ABOUT

Re-introducing the world to ITV and their new streaming platform ITVX

Our challenge was to build a strong and memorable sonic strategy for ITV that newly positioned the broadcaster squarely as a leader in the digital streaming space, including devising a sonic identity for their brand-new free digital streaming service ITVX.


Getting to Work
The first step of our process is always to deeply understand the client and distil their intent - why the change? With 65 years of heritage, ITV is truly an iconic and beloved brand yet one that hadn’t undertaken an audio rebrand on this scale before.

Offering clients a unique perspective and insight into the potency of sound in a branding capacity, is arguably why an audio partner gets the gig. We believe it’s our first priority to help our clients articulate their needs in whichever way they feel most comfortable - not one we dictate. It’s then our job to turn those thoughts into a sonic language.

Using our proprietary eight point programme, we worked closely with DixonBaxi and cross departmentally with teams at ITV through a series of curated workshops, questionnaires and interviews designed to audit core brand values, positioning, competitive landscape, objectives, touchpoint suitability, sonic opportunities and futureproofing.

"The Futz Butler have been a pleasure to work with from day one. They are extremely collaborative, taking time to gather feedback and research from our team before even starting, making everyone feel part of the journey. The work they produced, in every round, was exciting, challenging and original - taking us out of our comfort zone whilst still hitting the brief and expressing the brand. How they work, the process and the original way they approach the work is not only fascinating, but effective. It’s been a joy."

Tony Pipes, Executive Creative Director, ITV Creative

By collating and refining variances in ideology for the project before anything is actually created and ensuring everyone is heard delivers maximum buy-in of the impending direction at the earliest opportunity - essential with large brands of this nature with multi-stakeholder sign-offs.

Our approach would clearly need to balance retaining what was intrinsic to the brand whilst breaking new ground - juggling innovation with a populist accessibility that ITV’s core demographic has come to expect.

We believe, it's not enough for it to simply sound good - there must be an idea - a thread, that any execution of that idea manifests. Having fathered several overarching concepts, the next stage is to devise a Sonic Palette - the building blocks of which all compositions are developed out from.

This strong link between concept, building blocks and final piece means each and every asset not only sounds stunning, but has substance necessary for the longer term survival of a brand audio identity, mitigating the risk of it feeling disposable or dating quickly.

We experimented with literally hundreds of creative thought starters.

What would it sound like if we recorded hundreds of everyday people individually singing into their iPhones and created a virtual choir instrument - a choir of the people, from the results?

What would it sound like if we scratched an X (from ITVX) into the run out groove of a piece of vinyl and sampled the sound as a rhythm?

Could we use the sound of ambience field-recorded outside the ITV studios on the southbank as an interesting audio trigger for other instruments?

What would happen if we paid a nod to the birth of streaming (the humble video rental store) and ‘printed’ some musical ideas through a custom modded 1980s VHS player, using the lofi VHS tape akin to studio magnetic audio tape?

These creative devices and countless others, all helped us engender a truly unique Sonic palette - 100% ownable to the ITV brand, unavailable or mimicable anywhere else.


We presented five conceptual directions to launch the new ITVX streaming service to client from our studios in Holborn.

Concepts ranged from The Heritage Chord - upcycling the first six notes of the first sound ever broadcast on ITV on 22nd September 1955, and stacking them on top of each other played all at once to produce a rich open chord that can be interpreted in a number of ways.

Or Strands - drawing on the idea of accents and dialects. By recording the same catchy four note melody on twenty different pianos all around the country - all played at a range of different tempos (representing the subtleties of dialects that form the eclectic tapestry of Great Britain) we formed a cascading phase shifting melody unlike any audio mnemonic currently in use.

The final route chosen for the ITVX mnemonic - called Burst, closely sonically articulated the Spark, Amplify and Discover story of the visual animation created by DixonBaxi.

Using sounds such as sugar dropped on a balloon, a cinematic booj (bass downbender) and synths processed heavily through outboard guitar pedals, the end mnemonic sounds open, engaging and exciting, setting up the user’s delve into the seemingly endless world of streaming options as the platform moves from just 3,000 hours (ITV Hub) to over 10,000 on the new ITVX platform.


Reception
Feedback from both public and client has been resoundingly glowing. Our distinctly unorthodox approach was unquestionably a departure from the usual workflows the client had been used to, but was always there to serve their needs and goals - not ours.

"We hadn’t worked with The Futz Butler before but I’m so glad we did. What has been incredibly refreshing is to experience The Futz Butler's unique, honest and often bespoke approach." Matthew Caldwell, Lead Designer, DixonBaxi

The results have been nothing short of astounding:

- Streaming figures up 138%
- 1bn streams inside first 4 months
- In March 2023, ITV experienced it's best ever streaming figures with 282 million streams, up by more than 100 million from 2022.
- ITVX has overtaken Disney+ and Channel4 as the UK's 4th most considered streaming service.
- ITVX’s brand awareness score has increased from 77.7 to 81.5. And their BrandIndex score has jumped 47.4%, from 13.5 to 19.9 (source: YouGov's BrandIndex)