The UK factual market is saturated by ‘blue chip’ natural history content, so the challenge of this refresh, was to create a destination where animals were the heroes of the channel, but at the same time it didn’t become a self-indulgent nature shoot, or a kid’s channel.

The objective was to create a general entertainment ‘animal channel’ rather than the traditional interpretation of ‘factual’.

Using the client insight ‘surprisingly human attributes’ we looked a various different styles and media – we decided very early on to avoid live action; a channel that loves animals shouldn’t seek to exploit them. But, we wanted to create various environments to showcase different animals and their surprisingly human behaviours – so came up with the idea of our self-contained Animal Planets. We explored various different styles including claymation, puppets, modeling and most notably origami, which led to the final 3D graphic route.

Obviously this rebrand was combined with new programming, stunts and marketing activity – so can’t claim all the credit, but since the launch, the channel has moved from decline to growth for the first time since 2009, with key slots performing 22% higher than last year. More women (and kids) are watching in daytime, and more younger ABC1 men are coming in to the 9pm and 10pm premiere slots. Our internal brand-tracker shows that over 90% of viewers prefer the new look and agree with the statement ‘Animal Planet is one of my favourite channels’.