Is Mad. Ave. Ready To Go Naked?

They may well make quite a splash here--especially if the Naked way demonstrates the kind of results it has achieved in Europe. In 2002, for example, one of Honda's UK agencies, Wieden+Kennedy London, came up with the idea of a two- minute short film featuring the innards of the Honda Accord. A two-minute commercial would be ludicrously expensive to air regularly on TV, though. So Naked came up with a clever distribution strategy: Air the ad 10 times in high-profile TV slots, unleash it virally online, and then create a DVD of the short film and a behind-the-scenes documentary that could be glued to the cover of men's and car magazines. Without Naked's contribution, the idea would have died because it didn't fit Honda's budget. In its four years working with Naked, Honda UK has "increased sales by 35%, and as a total business we've spent 3% less money doing it," says Simon Thompson, the carmaker's marketing director.

Naked did something similar for Boots, the UK's largest pharmacy chain. And it did so without TV advertising or some sexy stunt. In 2003, Boots had run a TV campaign for a new service that collects prescriptions directly from doctors so customers don't have to wait for them to get filled, but it had gotten little response. Naked's strategists realized that Boots wasn't doing anything in its pharmacies to encourage customers to get their doctors to use the program. In effect, Boots was ignoring the 16 million customers who were already walking through its stores every week. Under Naked's guidance, Boots discontinued its TV spots and had employees suggest the service to customers waiting in line for prescriptions. According to Chris Laud, Boots' media manager, the number of participants in the program has skyrocketed several hundred percent at a fraction of the cost of the TV campaign. "It's more of a process problem they helped us identify," he says.

But will Naked's ideas take root on these shores? It's hardly the first agency to try to revamp the way the advertising business works (see "Tilting at Windmills"). And hot European shops vowing to shake up the game are an industry cliché--as is their typical coming-to-America story, in which the wunderkinds get their comeuppance.

"Agencies say advertising is part of the solution because that's their output."

For one thing, flagship agencies such as BBDO, and major media buyers Carat Americas and Starcom MediaVest insist that they already think the way Naked does. In other words, they say they're willing to put marketing dollars wherever they'll have the most impact--commissions and industry awards be damned. The Naked boys, as they're known, don't buy it. In their view, it's unlikely, to say the least, that traditional Madison Avenue would ever recommend reshuffling a $30 million television budget to spend the money retraining call-center reps, simply because agencies are in the business of producing advertising, not training manuals. "A client goes into an ad agency with a problem," Wilkins explains, "and of course the agency is automatically saying advertising is part of the solution because that's their output, whether or not that's right or wrong." Dick Roth, whose firm does ad-agency searches for U.S. companies such as BMW North America and American Express, says that if the timing was ever right for a Naked to come along, it's now. "Everybody talks about media neutrality," he says, "but I think they seem actually set up to practice it."

American marketers do appear to be hungering for the process that Naked will bring to the States. In recent months, Coca-Cola and Visa each have developed internal marketing-strategy teams that make sure that not every problem is reflexively "solved" by advertising. Coca-Cola now plans to cherry-pick the agencies that it works with to build its own collaborative team--reflecting Naked's philosophy that the best ideas cannot always be found in a one-stop shop. And the hottest agency in the country is arguably Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which already follows a Naked-style approach: It's famous not for snazzy commercials but for things like clever, can't-miss magazine inserts for clients such as BMW's Mini and Virgin.

During this period of change, while the Madison Avenue behemoths try to evolve their financial and creative structures, Naked may thrive as clients insist on importing its thinking. But some competitors and potential collaborators downplay Naked as, well, merely consultants--folks who concoct big ideas without having to implement them. "I think we bring a little bit more to the party," sniffs David Verklin, CEO of media agency Carat Americas.

If that's true, then Naked will probably founder on these shores. But the ad business still has to prove that it's finally really ready to embrace change. "Most writers and art directors still want to go to Santa Monica and make TV spots," says Chuck Porter, chairman of Miami-based Crispin Porter. "That's the culture they come from, and to get them to think in a different way is a hard thing to do." Until that changes, the Naked boys will still have plenty of bald heads to point their fingers at.

Danielle Sacks (dsacks@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company reporter.