The world’s largest international news broadcaster, BBC News, was a hugely complex entity.Although highly respected for the quality of its journalism, integrity and trustworthiness, BBC News faced significant challenges. In an increasingly multi-media universe, audience loyalty was no longer guaranteed. Thus the brand needed to work even harder for market share.The proliferation of 22 brands meant BBC News suffered from misattribution, with audiences often unaware they were actually viewing BBC News.The objective was to unify BBC News’ output – demonstrating greater coherence across the portfolio, enhancing their presence locally, regionally and globally.

As one of the UK’s most cherished and well-known brands, BBC News had strong brand equities that needed to be retained. These were identified as – the colour red, the globe, the audio ‘pips’ and the BBC News logo type and font.

We added distinctive visual expressions and additional elements to create a sense of personality across the spectrum of outputs and audiences. The new design succeeded in unifying the BBC News brand and conveying a sense of modernity. Importantly, this was achieved without compromising the BBC’s unique heritage and authority.

The unification of the identity for all the news programmes created an instant impact.

Additional research shows the brand struck a chord with audiences too.The majority of people actively like the branding.(Source: 3800 responses from BBC Pulse.)77% find new look “very appropriate” for the BBC.70% find new look ‘modern and up to date’.(Source: 1000 nationally representative people on UK omnibus survey.)