Evaluating Success in a Creative Project Ecology: Naked Communications as an Agency Legacy Brand in Historical Perspective (2000-2019)

So, D. W. T. 2020. “Evaluating Success in a Creative Project Ecology: Naked Communications as an Agency Legacy Brand in Historical Perspective (2000-2019),” Erasmus School of History, Culture, and Communication. 103 pp. Erasmus University Rotterdam. This thesis is an exploratory case study contextualizing the history and success of Naked Communications, an influential agency in the advertising industry founded in 2000. Despite the closing of its key offices by 2019, this case study draws inspiration from economic geography grounding advertising as a creative and cultural industry built atop urban-based clusters with a project ecology, to evaluate what success means for agencies in highly volatile and competitive settings. Faced with the dual and sometimes paradoxical interest to achieve creative and business success by way of its reputation and performance, a framework was created to navigate the historiography the advertising industry as well as how values are managed in shaping the actual and perceived success of an agency. This study argues that Naked was a successful agency despite the closing of his business because it built a legacy brand of itself, through its ability to leverage the agency values of positioning, process, people, place, and purpose, with the four main stakeholders (clients, competitors, talents, and insiders) of Adland’s milieu and beyond. The implications of these findings are to provide an alternative framework to contextual success for firms with an agency-based business model in urban clusters in the creative economy.