Get home after work tonight, turn on your Sky box and you’ll be bamboozled by hundreds of pay TV channels, all demanding your attention. Most brands only have a handful of competitors but in the pay TV world, things are different. If you want to stand out, your brand name is the first thing that today’s channel-hopping audiences look for.
There has been a slew of TV channel rebrands in recent years, from the now ubiquitous Dave to the more obscure Alibi and Yesterday. There’s even a channel called ‘Really’ – really?
Eulogy! client Comedy Central was one of the more recent rebrands. Formerly Paramount Comedy, a name that said safe, US comedy, the rebrand to its bigger, badder and bolder parent channel from across the pond meant audiences knew exactly what they were getting – a modern comedy channel, dedicated to delivering top-notch comedy.
So do channel rebrands work? Well, viewing figures certainly say so. Dave has recently recorded a record 2.66 million viewers for its resurrection of Red Dwarf and Comedy Central’s viewing figures have shot up by 59%. What’s most important though is making sure your proposition is clear and unmistakable. It needs to be more than just a gimmicky name – the programming needs to fit with the brand values already associated with the new name, so viewers understand exactly what you stand for as a channel.
