Oneness on lockdown - new idents for BBC One

I've just been doing a little thinking about the current BBC One identity.

Unlike many on here, I don't despise the idents. It's the go-to hilarious* punchline on TV Forum, but I think there's some potential in here and with a few changes could actually be rather a nice campaign, thoughts that I have shared before.

I actually really like the work of Martin Parr. If you're not familiar with his stuff, go and have a look – he's very good at what he does. It perhaps isn't to your taste, but he's well-regarded and certainly one of the greats.

I got to comparing his efforts to the ITV Creates campaign, one which – though maybe not popular in every execution – certainly seems to have gone down well here in terms of concept and scope. I kind of wondered if one of the biggest downfalls of the current BBC One idents is that they don't actually play on Martin Parr's name at all. I don't even know if he's really been mentioned outside of press releases and, maybe, the One Show. It's a bit like getting Leonardo Da Vinci to paint you a business card and only mentioning it one day as an afterthought. True, good work should be good work regardless of who has done it, but what's the harm in shouting about it? People might just get it a little more.

Indeed, the concept of capturing everyday life in the UK is a good one I reckon. For all the jibes about 'couldn't they get him a tripod' – and though I think the idea of editing shots from other angles has some merit – that isn't the style of Martin Parr. Which got me thinking, what would the campaign look like if other photographers/videographers had been involved? Alongside on-screen text saying 'bingo players in Cornwall', how would the campaign play out with 'captured by Martin Parr' or something, and other names, on screen?

Just a few thoughts.



*usually anything but funny

Why do channel idents have to be campaigns these days?

Hear, hear! BBC Two’s curve is again the perfect example of how a simple concept executed well can be so much more effective than an overly thought out “campaign” where the end product of the actual ident is probably only a small part of the overall thinking.

With respect, I think that’s semantics. It’s just a way for me to describe the assets that make up the identity, such as the idents, end boards, logo and so on. I don’t think it would be used for the old fashioned mechanical idents, sure, but you could well use it for the current (very nice) BBC Two identity. So, while I understand what you’re saying it wasn’t really the point I was trying to make.

For me, the issue was not the fact that they didn’t focus on them being Martin Parr’s work, it was more the fact that as a photographer the idents didn’t play to his strengths. He is well known for his excellent photographic portrayals of life in the UK and captures (generally unstaged) moments wonderfully. For me the execution of the oneness idents was the issue; simply filming people in the way that a photograph would be taken does not make for an interesting insight into people’s lives nor does it create an engaging Ident to brand the channel.
For me, I would have taken the theme of Martin Parr photographing the British public and gone with an approach used by STV years back of montages of photos of the scene accompanied by music finalising with an animation of the logo on a graphic based background.

I wasn't making a reference to you in any way, rather that some tv ident packages are glorified campaigns these days.

Essentially, Marketing have a heavy hand in presentation since that's where a lot of the budget comes from in campaigns.

I haven’t watched BBC ONE in a while but having seen the 8pm junction on BBC TWO this evening there was a promo for BBC ONE with what looked like a new end board with a new patterned background and different layout than normal. I wonder if this was just a BBC NI thing or if some new little refreshes are being phased in?

That was just the Spotlight trail, the background of the end board is from the programme title sequence.

Ahh. I thought they had updated the end boards to give a bit of personality to them install of being plain red. Ah well!

Think it's a first for this to be used as a still ECP slide after tonight's One Show. Usually it's for Cross-Channel promo.

Yep, BBC1 presentation needs a revamp. That might scrape a 2 in the gallery.