Success and Failures of idents

Success and Failures of idents

Idents are small adverts that are trying to market the channel. Each ident has opportunities and limitations. The opportunities are mostly advantages and allow you to brand your channel and create a corporate identity and tone for your channel. Most idents would normally have text-based information about the channel and/ or the programs there would be shown. Most of them try to appeal to a target audience, which would encourage brand loyalty. However with the opportunity there would be some limitations to their idents. These would include things like the typography – where you have to think about the font size and they way that the things are written. The aspect ration is also a limitation because you would have to think if the things shown would be on a big screen or a small one. This can also relate to the resolution because that would also depend on the device that is showing an iPod or a laptop. One other main limitation would be the colours that are shown – you would have to make sure it would be shown clearly on any device.

To be able to make a successful ident it has to interact with the viewers, the balance of the composition is done to a good standard; it has visual and sound information. The ident has to be directly appealing to the target audience e.g the music, images and language and most of all it is visually entertaining and interesting.

By having these limitations and opportunity it means that there would be some successful and unsuccessful idents. One of the first examples of an ident I would be talking about would be UKTV GOLD’S ident from 1992 and 2004. The ident from 2004 is more efficient than 1993 because of the aspects and settings that are used to make it. The 2004 ident is more interesting and more colourful than the old one. Its tempo is thought of well because it matches the speed of the animation and animations that are shown. It is trying to show that it’s a funny channel and that you can lie down and relax whilst watching it. They do this by trying to appeal to the target audience and the everyday person. They accomplish this by having real life objects and have a line that moves that connects everything together to make it seem like everything is linked and one making it seem like if you need or want anything they may have it. The use of their music and the “brand” of the channel are also showing that they are better than any channel and more important than what you have to do. Having their ident as a animation and not having it in the real world is trying to show that they are taking you somewhere else that is far away that you would want to be at.

However with the success of this ident there was an unsuccessful ident- this ident was the 2004 ident. I found this ident really boring and dull because there wasn’t enough use colour and the colours used were very dull and unappealing. The ident was also very pixelated and not very clear in the message that they were trying to show. Their target audience was unclear as well because their message was unclear in what they were trying to perceive. The ident also doesn’t have any information as to the programs that are going to be shown next which could be useful to the users so they are able to know the next program that are going to be shown.  The music to the ident is very boring and appealing to any generation because its quiet slow and doesn’t get upbeat in anyway. The setting of the ident is quiet boring even though they are trying to make it realistic and more in common to the modern person. I also noticed that in the ident the music was not to a very high standard and was kind of jumping and was not made to the best standard- this can make the audience unable to watch because of the poor quality of the ident.

Another ident that I analysed was the Dave ident that was made in 2013 and another one that was made in 2009. I also examined how it carries itself as a channel. The success of Dave channel may be because they did the correct research in order to get and to know what their target audience would like and would be interested in. This would include things like making the theme of ident imaginative and creative of having it on a boat- which makes it seem like it can take you to another place in the room that you are in. The use of the teenagers makes it seem like it’s trying to target at the younger audience and trying to interact with them. Having the circus music makes it fun and entertaining to watch and to dance to. The teenagers dresses up in a costume on a sunny day- and the fact that they are dressed like pirates makes it relaxing and making them dress up suggest that it’s fun and imaginative.

On the other hand when there are successes to ident there would be unsuccessful ones too. The Dave ident that was made in 2013 seems boring and uninteresting to watch – considering that fact that it was made recently and would be able to appeal to the audience. It also has no message or information about the upcoming program or anything to do with the channel. The ident also exhibits random things in it – however the alarm is also to show the everyday person.  The use of saying ‘ the breakfast club ‘ then having the alarm is almost trying to say they should stop what they are doing to watch the channel.