As with every­thing, there are right ways and wrong ways to go about things.

Naked Com­mu­ni­ca­tions’ lat­est cam­paign — the social media dri­ven lost jacket affair for Aus­tralian fash­ion label, Witch­ery, is one of those things. Great con­cept, but really not there on the exe­cu­tion. I’ll explain why in a moment.

The cam­paign has already seen some sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cism from smart folks in the mar­ket­ing indus­try — both Tim Longhurst and mUmBRELLA’s Tim Bur­rowes have done sig­nif­i­cant analy­sis of the cam­paign and gen­er­ated some inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Tailored’s Bren­don Sin­clair has been brief but scathing.

So, to my per­cep­tion of this campaign.

I think the con­cept, which bor­rows heav­ily from real life, is very clever. But there’s one prob­lem. It told us fibs. It pre­tended to be real. It’s not. It aimed delib­er­ately to deceive. The whole cam­paign sock pup­pets as real­ity. And that’s where it breaks down.

In spite of the (frankly bel­liger­ent) protes­ta­tions of Naked’s Adam Fer­rier at the above­men­tioned blog posts, and claims of suc­cess for his client, Witch­ery, this cam­paign is disin­gen­u­ous at best and a PR dis­as­ter at worst. My view is that it might just lose Naked clients. It’s dis­re­spect­ful of the (for­mer) audi­ence. It treats them as a group to be deceived rather than a group with whom Witch­ery and Naked could have had a con­ver­sa­tion and really engaged in an effort to build some brand affec­tion and brand loyalty.

In spite of Adam’s note that Naked’s cam­paigns for clients are there to “build demand led growth”, I very much doubt that this cam­paign will have that effect. Yes it’s grabbed atten­tion, even in the breath­less her­itage media. They have attracted eyeballs.

But eye­balls, as we are ever­more increas­ingly aware, are no longer enough. How many of us will con­sider Witchery’s new men’s line because of this cam­paign? Con­versely, how many of us will remem­ber the cam­paign because of the fak­ery and delib­er­ately avoid Witch­ery? How many of us will tell our friends the same thing?

I know I will.

This cam­paign had the poten­tial, with a focus on using exactly the same tools, in much the same way — with the added ingre­di­ent of hon­esty and open­ness — of being a real suc­cess for both Witch­ery and Naked. Of draw­ing favor­able atten­tion rather than the scathing crit­i­cism it has.

Clever use of social media as a cam­paign tool is fine, and I do think Naked’s con­cept is clever. I don’t how­ever, think the exe­cu­tion was right. Naked has tried too hard with too lit­tle atten­tion to the way social media actu­ally works. They assumed they could go viral and take the win.

Wrong.

I’ve been say­ing to any of the agency folks I know that will lis­ten to me that agen­cies need to pay more atten­tion to the way social media works and the way com­mu­ni­ties behave in the face of social media. I’ve said on more than one occa­sion that the agen­cies, in spite of best inten­tions, should be much more care­ful about how social media gets included in their busi­ness and their cam­paigns. I’m say­ing it again now — it’s not enough to just include this stuff in cam­paigns. You need expert opin­ion and advice fed into your strat­egy. Here in Aus­tralia there are prob­a­bly half a dozen inde­pen­dent expert voices (me, Lau­rel, Lee, Trevor, etc.) who would be happy to help you. On top of that, there are a cou­ple of agen­cies who are spe­cial­is­ing in social media dri­ven marketing.

If that sounds like a bit of a pitch, it is. I’d love to be help­ing agen­cies with this sort of learn­ing and think­ing. But I’m equally happy if it’s the oth­ers in that list that are doing it. Karma, baby.

But seri­ously, wouldn’t Naked have been bet­ter off to get one or two days advice from one of these inde­pen­dent expert voices and not messed this up? Frankly it’d save them money and maybe make sure the cam­paign didn’t back­fire as it looks to have this time.

UPDATE: Bla­tantly disin­gen­u­ous mea culpa pub­lished, try­ing to main­tain the cam­paign. Oh dear, why do these peo­ple not learn? It would have been inter­est­ing to be a fly on the wall dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion that resulted in this.

mUm­BRELLA and Mar­ket­ing is a dirty word pick over the bones. If Naked are still advis­ing on this, Witch­ery should drop them like a hot potato and ask for their money back. Both Naked and Witch­ery look very, very silly now. Naked con­tin­ues to flog the dead horse, try­ing to jus­tify themselves.