including exposure to interesting technologies and social media approaches, and a new drinking game based on Pop Up Pirate…

Most of all it was a great reminder of how invigorating training can be for both trainer and trainee.