UKTV unveils new masterbrand to unite its streaming and linear offer
The broadcaster’s CMO Penny Brough exclusively tells Marketing Week the inside story about why it felt the need to make the change to U, the research that underpinned it and what it hopes it will achieve.
UKTV is overhauling its brand architecture and is set to launch its new masterbrand, U, next summer.
The broadcaster will transition its current streaming service UKTV Play to U and its family of free-to-air channels will become U&Dave, U&Drama, U&Yesterday and U&W. Its CMO Penny Brough hopes the change will “strengthen” the links between its channels and make the broadcaster digital-led and “fit for the future”.
Speaking exclusively to Marketing Week, Brough explains how upon joining UKTV in September 2022 she became aware that despite owning “strong linear brands” there was a lack of awareness among the public of how the wider family of brands connected due to the lack of a strong masterbrand. “It becomes very difficult to move viewers across the channel network,” she explains. “But, more importantly, it is quite hard to move them from channel to VOD [video-on-demand] player because the naming convention was disconnected and disjointed.”
