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It’s All Good: Three years of Three

Three years since TV3 became, simply, Three – we sat down with MediaWorks ECD Ant Farac to talk the channel’s latest campaign and how the brand has changed in the last three years.

In February 2017, the powers that be at MediaWorks decided a change was as good as a holiday and revamped the brand to better fit its place in the market, as the one-stop-shop for fun – crucially, young – content.

It was a big change. The ferns-and-panels logo of TV3 had been the same since 2003, and as chief content officer Andrew Szusterman said at the time, the “world the brand lives in has changed. It was no longer fit for purpose”.

But the rebrand was not without its share of backlash. Although called Three, the logo is spelt ‘+HR=E’ – a change that was too abstract for some. Some viewers questioned the use of maths symbols while one Twitter user called it the ‘mullet of TV logos’. However, whatever was said is a distant memory now. Three is Three, and MediaWorks ECD Ant Farac says it was always meant to be a brand that could evolve as the years go on.  

“The beauty of the graphic nature of the logo is that it provides a toolbox of things we have available to us, and it’s always felt like it’s in a process of change. Transforming itself each year is part of what Three is now,” he says. 

“We aren’t reactionary and it’s not that we want to position ourselves differently in the market [with current campaigns], it’s just the brand organically wants to change all the time and it’s free and easy to do that.”

The fact that the Three brand is free to grow within its branding is clear in it’s latest campaign, based around the tagline ‘All Good’.

The campaign came to life via a giant stage show screen with pulsing patterns and words, starring 24 of Three’s talent from across its news and current affairs and entertainment programming. The ad is backed by Labyrinth’s dance anthem ‘Express Yourself’. The graphic design of Three’s logo is present in the special effects in the ad, which utilises vibrant symbols, shapes and colours. 

It is built around the three pillars of the brand the team set out at the time of the revamp: design has to be vibrant, playful and inspiring.

“What we created originally enables us to move into different phases as people come and go. Our talent is paramount to the brand, they make us different and who we are and it’s about showcasing that.”

The latest campaign follows a similar model to the TVC that launched the rebrand back in 2017.

While the 2017 campaign had extravagant sets and costuming, the 2019 version does the complete opposite with all the stars dressed in white – a number of the costumes were custom-made to seamlessly fit the right tone for the ad. Farac says the team likes to think of the latest version as their ‘White Album’.

“Our talent all come from different places within the spectrum of genres we have at Three, and putting them together in white unifies them. Three is such a poppy, vibrant brand and in previous years we’ve been quite maximalist and an assault on the senses in a good way,” Farac says.

“This time it was more about them and making it feel like a really fun live event.”

The campaign rolled out on-air, digital, social, and outdoor in February.

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Caitlin Salter is a freelance writer who contributes to various publications at ICG Media.

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