Career to date:

2014 – CEO, Naked Communications
2008 – Co-founder and CEO, Himan Digital
2005 – Vice President, Morgan Stanley
2000 – Sponsorship Manager, Prodrive
1996 – Army Officer, HM Forces

As CEO at Naked what is your primary focus?

To decide on a plan, to communicate that plan every single day both internally to staff and externally to clients, shareholders and press and to remain calm when things inevitably don’t go exactly to plan!

Please share a paragraph on your career to date – specifically talking us through the high points?

After university I spent eight years as an officer serving with British Airborne troops in conflicts including Sub Saharan Africa, N.Ireland, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. In those eight years I learned the value of having a plan and the ability to clearly communicate it to those around you. I also learned the value of a sense of humour when things are going against you. That was reinforced during the 18 months sabbatical I spent with the British American Racing F1 Team working on their Marketing and Communications. Having left the army I joined Morgan Stanley as part of the Global Associate Program where I learned how to add up, use pivot tables and the scale of big, big business. I also modelled how many mobile phones we would sell globally by 2015, which led me to leave the trading floor and co-found Human Digital in 2008 as one of the UK’s first Social Media Agencies. Focusing more on the strategic side of communications we helped Microsoft connect with evangelists to launch new products, Levis establish a new women’s denim proposition and the BBC re-launch the iPlayer in 2010. In 2011, M&C Saatchi acquired Human Digital and I led the agency through this period of integration, which saw work with clients as diverse as The Olympic Delivery Authority London 2012, The US Department of Defence and Burberry. Whilst each client relationship is different every one shares similarities around a recognition that the experience a customer is having with a brand isn’t as good as it should be and an ambition to really shake things up.

What’s unique about your agency / business? Why did you join Naked?

Nothing. The sooner our industry stops obsessing over uniqueness and starts actually delivering results the better. I joined Naked for the same reasons I work with clients: ambition and permission. We are ambitious to apply the principles of “lean” to the creative process in order to create experiences that truly have value to businesses and people alike. In a functioning capitalist society that should not be mutually exclusive. And in Naked we have the brand to give us permission to do that. In fact we have an obligation.

Who are the people new to you (either within your business or externally) who have particularly impressed you in the last twelve months?

Elon Musk at Tesla remains an example in agility and commitment specifically around the idea of intellectual property and the value economy. Closer to home there are people in the London office who provide daily inspiration and motivation for me. The vast majority are juniors.

What has been your agency’s best work in the last year?

Pedigree Tracks. It’s Nike + for dogs, solves the issue of obesity in your pet and will be cost neutral in 24 months through smart data revenue.

Industry wide, what work has excited you most this year?

A lot of the advertising that KLM commissions is sweet, smart and incorporates a genuine experience rather than advertising, whereas Geicko in the US continues to convince Warren Buffet that it’s smart to spend $1bln on communications and that should be heralded.

Who or what inspires you?

People who continue to deliver in the face of adversity.

How do you stay in-touch with the industry’s best work and culturally relevant news?

Surely if it’s culturally relevant you don’t need to stay in touch with it?

What work or agency from outside the UK do you think is particularly influential?

It used to be KesselsKramer when they were still active in the industry.

What do you think are going to be the main challenges for agencies in the next two years?

We don’t have the requisite technical skills in data to back up the claims we’re making, we can’t tell a good enough story to the C-Suite in terms of ROI (and no I don’t’ want you to show me another econometric model), we are no longer where the cool, smart kids want to work (they want to set up their own gig and sell it to Google), but the biggest challenge is to remain relevant to senior stakeholders.  

How do you see the media landscape unfolding in the next five years?

To the consumer it will fragment further as the decentralisation of content and what that means from an attitudinal perspective continues. From a business perspective it will consolidate with the big four: Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple continuing to buy.

What’s your attitude to the ‘traditional’ pitch? Do you think there is a better/more modern way?

It’s ridiculous and does the clients a disservice. Having attended a recent industry function where a client berated agencies for not being business focused enough and in the same breath gushed over the “production qualities” in an RFI. I have a six year old daughter and she realises you don’t get something for nothing. The sooner we can have grown up conversations around money, the better. If I were a client I would work out whether I wanted an opportunity seized or a problem solved. At that stage I would approach the intermediary I wished to work with and ask about the leadership and therefore the culture. Then I’d issue a brief aimed at understanding two things: how the agency worked and what they would produce in this instance. I would only go to three and each would get 1 hour to present. I would appoint on an initial project from that stage with the output being a strategic delivery (that does not mean power-point, it might be customer journey, experience architecture etc) and I would pay. If we reached the end of that and I still didn’t want to proceed I would have something of value and the agency would have been paid.

What’s the best pitch you’ve been involved in?

The recent one where at least all parties looked at each other half way through and admitted it was ridiculous.

In what ways do you think the industry can change for the better?

How long have you got, but I’m keen for us here at Naked to start every day with a shot of humility. I believe the only people who believe advertising is important, are people who work in advertising. If people loved our output, why would Google force you to wait 5 seconds before skipping the ad?

What’s the next big thing for Naked?

We’ve changed significantly over the last year. Our skill sets have broadened and deepened to include Business Analysis, Technical Coding, Animation and Consulting. For us the focus is making our lead clients famous by fulfilling the single thing the discipline of Marketing should deliver: generate demand.

With so many new products and services giving customers more choice, how do you help the brands you work with encourage loyalty from their customers?

Firstly we work out whether loyalty is actually needed. Most marketers say loyalty and either mean, “habit” or “reward”. Almost all, “loyalty programmes” are reward schemes and of the Inter-brand top 100 most loyal brands the leading 15 don’t have “loyalty schemes”. Equally the two best loyalty schemes, aren’t seen as such: iTunes and Nike +. So it’s not a question of choice, or even competition, it’s a question of understanding what do you want to achieve and then being enlightened enough to entertain all possibilities. And yes a genuine “loyalty” scheme might be one of them.

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