Foxtel rebrands and officially launches Foxtel Now after conceding brand was seen as ‘aggressive’
Foxtel is attempting to reposition as a brand and content platform for everyone, “not just the privileged few”, with new logos, branding and the official launch of streaming service Foxtel Now.
Bye bye baby.
Bye bye bath water.
Strategic challenge: Be more like competitors. Fine. Be less differentiated. But don’t Bess DISTINCTIVE.
I would have thought at the very least there would be some recognition of existing memories and brand assets in the new brand. Sadly not.
Orange?
Fox / Telstra heritage?
21st Century Fox management?
Anything that might remind a punter of the decades of branded memories?
Abstract dots?
This will make it harder for people to recognise the brand and recall it. If it’s about being less distinctive, then they’ve succeeded. Poor strategy.
Check out my post on LinkedIn comparing the new foxtel logo to vivino: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6295471584182435840/
Rather get an all caps text than an all red one
I ditched Foxtel a couple of years ago for two reasons:
1. The price was ridiculous … I got better stuff on Netflix for 1/5 the price
2. Murdoch … never giving another cent to that parasite.
ditto
Better stuff on Netflix……..thats gold!!!! Thanks for the good laugh!
But Peter you’ve gone and deleted 19 channels and these are channels that a lot of people love while not reducing the price to match this reduction. Now if one want to watch BBC World News, CNN or CNBC you’re either forced to get a satellite dish bolted to your roof or go to the opposition like Fetch which I think a lot of people will do, a very poor decision with very little thought.
Kudos to Foxtel for lowering the bar to legally accessing popular HBO content, but this is till just another substandard streaming offering from Foxtel intentionally crippled to avoid cannibalising their ‘premium’ cable/satellite product.
While Stan and Netflix boast an extensive 1080p Full HD catalogue and a growing but admittedly niche collection of 4K Ultra HD content, we’re supposed to get excited about Foxtel’s 720p “HD lite” and the removal of several channels from the old Foxtel Play lineup?
Who signed this off???
This is what happens when you get an ad agency to do the branding
Maud=Monkeys
Yeah they might be spending $1.6bn in content but it’s not going to be the bulk of content for Foxtel Now…
I am the only one who sees this as phallic? Less masculine? I think not ?
At least it is horizontal. Wouldn’t want a cock-up would we.
That logo is really bad. The marque is terrible and the font is horrible. Whoever approved this is going to get fired in the morning.
Really?!? This sort of rubbish gives marketers a bad name. Based on this logic Netflix should be really struggling. What a load of branding BS. Seriously people fix the product, the price and service experience… then you might realise it’s got nothing to do with uppercase vs lowercase.
The logo looks like an arrow pointing down, then I don’t get the whole lower case font, going from one extreme to the other end of the spectrum makes no sense.
Haven’t the agencies learnt about this drastic shift in brand look that they don’t usually last anymore than 3 or 5 years?
Woolworths has lasted.
Yes, but that was done by a reputable agency. Who’s Maud? What have they ever done that is memorable?
So getting rid of 19 channels on Foxtel Play (As of yesterday), changing the name to “Foxtel Now” , yet charging the same price ?? Is some sort of make over ??? Smoke and mirrors, Smoke and mirrors. Your paying the same price with less channels. What Great Change???
More like trying to play catch up in tech/consumer choice to it’s competition.
The day before yesterday’s product
Only the technically and Intellectually challenged would even be interested in Foxtel
It’s in a death spiral – good bye ….. and take Citizen Murdoch with you
Hilarious! Still charging way too much for delivering way too little and, as always, you’re way too late! And as if we’re suddenly going to find you less aggresive, less arrogant and less elitist just because a chosen few indulged themselves in a fancy font party back at HQ – YOU’RE OWNED BY RUPERT MURDOCH, FOR GOD’S SAKE! (sorry, you’re right, that could have been a little less shouty, perhaps, maybe even lower case all round just to relieve some of the blunt force trauma people might continue to suffer in dealing with Foxtel!) Sheer hubris, nothing less – which, of course, we’ve come to expect throughout all these wearisome years. So, anyway, keep reimagining then, it’s all you’ve got left for those lonely days ahead.
Amazing. Here I was thinking all along that Foxtel was losing subscribers due to its high prices, poor customer service, inconvenient installation requirements, low picture quality and inability to choose what channels to purchase. Turns out I was mistaken and Foxtel are losing customers because of their aggressive logo, despite their main competitor also having a logo in all caps and a bright colour…
Despite this, I would actually sign up if I could just buy the sports package by itself. However, Foxtel seems to think the inconvenience of catering to customers like me is not worth the money I’d otherwise happily pay.
Yeah, that’ll fix it!
It was the branding! Thank god they changed the logo!
That’s why everyone was leaving FOXTEL in droves (oops… foxtel). Because it was masculine, shouty, and… retail aggressive… yeah!
Definitely not the ads every 4 minutes. Hour plus hold times on the phone. Lacklustre product and service offerings. No actual HD. Insane price difference. Lock-in contracts with crazy fees. Installation costs with crazy fees.
Yeah! Thank god the logo is now lowercase! Less shouty!
I live alone. Foxtel is my best friend. It’s my companion. It’s my entertainment. I don’t mind if the Foxtel logo looks a little different. As long as Foxtel is there when I get home tonight I am happy.
I like to laugh alone with salad.
You don’t make friends with salad!
It’s not the brand that’s aggressive it’s the business and ruthless culture. New small caps logo ain’t going to change that.
You missed the last part of the press release. It’s okay though I’ll summarise it:
“While our branding has changed, customers can be reassured that Foxtel will continue to offer the same over priced packages that they’re accustomed to. Treating our customers like idiots has been, and will continue to be, the cornerstone of our business. This is something we at Foxtel are incredibly proud of. We have also continued to reinvest in content and discovered new ways to separate programming across multiple channel packs so customers have the added flexibility of paying us more for less. “
I think Mumbrella and all its armchair experts bagged Stan when it launched too – name too weird, too abstract, too bogan, too Australian, too whatever. Settle experts. Breathe a little.
There are huge waves changing the broadcasting landscape. Transparency is abundant and slowly but surely the public are beginning to wake up to the fact that Murdoch owned and operated entities seem to be bullish, arrogant and not user friendly. This appears to be a global trend. The News Of The World had to be shut down. (Remember the phone hacking, including that of a murdered teenagers phone?). Fox News has had sexual predator, after sexual predator marched, (CEO and chief anchor man…), (reluctantly it would seem, because it took them long enough), however it has dented the business in ad revenue. Advertisers do not want to associate their brands with such despicable characters and operations. Lastly Foxtel, the 3rd party that wants to charge enormous amounts and make it ever so hard for you to access content in a ‘modern way’, (aka on any device, whenever you want to). I wont get started on the rest of the News / Fox related businesses.
Ultimately Fox / News Corp/Ltd (whatever they call themselves these days), is under attack by faster, more dynamic and far more user friendly businesses. Secondly, they are under attack by, it would seem, far more ethical and ‘nice’ businesses.
If any of the sentiment above is off course, wrong or spiteful, please sound me out. I often thinks it’s the elephant in the room when I read reporting about why a Murdoch entity is falling over. It seems to me that the years of smearing anything that perpetrates common sense and value to the user / the community / wider society, are coming back to bite these Murdoch businesses, hard. Arrogance and greed throughout any business will eventually lead to it’s demise – can this be the case with the Murdoch empire? Some might say yes? It’s the old staunch conservatism v progression argument and right now in broadcasting and publishing, if you are not progressively inventing, giving the user what they want you are out. User first = win. Murdoch entities seem to put $’s first. I would love to hear another side to this if I am barking up trees.
I feel dumber for reading this rationale – I am sure when it was being pitched it came with a side of lubricant.
Can we move away from the wank and just say – our logo needed a refresh?
And I don’t really buy it regardless. Foxtel built its proposition around male sport – rugby league, AFL, football/soccer, union, US sports (NFL, baseball) and programming like GoT, The Walking Dead, True Blood et al – typically targeted to the XY chromosome. Unless the channels build in more Morgan Fairfchild and Melissa Gilbert telemovies, re-runs of Charmed, Dynasty and the Aaron Spelling back catalogue, then I suspect it will continue to appeal to men, most of who, could care less about a less aggressive font.
this was the required repositioning that Mr Buckman needs to create his story and platform and move on to bigger things
When clients confuse “brand” with “business”, misguided rebrands like this happen.
“Our brand is losing share! We have a brand problem”.
“Well, let’s fix the brand… via a complete re-brand”.
Client isn’t addressing the real problem… and making yourself less easy-to-find/mentally available at this moment in time may prove to be a significant mistake.
If I was Netflix, Stan, Fetch, and even Amazon, I’d smell blood in the water…
When you use your all caps logo as a reason for the business not performing you must be clutching at straws.
I’m a long time Foxtel subscriber and what is important is value for money. In 2017 there are plenty of content options to fill the limited hours in a day I can consume media. When the value is gone so will be my subscription especially when it seems I continue to pay more money for the same or less content.
The logo made the “quite aggressive, quite arrogant, quite elitist”?!!!
A brand is what you make it. Foxtel’s business practices, pricing and marketing created the aggressive, arrogant & elitist brand image. The logo had sweet FA to do with it!
Pffft.
Foxtel isn’t for everyone; a lot of people would rather eat.
I am a Foxtel subscriber – but I still had to use a VPN to get the current season of The 100 on Fox8 – because they chose not to show it the same time as the US. This season has already finished – nice one Foxtel. How about instead of changing a logo and giving us HD streaming – which you should have done in the first place – help us to stop hurting you, by playing content when it is available – you are your own worst enemy. You want us to stop pirating and using VPN’s but you give us no choice.
I hope it works for you because I am not a Foxtel hater – but I do have a problem with you saying one thing and delivering something else.
seriuosly?? they pay Buckman all this money and what does he actually do? (Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy)
What. a. load. of. guano.
Bam. Pow. Zap
You’re fired agency.
Is it an upside down Southern Cross with the stars in the wrong position?
I subscribe to Foxtel Play. I’ve not received any communication from them on the change to Now and what it means to me or the cancellation of some channels. Last comms was 19th May suggesting programs to watch.
They should have redirected the time invested in branding chat and figured out how to best communicate these changes to existing and new customers.
I haven’t had one communication from Foxtel ever. Nothing on new boxes, services, x-sell, nothing. Couldn’t market for confefe
Check your account. You are probably opted out.
No. I’m opted in for everything. Never received a single communication in 8 years…
Those dot thingies are very 90s… Foxtel have missed the point. A rebrand isn’t going to fix an overpriced, shit product.
Excellent logo to answer a nightmare brief. A nightmare speech to answer an excellent logo!
Yeah, because the logo was what was stunting their growth and market share.
You have to give credit where it’s due, whoever the agency was that sold this one in could sell fridges to Eskimo’s.
My favourite, however, is: “Conceding that the brand’s previous logo with big block capital letters and burnt orange colouring was “almost like when someone sends you a text message all in capital letters”
Did anyone point out that Netlix’s logo is also in capital letters? Your logo isn’t the problem guys. THINK.
They’re even too scabby to offer a 1 month trial. The trial period is 2 weeks!!
I suspect a number of people will be called to account over this decision once the dust settles. Not only is it an appalling waste of money to rollout it also demonstrates no focus on the bigger issue of subscription numbers and customer dissatisfaction with what is one of the worst TV experiences in the industry – from hardware through to programming, digital services & apps.
It’s like someone thought customer expierence started with a new brand identity. How backward is that in this era?!
+1, indeed… smoke and mirrors isn’t going to fix their product
Such epic dribble from news Corp;
http://www.news.com.au/technol.....1b66282728
Who cares what it looks like. Service would be great. Don’t sign up with the Telstra/Foxtel deal. Absolute con
Foxtel: Just another company that doesn’t understand branding.
You have to be kidding with this rebrand. Way to ruin a brand. I hope you paid $10 to get that designed as that is the quality of the work here. Having a design background and having worked in the agency world for many years i find the last few major Australia companies to have done rebranding to be very weak and lacking in true creative vision.
Foxtel’s move to use lower case is so clichéd. I also find it very interesting that part of the drive for the change was to make the brand less masculine surely there are many other colours to choose from then salmon pink. What is with that icon/symbol ……
You can see how literal the creatives took the CEO statement of how the old brand was seen and just went opposite. Upper case to all lower case. Masculine and bold to Feminine light and pink!. Would of loved to have seen the hipster heavy focus group they got into to review this.
As you can tell I for one am not a fan. This is not a strong or unique brand. The colours used should only be seen a wall colour a mental hospital. The icon would fit better being used by game shop with a name that starts with be with a B.
Overall the changes to the brand have gone to far. Loose the icon and take the colours back to the silver and you may just be able to maintain some brand integrity with the new lower case font.
I’m surprised Ritson hasn’t labeled this mob clueless as well by not walking in the consumer shoes etc…like he did to media agencies. Oh that’s right, he’s on the News Limited payroll and guess who owns Foxtel.
Regardless of the reason yiu give fir removing channels from Foxtel Go/Play.. it’s only to firce those viewers to subscribe to your full service.
Fail for Foxtel – again.
I know I will be cancelling my foxtel subscription the day of the last GoT episode, and staying with Netflix and Stan.
Shame on you Foxtel.
Orange capitals are aggressive, arrogant, and elitist, but lower case in dotty pinkish red case is not?
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our typeface, but in ourselves.
Hello Foxtel Now – Goodbye channels!!!
Why am I suddenly unable to view Lifestyle You and Style as part of the entertainment package? These channels are suddenly locked since the launch of Foxtel Now. No explanation, no solution offered about how to access these channels. Time to reassess my subscription ?
It’s gone from looking like an entertainment brand to looking like a low end office supply company.
http://bpando.org/2015/10/05/b.....mpression/
Suggested tagline “Foxtel Now: Your money still goes to Murdoch”
Not a great bit of kerning. But the brand as a whole has legs to be interesting. Look forward to seeing how it progresses.