RTÉ2

THE BACKGROUND

RTÉ 2 is Ireland’s youth-focused public service channel. Historically the brand has suffered from an unclear brand positioning and confusion amongst its target audience about what to expect on the channel. As part of the channel’s public service remit RTÉ wanted to re-position the channel to create a clear connection with the audience. Both the programme strategy and brand communication then needed to be re-appraised.

THE CHALLENGE

In an increasingly cluttered TV landscape, we needed to create a brand with a strong emotional connection for this programme-loyal (but not channel-loyal) 15-35 age group. We are targeting a generation that likes to keep it real with a “no bullshit” attitude: a generation of multi-taskers who are avid reporters of their own lives through social media.

THE SOLUTION

We created a new brand proposition – 'tells it like it is' – to establish the channel as the home of frank, funny and fascinating content and give the channel a focus for the commissioning, scheduling and marketing teams to get behind.

We were clear that if RTÉ 2 is a brand that 'tells it like it is', its channel branding and communication would need to inhabit the world of the audience, talking their language.  So we created a ‘real world dashboard’.  For our channel idents, we sent a small team to capture the lives of real Irish youth, in their element, going about their daily lives, and we mixed and mashed video, photos, comments and gifs to populate our dashboard.  We also commissioned new music to act as the soundtrack to this world.

RTÉ2 already owned the colour green so we wanted to keep it, but to use it in a more interesting way by creating a new palette of greens that we use in a flexible grid pattern to adapt to different moods.

It’s crucial that RTÉ 2’s identity evolves to keep fresh and feel relevant. To help make this happen, we created a library of images, footage and gifs for the channel team to create new ident combinations and layouts. Practically, our solution was ready to use immediately, but still has plenty of scope to grow.

THE RESULT

As a continuation of the RTÉ and Red Bee partnership, we developed the big creative idea for the launch campaign: RTÉ 2. We Go There. We Go There, to the heart of the action. We Go There, to explore subjects others wouldn’t.  We created the TV launch promo to showcase the channel’s raft of new programming for the autumn as well as the off-air campaign for flagship programme, Damo & Ivor.

“We first approached Red Bee to help with some strategic work for RTÉ2 because of their broadcast industry knowledge and experience. We were all very impressed with the high calibre of their work and were very excited by the new strategic expression of our brand. They followed that up with some really strong, pitch-winning creative work that demonstrates real audience insight and has the whole team here excited. That goes for our launch campaign idea too, which the Red Bee team has also delivered. Overall, we really enjoyed working with the team in London - they are a truly collaborative agency with a huge amount of talent, energy and expertise.”

Donna Byrne, Creative Director, RTÉ