Channeling Our Creative Side

Don’t change that dial. The PBS station in our market has a new name and look but offers the same “Seriously Good TV.”

KPTS Channel 8 has changed its name to PBS Kansas Public Television. The move puts the channel under the national umbrella of PBS brands. Greteman Group was tapped to create a campaign geared toward a regional audience and to update the brand.

Public television is for the common good, using the airwaves to offer television that aims to inform, educate, and entertain. It is free TV with prestige programming. But it is hardly stodgy.

Our challenge was to remind viewers of the station’s depth of programming — kids shows, comedy, cultural performances, imports, and local shows that highlight community issues and people — in a few words. We cheated a little.

“Seriously Good TV” is a campaign line with legs. Flexible ones. The full line speaks broadly to the quality that the station offers across its schedule. When you break it down and simply apply “seriously” before other words, it extends the theme and gets more specific. PBS, for example, is “Seriously Smart,” or “Seriously Local,” or “Seriously British,” or “Seriously Educational.” You get the idea. It’s a fill in the blank. Collectively, they tell the story. Individually, the lines serve as focused headlines for billboards, social media graphics, and other targeted messaging.

Our designers created a vibrant look for the campaign by employing bold graphics that help tell the story. The illustrations, using the PBS brand palette, create a colorful contrast to the live footage and programming photo stills that will appear alongside them. Those elements were then put in motion in a video, creating a demo for the client to see how the campaign could work in station IDs and on-air promos. In all, we created a toolkit of assets to turn over to their internal marketing team to execute, including billboards, social media visuals, graphics standards, and motion graphics video content.

The client praised our work in an email. Subject line: “Wow!”

“Even in the short time we’ve spent with it, I am excited for the possibility it will give the station,” it read. “Your team has done it again with your work for KPTS. Thank you and your staff for another outstanding campaign. You’ve done so many, but this is another feather in your caps.”

That’s good feedback from anyone, and especially from an old friend. It was a pleasure to work on a campaign for the station that taught many of us at the agency our ABCs. From A-Z, it is a campaign that says local PBS is free, fun, and for everyone. Seriously.