I couldn’t agree more, Tim. I’d have thought by now that most, if not all marketing agencies were wise to the power of the (former) audience and just how savvy they are. And that they had at least a modicum of respect for the crowd.

It would appear that Naked is neither clued up or respectful. There are others in the same boat – witness the issues NAB had in 2008 with its ham-fisted attempts at garnering publicity online. Their agency knows no better.

Faked campaigns can be good – if they’re acknowledged as such and the work is clever. This is neither.

As an aside, I have just begun work with a new client – the Sydney office of a largish marcomms company – that wants to learn how to do this stuff right.

Nice post Tim, it’s sad to see that companies prefer to trick the market than focus on providing a good experience around the product, service and brand.

Hey Tim

Nice work on the blog. It’s epic! I would like to add to the debate that even though it’s important to be honest it’s more important that we have the freedom to be dishonest. There is no dividing line between the two, rather a merging with each person adding their dividing line depending on their perspective. I think it’s better to leave it up to the audience to make the decision about whether or not someone has been deceptive. So in the case of advertising, if the public feels unfairly treated then they won’t buy the product. To think they might be deceived into buying could be a little patronising. Maybe what Naked are doing is being subversive, which is a great thing. If the following organisations were subversive how would we feel about each; Nike, Oxfam, Coca cola, Amnesty. Each person and the organisations that control them should be treated fairly so if it’s OK for Buggerup to be subversive then it’s probably OK for a campaign for Coke to do the same. Then that raise the bar for the public subversives to find imaginative ways to hit back. Finally, we viewers of advertising are not stakeholders, we are the decision-makers. Contrary to accepted wisdom we are the top of the food-chain, without us those companies won’t survive so they’d better not be too disrespectful of their audience….OK, I got a bit carried away in the last two sentences.

I don’t find fault with Naked so much as i do the lazy news media reporting non-stories. It’s not news, it’s fairly obviously a PR stunt and it doesn’t deserve the coverage it got.

I think it was a succesful campaign – it made me (and thousands more) watch the youtube, and i even thought the jacket didn’t look half bad.

I think astroturfing is deplorable and reflects poorly on the PR industry – but in this instance i’m more offended by the poor standards of our news media.

In my view, the point is there’s no point in deceiving people like this – its not clever and its not cool and as Tim rightly points out it erodes trust – as if to underline this i received an email just after reading Tims post pointing me here: http://www.findingdawn.org.au/ and i found myself immediately questioning the authenticity of this website before feeling slightly ashamed as i realised it was indeed a real life tragedy. In a world where marketers invade our heads pretending to be something other than they are we are forced to question the authenticity of our social interactions constantly – and that’s a real shame. And to make it even worse it was done so poorly! Sorry but the actress just wasn’t remotely convincing AND its not original and smacks of the lonely girl hoax so its just a bit sad on that level too though thats of course not the point! In a way it’s less bad because it IS so badly done and was easily debunked (maybe?!).

More seriously though and closer to home (for me and the Raise The Bar team) there’s been a backlash to the AHA’s Dont punish us campaign which also deceived people into thinking it was a grass roots campaign when it was an AHA funded one. They copped a lot of flack and bad vibes from the punters for that one too – and rightly so.

I got so bored by that you tube video and the girl’s repeated insistence that she was genuine that I stopped watching before I ever saw the jacket it was trying to sell. I still have no idea what it looked like or what brand it was, and have no interest in googling it to find out. That is probably a good thing, as I think I would automatically associate that brand with a similar sentiment to Tim’s post.

I can’t believe anyone a) got to the end of the video and b) deemed it newsworthy.

Thankfully for my ability to give my 2 cents someone did, and I (regretfully) read the story. To be a pedant, why would a (normal) girl effectively steal the jacket of a guy she was interested in rather than put a witty note with her phone number in the pocket for when he returned to pick it up? And more importantly – what cafe would allow a customer to walk off with another customer’s lost jacket which they’re bound to come back for?

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with realistic details.

Generally though I think it was an interesting idea which would have been much more effectively spread via email with a credible story – and a “do you know the owner of this jacket?” line rather than clicking on the (terrible and horribly long) video from a news site with an increasingly suspicious news angle as I suspect most people who watched it did.

I think the fact that Mathew Baxter got fired (oh sorry pushed asside) over this one shows that even if consumer psychologist Adam doesnt understand someone certainly did.

If marketing people want to move above carsales people in the trustworthiness ranks then I think they have to have a good hard look at their tactics.

Hi Tim,

Just came across this site from a Google Alert (don’t know why it comes up now). Without joining the discussion, I should disappoint you, by pointing out that several Naked People have contributed to the second edition of the Age of Conversation book, among them us from the Copenhagen office.