Life Unfiltered for W

UKTV today unveiled a new on and off-air identity for its popular entertainment channel W.

Coinciding with W launching free-to-air, the channel’s new look and feel positions it as the home of genuine human moments, leading with the tagline, “Life Unfiltered”.

W’s Head of Marketing, Nick Gilmer:

“W prides itself on shining a light on the real lives and experiences of our audience. With an unrivalled line-up of popular talent W brings to life the stories of Britain’s everyday heroes through the best real-life factual shows on TV. The new branding perfectly captures what it is to live Life Unfiltered. W’s new identity will enable new and existing viewers to immediately understand the channel’s content offering and the emotional response they will feel when they watch W and its shows on TV or on UKTV Play.”

In-house agency, UKTV Creative, designed, developed and delivered all 200 assets for the channel rebrand over seven months; from the full on-air packaging to the suite of eight bespoke channel idents. Testing was crucial to the creative process to ensure that the new branding resonated positively and connected with new and existing W viewers on an emotional level.

Framing W’s content, the brand-new idents have been created to resonate with the channel’s core female-skewing target audience aged 25-44, featuring relatable human moments that embody the Life Unfiltered mantra.

UKTV’s Head of Design, Peter Allinson:

“UKTV Creative is proud to have been part of the process of sharpening W’s positioning and refreshing its on-air identity. The resulting suite of assets truly embody a down-to-earth and unfiltered feel, that celebrate W’s inspiring programming and real-life moments in all their imperfect and unique glory.”

The new W logo works as a bold stand-alone mark, and also as a simple framing device, allowing imagery and footage to be shown through the W lens, serving as a window into real life. The new W colour palette is vibrant and full of life, with hero colour Burnt Sienna lending a distinctive human quality to assets, with organic shades that are often found in nature. Real-world textures also play an important role, with paper, paint and natural wall textures creating a tactile look and feel throughout the branded assets.

Sustainability is one of the core pillars of UKTV’s business, so every element of the creative process was completed with sustainability in mind. All creative work was executed in-house with deliveries completed via FTP, ensuring no hard drives or couriers were used. The new channel idents and stings were sourced by Stalkr, a world leader in creative sourcing and licensing content, which saved on the transport, resources, waste and power typically needed for film shoots.

The W brand refresh coincides with the channel’s free-to-air launch on Monday 28th March in Freeview slot 25, and on direct-to-consumer video on demand service UKTV Play. Viewers will have access to a plethora of hit UKTV Originals for free, including brand new upcoming shows Alex Jones: Making Babies, Rochelle Humes: Interior Designer in the Making, Nurses on the Ward and Dating With My Mates, alongside new series of returning favourites Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over, MasterChef USA, Australia and Canada, and Inside the Ambulance. Many viewers will also have the chance to see award-winning Emma Willis: Delivering Babies and Myleene Klass’ acclaimed documentary Myleene Klass: Miscarriage and Me for the first time.

W’s channel director, Adam Collings:

“W’s new branding perfectly communicates our rich mix of shows, offering moments of unfiltered joy, tears and laughter. By taking the channel free-to-air we are thrilled that even more viewers will have the opportunity to enjoy W’s powerful content and discover a channel they’ll want to spend time with.”