editorlisa

A master class on branding.

Positioning MTV: Music Television

Throughout most of the 80s, our original, in-house, MTV creative team had established all the original vocabulary (written and visual) for the channel. In April 1983, Alan and I resigned and set up Fred/Alan as the media’s first “branding” consultancy and advertising agency. Bob Pittman was a smart and shrewd competitor; he signed us right back up. MTV Networks was our first client.

But, by 1987 we were being driven insane by a raft of new employees who thought they had the secrets of MTV in their heads, and kept telling us how to “improve” our work for them. The problem was, each and every one of them had a different version of what was right. Alan and I suggested we write up the definitive (yeah, right) “positioning” document so we were all singing from the same (that is, ours) hymn sheet.

Results: “MTV vs. Normal TV” became the common thinking around the network for quite a while and became an ad campaign: 

“TV or MTV?”

We wanted to keep “I Want My MTV” (which we hadn’t written, but had developed as network executives). But marketing executives of the 1980s were already infected with the virus they have today. “Why stick with something that works? We want to put our own ideas out there. We need something new!”

[via emilgh]