Episode 62 - Paul Woolmington, Naked Communications on Brilliant Misfits, Integrated Marketing Communications, Mountain Gorillas and Titanium Lions

Transcript

This program is brought to you by PersonalLifeMedia.com

[music]

Susan Bratton:  Welcome to Dishy Mix. I’m your host, Susan Bratton, and on today’s show you’re going to get to meet Paul Woolmington. Paul is the CEO of an agency in New York. It’s a communications strategy firm, called Naked Communications.

On today’s show we’re going to talk about media neutrality, brilliant misfits, what it’s like to be an English-man in New York, Ugandan mountain gorillas, and the Cannes Titanium Lions.

[music continues in background]

Paul Woolmington: The idea “naked” is actually an interesting one, because it really isn’t just a funky name. The first premise of “naked” is that brands today stand naked in front of  consumer, and that, what client marketeers require more than ever before, is the naked truth. Sometimes, what is good is that someone who has maybe had a dozen years of experience in the business might have done two things in their career: he might have been in public relations and then they may have been a strategic planner of agency. They may have been a creative and then ended up being a digital strategist. So we quite like people that are not afraid of change that XX during the course of their lives – they adapted to the environment.

It’s great to be involved in pushing the industry, and being restless, and not allowing people to fall back on legacy. Certainly, that most recent work stands, I think, as a testament to where the industry may be going.

Susan Bratton: Welcome, Paul.

Paul Woolmington: Welcome, Susan. It is great to be here.

[music fades]

Susan Bratton: I am so glad we finally got you in a location, long enough to have this conversation. You and I met maybe a year ago. You are on the board of Ad:Tech now and I had an opportunity to make your acquaintance, and was instantly smitten with you - and knew, that some day our destiny would be to do a Dishy Mix together.

Paul Woolmington: The feeling is mutual, because what you did at Ad:Tech is amazing and it’s been great to be involved for the last couple of years in Ad:Tech.

Susan Bratton: Good! Just for our listeners who might not know you, I want to let them know about the past you have, Paul. First of all, you are really a veteran of the advertising business. I would say coming more out of media now, but you have really been moving from media to a more integrated concept or construct of where you think the world is going – this is one of the things we’re going to talk about. But that all came from the fact that you’ve held positions as Worldwide Chief Strategic Officer and President of Media Operations at Young & Rubicam and the Media Edge. Before joining Y&R you were Worldwide Media Director at Ammirati Puris Lintas in New York. Of course, starting out  in the UK, you founded your own media firm, called 20/20 Media. Then, you had moved over from Y&R and founded and served as Media Kitchen’s Chairman and CEO – or Head Chef, as you like to say - just before you came to Naked Communications. You are also really involved with creating the Media Lions at Cannes as well as, recently, being part of the Jury Panel for the Titanium and the Integrated Cannes Lion programs.

I want to talk more about the world of awards and the world of Cannes, but I wanted everyone to know that you had this background where you came out through the media ranks, but you have a very different perspective on the world of integrated communications now, at Naked.

So, let’s just start with that. That’s kind of the beginnings of media neutrality and into this “polygamous marriage of media” I have read some things about. Tell us about that.

Paul Woolmington: Thanks, Susan. I think you have got it about right. I think everything I’ve done in my career has been somewhat restless. I have never liked to categorize myself purely as a media guy, or purely as a brand-planner, or as an agency operations manager. So within the marketing, within the realm of media advertising marketing, I would say I was somewhat of a generalist.

The idea of “naked” is actually an interesting one, because it really isn’t just a funky name. The first premise of “naked” is that brands today stand naked in front of  the consumer. And that what client marketeers require more than ever before is the naked truth; objectivity, in the way that you put a marketing communications plan together. So Naked was actually created under this premise that in order to be objective you can’t have a manufacturing output. If you’re heavily involved in building websites and you’ve got a lot of technicians who build websites, then - guess what - that’s going to be potentially a bias in your recommendation. If you’re an advertising agency, as much as you protest objectivity and neutrality, then you get a lot of mouths…

Susan Bratton: You solve the problem with media.

Paul Woolmington: You’ve got mouths to feed. And so, I think, what we realised was that what we wanted to be in the business of, was solving business problems through the most objective channels and I think that’s where a ‘sweet spot’ of Naked is.

We have a couple of other guiding principles. Guiding principle one is that “everything communicates”. I think that’s fairly obvious, but when we talk about communications, we talk about everything from the way a telephone is answered to internal stakeholders, to retail channels - to every way in which a  brand could communicate with any one of its’ stakeholders.

Susan Bratton: Didn’t you put together something where you’re counting the touch-points that a brand has with its’ consumer? Aren’t you up to a 120 now, or thereabouts?

Paul Woolmington: Yes. Obviously, there are thousands, and thousands, and thousands - many of which you can’t measure and many of which are evolving every single day, so we try to think of every one. But you’re right: yes, we actually have various methodologies that can analyse and can look at in excess of 100 touch-points, like multiple digital channels, multiple retail channels or the traditional and non-traditional channels, and many of the emerging channels. Yes, you’re right.

Susan Bratton: So you really consider yourself an independent communications agency. You don’t profess to have any bias toward particular media or particular creative. You’re like the handyman that doesn’t favor any particular tool.

A lot of times, in addition to working with clients - like CocaCola, Nokia, Sony, Nike, J&J, Google, the Gap - you’re working with agency partners, like Strawberry Frog, Mother, or RGA. How are those relationships working? What part do you bring to it that an agency doesn’t feel like they could do it themselves? How do they actually want to work with you? What do you do?

Paul Woolmington: First of all, thank you for all of that. I think the first thing is that we help dry clarity, because I think what we’re trying to do is step back and see a bigger picture. What is the business issue that we’re trying to solve through communications? We help. As we primarily work directly with clients, so the work we do with agencies - in the plural - tends to be through the client. But what we’re serving is a function that probably clients used to do internally, which is integrating marketing communications. It’s a fusion of business planning, marketing planning and communications planning. That’s where our “sweet spot” is. I think how we assist is, first and foremost, bringing alignment behind how you sort the business problem.

Prioritising: helping clients to prioritise what the task of communication is for any given issue that we’re trying to solve – and through that also understanding the best way, best channels, the customer journey, et cetera. So I think where we work really well with agencies and why agencies like working with us - again, agencies in the plural - is because we help them get to a better brief; we help them to do better work; we help prioritise so they’re not trying to put 20 things into one medium, when actually that medium is good at doing two things really well.

And I think creatives love us because we also are an aspiring partner for them to actually get to a better place. I think great ideas are much more like: there is a wisdom in crowds; there is a wisdom in collaborative process. Yes, occasionally ideas do come from standing in the bath and having an Eureka moment, but actually many times it’s 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration that gets to big communication ideas that are going to work across all of the channels and across all of the constituents.

That’s where I think we help. And because we’re not a threat - we do not have manufacturing outputs, we’re not there to try and create ads or to build websites, et cetera - we’re there to really facilitate great work. A lot of it is down to human relationships: hopefully a lot of the people that we hire at Naked have a great sensitivity. They’re either ex-clients, they’ve worked in the consulting fields, they’ve worked in different agencies and different aspects of agencies, so I think there is a high degree of sensitivity.

Susan Bratton: You called the people who work at Naked “brilliant misfits” - I want to come back to that. But before I do: you were just talking about the fact that you’re not a manufacturer and the idea that you don’t specifically need to build websites or buy media.

Brad Berens, someone we both know and someone who’s been on DishyMix, is the Chief Content Officer of iMedia Connection and the Ad:Tech Conferences. He wants to ask a question for you. This is your model of not actually making stuff to get higher up the food chain, like a typical agency business model would be. He wants to know, if an economic downturn will hit you harder than it would hit more traditionally oriented agency company.

Paul Woolmington: It’s a great question. I don’t think anyone is immune from economic downturns. But I think the proof to put is in the eating: at the moment, our business is growing exponentially, because clients have also grown frustrated and they know that there must be a better way. I think many clients are fed up of relying on a 1950’s-built model of the way that they either integrate or the way that big-holding communications companies try to pull resources together.

Ultimately, I think clients feel overwhelmed. Because there is more choice, it doesn’t mean to say: use more things. Actually, with more choice, you might choose less things. But which specialist skills you need at the table to deliver, might vary radically. So I would say, so far, we have not been affected by the economic downturn - partly, because we’re also an international business, but our domestic business is also thriving.

Last thing is, there is so much more we could do for many clients out there. We are pretty unique. There are companies that overlap on things that we do, but there isn’t anyone that does what Naked does globally, and here, in North America, in the way that we do it. That’s not even an arrogant statement – it’s just a fact. Therefore, so far we seem to have been benefiting from that, and each time we do more work for clients, we seem to get more and more references from our clients. Our clients are our best salesmen. We found one client is likely to recommend us to another one of their clients, because I think we tend to fit more as almost surrogate of the marketing function, or of the strategic function within a client organization.

Susan Bratton: Alright: so one of the things that you’re doing is pulling together the disciplines of account planning, creative and media, and you talk about how you have a unique group of - I love your term - “brilliant misfits”, who do this for you. Before we go to the break, Paul, I really want to check back on the “brilliant misfits” piece. I didn’t want to drop that. I think I would like to be called that. And what I’m really trying to understand is: who are these people that you’re bringing into your company and how are they different than what you’d find at any agency? How does that make a difference? If you could give me an example of a project you did, or something like that -  that would be interesting.

Paul Woolmington: Great point, Susan. Firstly, we hire people from multiple disciplines. Internally, our structure is important as well. We allow them to be misfits, because they may have come from a digital background, but they get to work on brand strategy. They may have been a creative, but they get to not only be a creative, but also contribute to the strategy. We don’t really have any “high rockies” or “silos”, which emancipates them to be brilliant misfits.

To give you some examples: we’ve hired people form Nike, we’ve got people from brand-planning backgrounds, we’ve got people who’ve got public-relations backgrounds, we’ve got a number of management consultants, we’ve got people who’ve worked on the media side. They’ve come to us and, literally, sit on a long trestle table - so I could be sitting next to an ex-creative from Goodby and an ex-client from Nike, and opposite me could be someone who has a management consulting background. To be a bit more specific, we’ve been working with clients like Nokia. We’ve been helping them very strategically on the long-term business planning that is quite heavy-lifting business planning of how they might go to market 2009 and beyond.

But actually on the team, we’ve got an ex-creative from Goodby, we’ve got an ex-media person from Goodby and the Media Kitchen, we have a management consultant and we have an ex-account person. You might think that the project would lend itself to sort of business and management consulting, but we believe we’re getting to a more powerful place and I think the client also believes we’re getting him to a more powerful place with the combination of skill sets that we bring to the table. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of a better understanding of not only the philosophy and the culture, but also how it actually physically manifests itself at a client level.

Susan Bratton: It does. It does make a difference. It’s not the classic line-up that you would have from a more traditional agency. I get it! Thank you.

I also want to hear more about some of the Cannes work that you’ve done around awards. Mostly from the perspective of: how can the people in our industry participate in those kinds of awards. We need to start getting more involved in that. So we’re going to take a break, thank my sponsors – I actually have some special offers in this commercial break from some new sponsors, and I think you’ll be interested.

When we come back, we’ll talk about that and more about Paul’s life, growing up in Uganda, and some of the other things that he’s done that are really fun and interesting. I’m your host, Susan Bratton. We’re going to take a short break and we come back, we’ll get to know a little more about Paul Woolmington, CEO of Naked Communications.

Oh, wait! Before we leave for the break, Paul, I forgot - you have some goodies for DishyMix listeners. Tell us what you have.

Paul Woolmington: We produced a limited print on “House of Naked” book, which is a lot of fun. I was thinking we might autograph that and have a few of those, plus a “Naked on Tour” – a world tour T-shirts. So there are a couple of goodies for you.

Susan Bratton: Excellent. So if you would like to have either of personally autographed copy of the “House of Naked” book - sounds fun to me, or the “Naked on Tour” T-shirt, go to the DishyMix fan club on Facebook. Just post your request and Paul and I will award some books and some T-shirts to our favorite posts. Go and do that and see if you can get some great shwag. Now, we’ll go to the break. Thanks for the goodies, Paul.

[commercial break]

[music interlude]

Susan Bratton: We’re back.

Paul, I started an awards program in the interactive industry through the Ad:Tech award program, called the Industry Achievement Awards. We have been, for the last two years now, awarding individuals in the Industry, who have contributed far beyond and above their particular role or job in the Industry, to be someone who has really helped move the entire business of digital media and marketing forward. I really am proud to have created that Industry Achievement Award. Some people like Rich LeFurgy, Pete Blackshaw, Kate Everett-Thorp won it this year.

You have also done some similar things: you’ve been a juror as well as created some new awards. Tell us about your perspective on that and some of the work that you’ve done.

Paul Woolmington: Yes. I think we both share our passion. I think the passion is that there’s got to be a better way; there’s got to be a way that we can evolve and recognise what is happening today rather than the legacy. A lot of awards are based on siloed legacy structures. We do need to celebrate the cross-skills, whether it would the “Webby” for best websites. What we find is that things are much more multi-dimensional. What we need to do is recognize big ideas. We need to recognize how the industry is changing.

Some specific examples: in the old days the Cannes Advertising Festival was very biased towards the creative community and it celebrated the craft of making TV spots, printouts and out-of-home posters. Way back in the late 90s, about a decade ago, I engaged in conversations with them to say that maybe media could be recognised, because content and contact are pretty important two sides of the coin on doing anything good.

I was lucky enough to have helped create the Media Lions, which was one of the first additional competitions they created at Cannes, and was the Jury President back in 1999. But more recently, what we’ve seen again, I think, is the evolution of the awards system, and much like you did, recognising brilliant thinking and keeping awards a little more open-source. For the Clios, our camera’s involved in the creation of the content and contact awards. It was really a holistic thinking – you can have a brilliant creative execution but it didn’t come with brilliant placement or thinking about medium context and message together, then it’s worthless.

It was also meant to democritize the way people enter those awards – you didn’t have to be just a brilliant creative director to win. Great media people and great digital people could enter those awards. Most recently, this year, I was honoured to be on the jury of the Titanium and Integrated Awards at Cannes.

Cannes has certainly evolved in the last decade. Now they have been very successful - they have, I think, over 10 different categories: they have the Cyber Lions, design, media and print TV. They’ve obviously expanded it. I was honoured enough to be one of nine jurors and we were looking at where is the future of this Industry going. When I say “Industry”, I mean: where is the future of communications going and where is the future of marketing going? And so, what they wanted was something much more open, that would allow us to interpret the best out of the other awards.

Some examples were things like Uniglow, which is a Japanese clothing company, who have created an amazing body of work built around uniqlock.com. You could say it’s a widget, which is a sort of clock you might download onto your desktop. It’s actually far more than that. It transcends its’ medium: it’s a brand utility, it’s a catalogue, it’s entertainment, it’s 24/7, it’s community, it allows you to blog. It’s just an incredible piece of entertainment, information, utility - all crammed into a widget that you download onto your….Now, is it a widget? Yes. But is it more than a widget? Absolutely.

That was an example of something that we felt may have defied categorization, because it wasn’t a beautiful website. Now, as it happens, it did also win the Cyber. I think it was something that showed where marketing can go. It’s great to be involved in pushing the industry and being restless and not allowing people to fall back on legacy. Certainly, that most recent work stands as a testament to where the industry may be going.

Susan Bratton: I really appreciate you continuing to do something that’s above and beyond just your own business and your own work, to support the Industry and to recognise an award for great thought and great work. Helping the young next generation in our Industry to move forward is also fabulous and I know you do a lot of work there.

You have a birthday coming up in just a few days – are you going to be 46 or 47 by my count?

Paul Woolmington: I think I’m going to be 47 by my count.

Susan Bratton: 47.

Paul Woolmington: 1961. Yes.

Susan Bratton: I was born in the same year. I’m just like a month older than you. Aren’t you August 27th?

Paul Woolmington: August 27th.

Susan Bratton: I’m July 26th, 1961.

Paul Woolmington: Wow!

Susan Bratton: We’re like a month and a day apart!

Paul Woolmington: Yeah. But one of the best birthday presents I’ve ever had was my daughter, who’s now nine, and who was born on August 27th as well.

Susan Bratton: Oh, no way! I have an eleven year old daughter. You just have one daughter?

Paul Woolmington: I have one daughter who is nine and I have a son who is five - Gabriel.

Susan Bratton: Nice. And you’ve lived in Manhattan now for about a dozen years?

Paul Woolmington: Yes. I came over to this country 13 years ago and never looked back. I really and truly believe I am a citizen of the world. Being in New York, I think you can continue to believe that. I’m now an American citizen as well, so am of dual-nationality.

Susan Bratton: Congratulations.

Paul Woolmington: My citizenship’s just coming up to three years. The children were born here. But yes, I live one block away from the office – live and work in Soho in downtown Manhattan.

Susan Bratton: Nice, love it! You aren’t originally from England. You are actually a Ugandan native. For listeners who are not able to run to Wikipedia at this very moment, like I could do [laughing] before I got on this call with Paul, Uganda is near Kenya and Tanzania, so it’s south-east Africa, but inland, bordering the north part of Lake Victoria. It’s really where you’d go to see a lot of the mountain gorillas and things like that. How long did you live there, Paul? How long were you in Uganda.

Paul Woolmington: Well, I was born in South Africa. It just so happens my father was an academic, but he could not stand the Apartheid regime that was there at the time. He was blessed to get a posting at a great university, which is still in Campala – the capital of Uganda, called Makerere University. In his time, various luminaries like Paul Theroux and [xx], and people like that all happened to be there during the 60s.

Susan Bratton: Wonderful time.

Paul Woolmington: Rather than lecturing in good old England or in America, you had the opportunity to have this adventurous lifestyle. I lived there till I was about 12 or 13. Various people have called Uganda things, but one of the wonders was: it was called the “Pearl of Africa” - very fertile, beautiful, natural resources. It doesn’t have a coast-line, but it has a border on Lake Victoria, which is the largest lake in Africa. The people are just wonderful. Africa is just a great continent, misunderstood by many people. There is generosity of spirit and hope that people have in Africa, and in Uganda in particular. Bear in mind, it’s a country that has a lot of infamy attached to it.

Susan Bratton: Idi Amin.

Paul Woolmington: Idi Amin was there, we were there.

Susan Bratton: That was the 70s, correct?

Paul Woolmington: Yes. I was there pre-Idi. There was a guy called Milton Obote who actually was as much a despot as Idi was, but Idi was just mad, so I think he got the public’s attention subsequently to be made famous on various films, from “Raid on Entebbe”, to books, to first depiction of him in the “Last King of Scotland”, which was fabulous.

Susan Bratton: That was such a great movie, wasn’t it?

Paul Woolmington: It was just amazing. I’m a BAFTA British Academy member and I have voted overwhelmingly, not because there was a connection, but I though it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime performances, that was just outstanding. It brought back a lot of memories, because it’s fictional novel, but it’s based a lot on obviously true fact. There is a little bit of fiction in there, but they actually shot it in Uganda. Museveni is the current benevolent dictator, slash Premier there. The country was left ravaged 20 years ago. Of many of the countries in Africa, Uganda is, you could argue, pretty well run and its’ back on its’ feet, which is amazing.

Susan Bratton: I bet that does your heart good. Do you ever go back there?

Paul Woolmington: It’s an incredible coincidence that my wife is also English, but she was born in Dar-el-Salam, Tanzania, in Africa. So we got back lots. Yes, we’ve taken the kids: we did Tanzania and Kenya with our kids a year and a half ago. We just love travel. I have travelled extensively - probably blessed to have been to maybe 13 or 14 different countries in Africa. The sadness is, I will confess, I’ve never been back to Uganda and I certainly am to rectify that soon. In the next couple of years we’re planning a trip back to Uganda, but there is something that going back to try and find where you lived, maybe there’s a romantic vision of your childhood that might be somewhat abused by [giggling] what it represents today.

Susan Bratton: Well, it’s going to look very small. [laughing]

Paul Woolmington: [laughing] Likely.

Susan Bratton: You know, it always surprises me when I go back and look at the things from my childhood: how the houses in which I grew up look so tiny. Just by today’s standards, things have changed so much. But it sounds like it’s a great place to take your children. There are like 22 National Parks just in Uganda alone, I think. It’s an incredible place for travel.

Paul Woolmington: Yes, it is.

Susan Bratton: And you get to see the Ugandans. Ugandans are from different tribes, including the Swahili Tribe – that’s one of the big advantages.

Paul Woolmington: Oh, absolutely. These borders were cosmetically drawn by colonists, but they were drawn across tribal boundaries. In any country in Africa, you’re highly likely to have multiple languages. As it happens, Swahili is very much a South-Eastern language, so it’s a language that’s often spoken in addition to a local language. So, in Uganda, a tribe would be the Buganda and so they have their own language.

Susan Bratton: Bugandan.

Paul Woolmington: Buganda. Generally, there is a titular King of Uganda and he most often comes from the Buganda Tribe. But, in addition to that, most people in Uganda would speak Swahili, and, surprisingly enough, because East Africa was very much a British colony for many years, English would also be well spoken in major cities.

When I grew up as a child, I had a wonderful nurse called Mary, who was Ugandan and her son Ben was a very good friend who I grew up with. I spoke Swahili before I spoke English. Much to the surprise and shock of my grandparents. When they came to visit, I was running around with probably a pair of shorts and nothing much else on, and speaking Swahili fluently and stumbling on English. My father happened to be a linguist as well, so I think it was added - he probably spoke to me in Swahili as well. Fun times, but you’re absolutely right – the cultures are mixed and that’s what makes incredible place to visit. As anywhere in the world, people are different, they come from different places, so to call people Indian is also…

Susan Bratton: Leaving a little money on the table there.

Paul Woolmington: Yes.

Susan Bratton: [laughing] I love it!

Well,, we’ve got to let our listeners get back to their lives, Paul. The last thing that I wanted to know was what you were going to do to celebrate your birthday this year.

Paul Woolmington: Great question. I now celebrate my birthday through my daughter’s birthday.

Susan Bratton: Alright, of course! So what kind of a party – are you going to have a theme party for her?

Paul Woolmington: Well, recently I was best man at very good friend’s wedding and they’re going to come from Sweden and the UK and I’ve got some other very good friends who are going to come up - we happen to have a lovely place up in Connecticut. We often untuck on mother’s vineyard around that time, but this year we’re going to be in North-West Connecticut, in place called West Cornwall, where we have a lovely place and we’re going to have just some wonderful friends and I think India will get to invite some of her friends up. Probably lot of splashing in the pool and running around, hopefully there will be lots of apples on the trees: picking apples, making apple-cider, being a New-Englander, I think.

Susan Bratton: That sounds really nice. West Cornwall – that sounds wonderful. I’m going to have to Google-map that and see where that is – it sounds absolutely delightful. You’ll be surrounded by friends and family and your beautiful son and daughter, and that is absolutely the way to celebrate your birthday in style.

Paul Woolmington: Yes.

Susan Bratton: Good. Paul, I’ve really enjoyed getting an opportunity to get to know you better as has everyone who’s listening today. So thanks for sharing a little bit of your perspective on the agency world as well as your life and who you are as a person. Thank you so much for that.

Paul Woolmington: You’re welcome, I’ve so enjoyed it being on DishyMix, Susan.

Susan Bratton: [Laughing] Good, Paul. Alright, have a great birthday. I doubt I’ll talk to you again before then, enjoy your time off and have a great day.

Paul Woolmington: And you.

[music in background]

Susan Bratton: Alright. For all of you DishyMix listeners who would like to share this episode with your friends, I’d love for you to do that. You can just forward a link from PersonalLifeMedia.com, you can Google me on DishyMix, or you can join the Facebook fan club for DishyMix, where I give away all kinds of goodies for my guests. Thanks again for tuning in today and I’ll talk to you next week. I’m your host., Susan Bratton.

Find more great shows, like this, on PersonalLifeMedia.com

[music fades]