How Naked Wines Found the Balance Between Parody and "Creating a Moment"

As the Australian federal election captures the news cycle, Naked Wines has cut through the noise with the launch of The Naked Wines After Party — a new campaign by independent creative studio Supermassive -- designed to strengthen brand affinity, drive acquisition, and spotlight its position as a challenger in the wine category, and unique business model that puts people before politics.

Positioned as “a party without the politics,” the campaign taps into increasing voter fatigue and consumer desire for authenticity, aligning with Naked Wines long-standing mission to disrupt the traditional wine industry by backing independent winemakers and offering customers better wine at fairer prices.

To learn more about how this all came together, and why this was the right message for the times, LBB’s Tess Connery-Britten spoke with Adam Smith, creative partner at Supermassive and Andrew Seaton, director at Mint Films.

LBB> Tell me a little bit about how this campaign for Naked Wines came about, what was the genesis of it?

Adam> Naked Wines as a business was born out of a response to traditional wine retailers who were using false promises and misleading claims and sneaky tactics to confuse drinkers and to pay more for wine, but also forcing wine makers to take a massive cut on the produce that they're making to get on shelves. We found that there was quite a funny crossover between Naked Wines rallying against that to give independent winemakers and Aussie drinkers a fair go, and the actions of politicians. This notion of false promises, misleading claims and sneaky tactics are exactly the same things that many political parties use to try and trick voters into voting for them. 

Being in the zeitgeist of this year, and it was obviously going to be a big event that was coming up, it felt like a really smart way to integrate ourselves into the conversation and get top of mind and use this vehicle of a political party to tell our story.

LBB> The film is quite obviously set at a political rally, but at the same time feels a lot more fun than the ones we see in reality. How did you create that balance?

Andrew> It as a fine balance between parody and creating a moment that felt uniquely Naked Wines. Our approach was to create a space that looked and felt authentic. Production design wise that meant a podium with all the proper insignia. But we skewed it to something more fun through Matt Okine’s performance. It was meant to feel legitimate but clearly having fun with it. A parody with its tongue firmly in the cheek.

LBB> This was a campaign reflecting a broader move towards building a brand that stands for something. Can you tell me more about that?

Adam> From the start, Naked Wines were very value driven. They were using vouchers to convert sales and to get people buying their wine, and from the start of our journey with them, they wanted to make a real shift into brand building – to start attracting people to their business and to their wines because of what they stood for, rather than getting it for a really good deal.

We wanted to come up with some work that started to bring to life the values of not only standing up for independent wine makers and helping them make a living where wine retailers are not, and also standing up for Aussie drinkers and giving them wine at a fair price when they're getting tricked into paying more. Everything that we're doing is just about making those values apparent and really showing that we stand for not only makers, but drinkers, effectively.

LBB> How did you balance the humour of the ad with the message that is based in something quite serious –  with both politicians and larger winemakers, there is some pretty concerning things going on there?

Adam> Humour has always been a tried and tested way of talking about serious things, but doing so in a way that doesn't become too confronting. We really worked on that tone – we aren't really making a super serious statement here. What we are trying to do is have some fun, call out the nonsense that is going on, and do it in a way that people can relate to. 

It was about finding jokes and about finding nuance in how we tell those jokes to just help people have a laugh at a time when it could be dire, and people could not be feeling too great about what's going on.

LBB> Tell me about Matt Okine – why was he the right fit, and how did he come on board?

Adam> For the face of the campaign, we were looking for someone who represented this no nonsense stance, someone who told it straight and didn't beat around the bush. It was a happy coincidence that he's actually quite credible in the wine industry as well, he spent quite a lot of time working in independent bottle shops, and he also just recently launched his own independent wine bar. 

Matt ended up being a really good collision of someone who felt like they represented our tone of voice really well, in a credible way. He's obviously super funny and really charismatic, but also then has the experience in the wine industry and is able to talk about what we're saying from a credible perspective, it just made him a really good option for this campaign.

Andrew> Matt was a dream to work with. He got the tone we were after immediately and brought a really funny rising sense of passion and enthusiasm to the performance that crescendoed to something really funny.

LBB> Outside of the film, you had people walking around as human billboards joining the political volunteers outside polling places. What was the reaction to that like?

Adam> Oh, they loved it. Even the political volunteers loved it. Again, it was about finding that balance between fun and serious. You're walking past all these places you're going in to vote, and you just get swarmed by all of these political volunteers, all of these messages, all these people handing you flyers. It felt like a really good articulation of what we were saying around this notion of stripping away the nonsense and leaving you with the things that really matter – for us being great wine and fair prices. 

LBB> Were there any fun tidbits or stories that came out of the production day?

Andrew> We obviously shot the script from a range of different angles to give an immersive feel to the piece. Matt was giving 110% on all takes which was putting a lot of strain on his voice as he got to the loud passionate conclusion. With gigs that evening and weekend he was concerned about losing his voice but he kept it up throughout the shoot and luckily didn’t loose it. We laughed at how actual politicians are able to keep it up day in day out whilst they are on the campaign trail.