Sky Atlantic Takes Flight With Brand New Identity

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UK: Following the announcement of Sky & HBO’s multi-year output deal in July, Sky began the briefing process for the brand positioning of Sky Atlantic. Known colloquially as “the home of HBO in the UK”, the flagship entertainment channel officially launched yesterday with an impressive starting lineup including Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire and You Don’t Know Jack with Al Pacino and Susan Sarandon.

Sky Atlantic Launch - 1 February 2011

In a bold move to challenge primetime terrestrial heavyweights, Sky is capitalizing on a clear gap in the market. Buoyed by an impressive year, the heart of the channel is powered by exclusive HBO content, including award winning dramas like The Wire, comedy mainstays like Curb Your Enthusiasm, and off-HBO hit Mad Men.

Here’s a look at the Sky Atlantic Pre-launch :60 trail, starring Dustin Hoffman

Working a parallel umbrella branding course with talented in-house agency Sky Creative, London-based Heavenly secured the high-profile assignment six months ago, and was challenged to “develop a premium, intelligent and influential entertainment brand within the Sky stable to challenge the likes of BBC2, Channel 4 and More 4”.

Sky Atlantic Ident “Bridges”:

The proposition needed to be versatile and future proof to accommodate the evolution of the content to include UK as well as US programming. It also needed to “look and feel stylish, cool, immersive, smart and engaging, whilst not becoming too niche”.

Sky Atlantic Ident “Bright Lights”:

Following a detailed brand audit, Heavenly developed a positioning based around the discerning target audience, but with an irreverent spin. A deep, immersive and intelligent experience with culturally defining, premium content.

Sky Atlantic Ident “City Cab”:

As well as expressing the brand positioning, the name needed to be future-proof to accommodate the eventual introduction of UK content. Sky had traditionally used a functional naming strategy, but the nature of this proposition demanded a broader scope. Nevertheless, the new channel brand still had to fit alongside the existing Sky portfolio. There was an opportunity in the market to create a brand name with style and stature and an understated confidence that reflected and reinforced the content experience.

New Sky Arts HD Idents Capture Playful Majesty

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Sky has just unveiled four brand new idents for Sky Arts 1 HD and Sky Arts 2 HD, two leading art oriented television channels dedicated to theatrical performances, movies, documentaries and music.

 

Sky Arts 1 HD

 

The first new ident for Sky Arts 1 HD, titled “Chair”, is set in a whimsical seaside playground. With Radium handling music/sound design and ManvsMachine behind design and animation, the spot flows effortlessly even if the British summer doesn’t seem to quite want to cooperate. Nods to director Jon Yeo, Creative Director Cam Levin, VFX Creative Director Mike Alderson.

Here’s a nicely comped post production comparison video as well as the new Sky Arts 2 HD Ident “Bike”.

Special thanks to Sky Creative and Director Jon Yeo for sharing the new spots. Are you a broadcaster with new work? Drop me a email.

 

Sky Arts 2 HD

 

Catch two more new Sky Arts HD idents “Strings” and  “Fruit” after the jump.

Latest Sky 1 Ident Takes Shape for “24”

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Quick bit of creative to share with your morning coffee. The new :30 ident comes to us from Sky and Director Jon Yeo featuring Annie Wersching from 24. They’ve provided me with some PreVis Comparison shots for those of you interested.

Sky(‘s) the Limit with £1M Rebrand

Sources have confirmed that the massive rebranding effort (which began over a year ago) to reposition Sky as “warmer” are proceeding smoothly even though Group Marketing Director Andy Brent (prior Burger King Intl CMO, who was responsible for an Sky annual budget in excess of £100M) left rather unexpectedly 2 weeks ago.

The Sky logo will be retouched with a “well rounded S” and will debut via a new advertising campaign that will be unveiled leading up to Christmas. The planned refresh comes as the broadcaster gears up to launch its subscription digital music service, Sky Songs. A spokesman explains, “We’re making some evolutionary changes to help us keep reaching out to more customers over time”. The rebrand is targeted in the £1M range.

As you might recall, Sky’s efforts to change perceptions of its brand have included a high-profile 2004 ad campaign by HHCL/Red Cell intended to paint it more as an entertainment than a technology company. Much of Sky’s prior marketing effort was being poured into specific channel and content marketing, with a big push to support its HD offer. Sky’s most recent brand positioning, uses the strapline “believe in better”.

For an industry that has weathered (what is arguably) one of the toughest economic climates in recent memory, 2009 has proven to be a pretty busy year. Our clients are presented with increasingly high brand delivery expectations. They work longer hours and more is expected of them. Sure there are fewer briefs and (depending on your home market) tighter budgets.

But there’s a positive angle to Q4 09. Clients are getting better and better at resourcing and selecting great creative talent. Do more with half as much might sound like corporate speak, but who hasn’t tried to stretch their own dollar at the grocery in the last year? Doing more with less simply means that creative agencies need to cement their foothold on current rostered clients, all the while evangelizing REAL tangible benefit propositions to prospective clients. Ask yourself these simple questions:

• Without referring to the show reel, what sets us apart from our competitors?
• How does our unique category experience benefit a client’s bottom line?
• Apart from creative excellence, what do past/current clients say about our service, promptness, attention to detail… our ability to “get it right”.
• Clients do not pay for products, they pay for your brand experience. Are we communicating our creative process/production efficiencies or just talking random client names and just finished assignments?
• Do we invite conversation (early storyboards, motion tests, brainstorm scribbles on napkins) about how we got from point A to point B, or do we just like to show point B in marketing along with a bunch of other logos in a montage?
• How effectively does our marketing and business development communicate the agency’s brand spirit, personality, and voice?

If you’re not effectively communicating these essentials in marketing, it’s no wonder why the new business phone is so quiet.

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What do you think?

If you are a client, how well do you think creative agencies have adjusted to the new economy? How prepared are they at delivering on your longer term strategic goals?

As an agency, what tactics and adjustments in marketing communication have been successful in standing out from the pack and winning new client business?

I’d love to hear from you. Email me your thoughts, opinions, agreements (and disagreements!) at denny at dennytu . com

Getting to That Beautiful Idea

There’s certainly something to be said about how undervalued the words “creative process” can be sometimes. We send finished work around the world, links to :15 spots, channel branding montages, beautifully crafted, meticulously shaped, loved and birthed. Oft times we can forget that these assignments begin with just a simple brief, a conference call with a shared creative goal and a singular focused vision.

And although wiredriving links or Fedex’ng reels has been the expected route of first contact- when looking at a newly finished piece of work, I often times find myself asking: What did it take to get there, to that great big beautiful idea.

A few days ago, Director Jon Yeo sent me a nice email (thanks for the kind words on my blog Jon) which included this :90 VFX breakdown of the Sky Twister Ident.

And as always, that friendly reminder. We don’t sell people, places, or things. We sell an experience (both literally and figuratively), an undeniably unique approach to creative solution-making. Now that’s something to think about the next time a client calls.

News Corp to rebrand Premiere as Sky Deutschland

Breaking News: After surviving another incredibly busy week, my Blackberry continues to get a good buzzin’. International media giant News Corp. is planning to rebrand Germany’s biggest pay television operator Premiere as Sky Deutschland, inside sources tell me. The name change and rebrand, planned for the platform’s much-talked about relaunch this summer, would bring Premiere further into the News Corp. fold. The company’s UK and Italian operations already go under the Sky brand. Word is that CEO Mark Williams (who was previously COO at Sky Italia) hopes rebranding will help in his efforts to restructure the operation and return the operation to profit. The name change is likely to be made official at Premiere’s annual meeting in June. An extensive brand review is planned.

Premiere was formed in 1999 following the merger of DF1, a pay TV service started by the now defunct Kirch Group, and Premiere, a rival operator owned by CLT/Ufa (now the RTL Group).

Sky Channel Branding Ident: Twister

Needless to say, the record snowfall here in London has caused some schedule havok. I had been meaning to get this ident post up a few days ago (due to the number of email inquiries I received) but production meetings took hold and, well, you know how that goes.

That said, here’s another Ident from the Sky relaunch package. Included is some raw footage. Credits go to CD Andi Granger, and Directors Jon Yeo and Simon Ramsay, post to MPC. Extra thanks to Jon for being generous with the footage.

And here’s the raw footage:

Sky Rebrand Ident: “Bones” Featuring David Boreanaz

I’ve gotten a few emails in the last couple of weeks from the US asking about the much lauded, latest Sky Rebrand campaign. The Sky Ident, “Bones”, was shot in London on a custom built set, shot on 35mm and featured David Boreanaz. A digital DCP grade was applied to create a cinematic feel.

It was designed to work around the  crime, action, and drama genres on the channel lineup.  Sky’s rebrand project, which originally started mid 2006, brought a premium feel relating the brand to its exclusive content as well as strengthening the family association of Sky 1, 2 and 3.

The channel refresh strengthened the flagship’s entertainment offering in what would be the largest brand refresh since the channel’s launch. The rebrand encompassed three of the main disciplines: rigid bodies, fluid dynamics and particle dynamics, and were applied to various channel packaging elements including promo end pages, credit squeezes, nav menus, and bumpers. The new brand identity had Sky 3 formed of particulate matter, Sky 2 a liquid state, and Sky 1 a strong, solid matter. The R&D and Pre-Vis phase covered an extensive 9-month period.

Jonathan Yeo directed the Sky idents, while Sky CD Andi Granger helmed with Moving Picture company to fine tune the numerical brand look.

This is probably one of the more inquired upon recent UK campaigns by clients. Thanks to Jon Yeo for the project info. Yeo (btw) has turned his creative attention to commercials, music videos, and short film. We are very much looking forward to seeing what’s next from the talented director.

Previous Sky Cross Channels

A quick look back at some Sky cross channels. (By request)

For my colleagues in the States who hadn’t seen the Sky spot, here you go.

Of course, in Sept 2008, Sky Three (along with sister channels One and Two) re-branded in the biggest on air change in Sky One’s 20 year history. The re-brand saw the logo change from the written “three” to being replaced in favor of the number “3” as well as a tweak to the Sky part of the logo. The fresh set of indents complementing the relaunch were developed by Sky Creative and our colleagues at The Moving Picture Company.