Berlin-based design and production company METAphrenie has completed an evolutionary on-air rebranding of Qatari television sports channel Al Dawri & Al Kass.
Al Dawri & Al Kass, which launched on June 6, 2006 in anticipation of the Asian Games, which were held that year in Doha, approached the German production house in early 2007.
“They launched very quickly and the branding they had at the time was done in a bit of a rush,” Andrea Dionisio, METAphrenie’s creative director and partner, tells Communicate. “They wanted time to develop something much more malleable and stronger.”
One aspect of the channel that the rebranding campaign tackled was its logo, which featured a corner on the upper right hand side whose meaning was unclear. “They wanted part of the branding to incorporate some kind of an explanation of that,” says Dionisio. The company implemented a zooming animation that indicated the corner was supposed to represent the corner of a playing field.
The purpose was to engage viewers with the rebranding process by getting them to understand it. “It’s not something that just sort of happens and the viewers don’t notice,” he says. It’s something that’s so brand-centric that viewers should understand what’s happening.”
In addition, METAphrenie wanted the channel’s multi-colored player characters to engage in a game of their own, necessitating motion capture in 3D, which the production house shot in Los Angeles. The sports footage obtained was incorporated into the channel’s rebranding campaign.
The development from concept to completion took six months to finish, says Dionisio. The end result included several sport identities, openers for sports news telecasts, informational graphics and promotional systems.
But it doesn’t end there. “We also gave them a large toolkit of elements they could repurpose and start creating their own things in-house, so that they weren’t always dependent on us to create everything,” says Dionisio.
The process allows for a certain level of autonomy for the TV station without alienating the production house. As a continuation of the collaboration between the two entities, METAphrenie delivered recently additional promotional spots that thematically correspond to an ongoing local competition in Qatar.
The campaign has left the production house, which did a similar overhaul campaign previously for Al Jazeera Sports in Qatar, eager to work with more regional clients.
“One of the great things about a lot of the Middle Eastern clients is that they have a lot of trust in what you do, and so creatively they give you a lot of room to work and develop ideas,” says Dionisio, whereas in Europe, “clients have a stricter sense of what they want and what they don’t want.”
Which does not mean the client is not involved in the process. One aspect of Al Dawry and Al Kass channel’s involvement was “making sure that style-wise and taste-wise we stayed on point,” he says, which allowed the agency to cater to a foreign audience. “They understand the Middle Eastern market. We’re brought in more on the creative and aesthetic front to interpret that information and find an image for it.” The channel often provided feedback on developments.
The agency is working on pitches and proposals for other undisclosed Middle Eastern clients, and Dionisio cites the positive response to the agency’s work as an impetus for regional expansion. “We’re considering maybe opening a satellite office in the region,” he says. “The great work experience we’ve had so far with the Middle East is something we’d like to maintain and expand upon.”
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