Naked lands strategy brief for sports website Rivals.net

Naked Communications has picked up the marketing and communications

strategy account for the sports fans' portal Rivals.net.

Rivals.net, which is owned by the media company Chrysalis, has appointed

the agency to help develop its sponsorship and promotions partnerships

among media owners and FMCG companies, as well as building the company's

brand identity.

Chris Reed, the marketing director of Rivals.net, said: "Naked will

spend most of its time looking at deals and how to do joint promotions

with partners. It's not really about driving page impressions, because

we do that ourselves, but about building brand partners and brand

awareness. Naked could easily be an extension of our marketing

department."

Jon Wilkins, a founding partner of Naked, added: "This is where

web-based content sites should have developed their website

communications in the first place. If you have a content-rich site the

best way to disseminate its marketing strategy is through

partnerships."

Rivals.net uses an in-house creative and media team for its

communications but Naked would be responsible for creative and media

appointments, should the portal decide to look outside. Reed said: "We

are always looking at that, but we have a successful and innovative

creative team here."

In April, Rivals.net, which consists of more than 250 independent sports

websites, had 870,325 unique users, according to ABC Electronic. Page

impressions were just below 38 million and the average user time was 54

minutes.

This article was first published on Campaign