Shaping Dave’s personality to reach a new audience
Shaking up the tellybox
Role
Strategy Director at Output
Client
Dave UKTV
Industry
Broadcast, Comedy
Scope
Brand character | Tone of Voice
Date
2022
Credit
Design by Output
Motion by Found
Copy by Josh Burt
With a new approach to their programming and fresh award winning shows, UKTV Creative team wanted to shift Dave’s brand perception to reach a new audience.
‘Celebrating the messiness of everyday life’ was at the heart of their new brand strategy but they wanted help translating that into a design system and tone of voice that would propel the brand beyond the TV channel.
The Challenge
Create a distinctive design system and language that enables Dave to show up in different places — be it on social, out of home activation on the tube, to pop-ups in festivals — as well as being able to quickly generate assets to launch new collaborations, shows and promote up and coming stars.
The Strategy
Most importantly the brand needed to react to and contribute to the conversations Briton’s were having — wether it was a quick witted comment about something in the news, celebrating the win of a particular sports team, or to simply have a little moan about the weather.
Working with the UKTV Creative team, we interrogated what ‘Celebrating the messiness of everyday life’ might mean for Dave. And set out to choose three character traits that would help define how the brand sounds, behaves and interacts.
Voice and language
With copywriter Josh Burt, we had fun playing around with everyday language. Finding new ways of framing the mundane to spark a smile. Looking for a slight offbeat rhythm, giving the things we take for granted a slight twist — mimicking the off-centered visual language.
It’s a new Dawn. It’s a new Dave.
The brand guidelines, aka Gospel According to Dave, was a great opportunity to bring the voice and language of Dave to life — providing a wide range for examples for anyone crafting brand activations for Dave moving forward.
The Impact
Following the rebrand, Dave won Channel of the Year at the Broadcast Digital Awards 2023. The awarding body said: ‘The Dave brand spans more than just a channel – it offers also podcasts, comedy events and an entire personality which shines through its social media and advertisements. It is this ethos of being “more than a channel” which most impressed our judges – along with Dave’s commitment to new talent.’
