From simple and basic to smart and democratic

Freeview brings great telly free to 10 million homes across the UK. Yet millions more pay extra to other providers for services and content they don’t always need. Some simply saw Freeview as the basic, ‘low-status’ option.

How to get people to revaluate the Freeview brand, and see it as the smart choice in an increasingly complex media world? With the development of a new catch-up and on-demand Freeview service, the opportunity arose to combine substantive change with a bold new positioning and tone of voice.

Passionbrand worked with the Freeview team to explore a range of positioning relaunch options – with the idea of putting the viewer in control emerging as a clear, compelling winner.

We also explored a range of names for the new on-demand service, leading to the launch of Freeview Play in October 2015.

The final recommendations included a set of verbal assets to help Freeview carve out and maintain an image as a modern, democratic brand, and a design brief that led to a vibrant, new visual identity designed by creative agency DixonBaxi.