UKTV has commissioned Aardman Animations through Red Bee Media to work on the next phase of the brand identity for its new entertainment channel, Watch.

Working alongside UKTV’s creative agency Red Bee Media, Aardman Animations has been tasked with bringing personality to the Watch eye ball – or “Blinky” as its affectionately known – that features prominently in new channel’s multiplatform brand identity.

Commissioned by UKTV’s Marketing and Communications Director, Tom Lucas, and ordered by Christian Drobnyk, UKTV’s Director of Entertainment, alongside Paul Moreton, Watch’s Channel Head, Aardman Animations and Red Bee Media are collaborating to produce 4 x 10 second animated scenarios – entitled “alien”, “sofa”, “bloopers” and “movie” – as well as a series of generic BOPs (beginning of parts), EOPs (end of parts), blips and blipverts. The new work will go live on Watch on Friday 10th April alongside a new channel end line of “See it. Love it. Share it.” and the re-versioned live-action idents originally produced by Red Bee Media.

UKTV’s Tom Lucas, says, ““Our new identity for Watch has been well-received by viewers who see it as distinctive and original. We're now keen to inject more personality into this populist brand and Aardman's animations do the job perfectly - they're well-crafted, witty and surprisingly human.”

UKTV’s Paul Moreton adds, “Our research clearly identified that Watch viewers love coming together and sharing their TV experience. These brilliant new idents and our finessed end line of “See it. Love it. Share it.” really tap into that insight.”

Aardman director, Darren Dubicki, comments, “Given that we read an ingrained amount of personality and emotion through the eyes, we soon discovered that breathing life into this character was going to be simple, fun and successful. As soon as we gave Blinky some movement, he immediately displayed great energy and charm, which contrasts with the Watch logo which we kept inanimate - the letters became a bunch of props for Blinky to play with, relate to, annoy, and settle in with. These ident scenarios gave the character plenty of scope for exhibiting his full personality, and the simple ideas made the visuals quite elegant.”

In “alien”, an anxious-looking Blinky is beamed up off-screen in a tractor beam; in “sofa” we see Blinky trying to find a comfy place to sit and he finally finds his place at the end of the Watch letters; “bloopers” features a clapper board and numerous cuts, suggesting Blinky keeps making mistakes; and “movie” sees Blinky jostling past the letters to get to his seat at the end of the Watch letters, as if settling down to enjoy a movie together.

Since launching on 7th October, Watch has grown from a standing start to become the 13th largest channel in Pay TV, beating BBC3, More4, ITV4, Virgin One, FX, Discovery and all the MTV branded channels combined. Detailed qualitative audience research has identified that Watch viewers love coming together as a family to share their viewing experience, an insight that has informed the new end line for Watch: “See it. Love it. Share it.”. Red Bee Media’s live action idents have also been re-versioned to reflect this insight, so from Friday 10th April will all feature upbeat music tracks and new footage from the original shoots which focus more on togetherness and sharing, before ending on the Watch eye ball which has now been animated to blink – thus complementing the aforementioned Aardman work.

For more information, please contact:-
Rebecca Edwards, Senior Corporate Communications Manager, UKTV
020 7299 6261 / 07974 985 453
Rebecca.edwards@uktv.co.uk

Jenny Wilding, Aardman Animations Ltd
0117 984 8485
Jenny.Wilding@aardman.com

Anna Harding, Sales & PR Coordinator, Aardman Animations Ltd
0117 984 8919
Anna.Harding@aardman.com