Mumbrella

Hair and skin range Naked will now be looked after by Naked Communications after parent company Cosmex appointed the Melbourne office of the operation as its agency of record.

The Australian founded Cosmex also includes the brands Moosehead and Davinci.

Melissa Konishi, MD of Cosmex said “Naked have demonstrated passion and smarts, and we are very excited to begin working with them. We have big plans for our brands and look forward to working with Naked to help us deliver on these.”

Matt Houltham, MD of Naked Melbourne said “Cosmex are ambitious marketers, and we are looking forward to turning more consumers on to their brands. We’ve begun work with them and we have some interesting communications coming around the corner.”

Following a thorough pitch process involving a number of agencies, Brancott Estate has appointed Naked Communications to deliver the global Social Media campaign for Brancott Estate’s sponsorship of RWC 2011.

Quentin Job, International Marketing Director for Brancott Estate notes, “Brancott Estate owes much to the curiosity shown by its winemakers, first evidenced when we created the original Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. We continue to look for ways to progress, and as such feel Naked Communications is best placed to help us deliver on a unified global social PR campaign for our RWC 2011 sponsorship.”

“They developed an innovative global social PR platform that will provide Brancott Estate with relevant and engaging content to drive word-of-mouth and awareness around our RWC 2011 sponsorship.”

Louise Pogmore, Expression Director at Naked Communications, added: “We’re delighted to be working with Brancott Estate. Naked brought together a cross-disciplinary team from brand strategy, insights, ideas, and communications strategy which resulted in a holistic solution for Brancott Estate as opposed to a more traditional linear approach.”

The campaign is due to launch in New Zealand and Australia in July 2011.

Mumbrella

Renault has handed Naked Communications an assignment to help the French carmaker with new go-to-market strategies.

Renault’s marketing director Chris Brown told Mumbrella: “We want to work with the absolute best agency partners. Droga5 remain our lead agency, but we found that Naked had an experiential marketing offering that we wanted to explore.”

“We want to take our cars to consumers rather than rely on them coming to us,” Brown added. “We want to make it easier for consumers to engage with the brand – to see our cars and to drive our cars.”

Adam Ferrier, founding partner of Naked Communications noted: “This is an interesting project for us. We’ve looked at the traditional ways car manufactures ‘romance the metal’ through passive, image led advertising, and we think there is a more effective way to spend the marketing dollars.  We look forwards to working with the Renault crew on this.”

Renault’s other agencies includes Mitchell & Partners and eMitch. The carmaker parted ways with BMF in December last year soon after Brown joined the company from Mini.

June 30th, 2011 by Ben Fahy

For years, brands have created ads and placed them in appropriate media in the hope that they’d help sell more of their stuff. These days, brands are increasingly creating experiences in the real world that are relevant to the product and involving consumers in those experiences. And The Powerade Challenge, a 9km running course/interactive marketing campaign around Auckland’s waterfront, is a prime example of this shift.

After the weekend/weeknight running warriors register, they receive an RFID bracelet in the post (they cost $4-5 each, so registrations are limited to 3000). They run the course, check in at three Powerade vending machines along the way and then their time is uploaded to a website. Adshels and billboards have been secured along the way and pavement media will also accompany them on their journey.

The idea, which was dreamed up by Naked Communications and also involved Coca-Cola’s agency Ogilvy, Ikon (which scouted the course routes options) and Satellite (which researched and coordinated all the technology solutions), isn’t new, of coure, but it’s still pretty damn cool and it’s a great way to bring the product to life. Nike uses similar technology in its Nike+ shoes and Nike’s Gridrun in London required runners to head to various phone booths, call a number to get instructions and then run to the next one, with the data then uploaded to a website. The New York and Auckland marathons also use RFID anklets (in New York, supporters can send in a video and as participants run through a checkpoint, it sets the video off on the big screen).

Naked Communication’s Matt O’Sullivan doesn’t think anything like this has been done before in New Zealand. And he believes it’s slightly different to these international examples because it combines out-of-home media and technology to turn what many consider an everyday thing—a run—into a memorable, personal and interesting experience (in some ways, it’s a similar strategy to that employed for ecostore’s personalised magazine cover on ACP’s Little Treasures).

The Challenge also taps into the competitive streak of runners by letting them compare times online and, as Powerade sponsors the All Blacks, it’s thought some of the team will run the course, either as a PR stunt or on their own time, so participants can compare themselves with the cream of the crop.

The course is open for two months starting Monday and runners can complete it as often as they want to try and improve their times. There’s also the additional lure of weekly Powerade prizes.

So, the athletes have their challenge. But no word yet on whether Coca-Cola will create something for the other large chunk of Kiwis who consume its blue elixir. StopPress thinks a course requiring extremely hungover participants to go from one greasy food stop to the next, possibly in their car, while stopping at various dairies and petrol stations for a blue Powerade along the way, would be immensely popular.