New logo for ITV channels

ITV is to launch a new onscreen look for all its channels next Monday, with the aim of shifting viewers’ perceptions of the company from being a terrestrial broadcaster to a content brand.
The rebrand includes new idents for ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV News and ITV regional news bulletins. ITV4 launched with the new on-air look when it began broadcasting in November.
“We aim to move perception of ITV from terrestrial broadcaster to content brand, making it fully fit for a multichannel, multi-platform world,” said Clare Salmon, the ITV director of marketing and commercial strategy.

The new onscreen look for the broadcaster’s flagship channel ITV1 is based on the concept of “emotional moments we all share”.
ITV2’s brand proposition is “must-have TV”; ITV3’s new look is “drama that draws you in”; while ITV4’s proposition is “collision of opposites”.

Simon Shaps, the ITV director of television, said the new look for ITV1 was designed to be “very warm and inviting, not scary”.
He said it was designed to appeal to ITV1’s core audience, but also to help give ITV’s other multichannel services a clearer identity and bring in new viewers.
“We need and won’t sacrifice the volume audience that ITV has relied on for 50 years. But we also want to attract different audiences. This is about building on the existing audience, rather than displacing it.
“One of the things that underlies our thinking is that channels as brands are still important to viewers. We’re not yet in an on demand world.
“We want to offer viewers a much clearer sense of what the individual channels are about and how they fit together as a family of channels.”

Ms Salmon said that rather that spending extra money on the rebranding, the £7m marketing spend already allocated for the first quarter of 2006 would be refocused.
She added that “iconic” shows for each channel had been selected for onscreen promotion using the new branding, including ITV1 drama Wild at Heart and ITV2’s US import Supernatural.

As part of ITV’s “Brand 2010” exercise to prepare for the rebranding, Ms Salmon and her team carried out extensive research, including surveying 6,000 viewers about their attitudes to ITV and television in general.
The Brand 2010 project was supported by M&C Saatchi and WPP’s Mindshare subsidiary.
ITV’s new onscreen branding was created and produced by Red Bee Media.