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Naked Communications founding partner Will Collin could feasibly have driven a tank or worked at Boots the chemist for a living. It was in his first year of university that a work experience programme opened his eyes to both these diverse vocations. But it was another excursion - to an ad agency - that really captured his imagination.

Almost two decades on, and it looks as if Collin made the right choice. The three founding partners - Collin, John Harlow and Jon Wilkins - have just sold Naked to Australian marketing group Photon for £16.5m in cash up front, with two deferred payments on the horizon depending on performance.

That performance, like any agency's, has oscillated since birth. But from the outset, Naked has been a bit different to what already existed, focusing on communications strategy and planning and eschewing buying, to offer what it bills as a genuinely media-neutral approach.

Despite almost being an experimental agency, Naked started on the front foot only eight years ago, partly thanks to Mike Anderson, now managing director of News Group Newspapers, who paid six months' fees up front for Naked's work on Associated's Metro.

Their other launch client, the now-defunct burnitblue.com, was one of many dotcoms to crash and burn. However, awards came fast for Naked, which scooped Media Week's agency of the year gong in 2002 and 2003.

Media neutrality
"When we started we weren't entirely sure what we were," says Collin. "But we knew what we weren't. Clearly we weren't a buying agency and we weren't an ad agency. We felt like something in between, the bridge between ad agencies and media agencies."

At that time, full-service agencies were splitting into creative and media units, prompting a huge industry debate about media neutrality that Naked was integral to.

"Ad agencies looked at media agencies and thought 'gorillas with calculators', while media thought of ad agencies as wankers with ponytails and black polo-neck jumpers," says Collin. "It was crazy that these two clearly similar parts of the industry were operating independently."

Affirmation that Collin and co's media-neutral philosophy had mileage came in 2001, when Naked won a place on the Government's COI roster: quite an achievement for an agency with only eight staff.

"It was a really big deal," says Collin. "We were small, but it worked out that the COI wanted people like Naked working on its advertising. We thought, 'if the UK Government is willing to work with this agency, others will consider going with us as well'."

Naked has worked on the COI ever since, but the agency's client-retention record took a blow last year when Boots took planning out of Naked and consolidated its media spend into MediaCom, while 118118 took its planning in-house in April 2007, having worked with Naked since the directory service's high-profile launch.

Clearly, competition in Naked's realm is increasing. "All agencies are moving into our territory," says Collin. "We have a principle that every aspect of a client's business shapes people's perceptions of their brand. The packaging, helpline, website and ads - they are all sources of influence and communications strategy is how you orchestrate those influences.

"That means we compete with ad agencies, brand consultancies, media agencies and digital agencies. We're all competing to be thought leader and the person the client turns to first with their knotty problems."

Renewed focus
Collin admits that setting up eight satellite offices abroad also diverted attention from Naked in the UK, though a renewed focus on home shores has resulted in the winning back of 118118.

Naked's new managing director Chris Green, partner Ivan Pollard and Collin himself diverted their attention to the UK to "supercharge the London office", now their foreign ventures were up and running.

"Last year, 118118 had new people coming in, wanting to make a mark to show that they were the decision-maker," he explains. "A few months later, they came back to us and said, 'we made a mistake'."

Naked now has to persuade media-land that new owner Photon won't try to cross-sell throughout the group - a prediction Collin is eager to rubbish.

"If you believe Naked's objectivity has made the company's value, which clearly it has, only a fool would buy it and then destroy the thing that made it successful," he asserts.

"It would be crazy to introduce some automatic cross-sale and turn us from strategists into salesmen."

Collin's continued commitment to Naked's founding principles is admirable, but now the agency has a line above it to report into, he fully admits that only time will tell whether these ideals will endure.

CV
2000-present: Founding partner, Naked Communications
1997-2000: Communications strategy director, New PHD
1989-1997: Graduate trainee, rising to planning director, BMP DDB
1985-1989: BA in chemistry, Oxford University.