We knew straight away that Manhattan had a great story to tell, but we felt there was untapped potential for something much bigger bubbling away under the surface.

 So we worked with them to properly understand their audience – asking existing and potential customers what made the brand appeal to them and how they felt about the current state of the TV industry. And we complemented this by digging deep into the business itself – speaking to employees from across the team to understand why they worked for Manhattan and what they thought made the business special.

What we discovered provided us with a clear sense of where Manhattan TV’s brand should sit. While the rest of the TV industry is focused on complexity and a never-ending feature race – it’s not what Manhattan’s core audience of older TV viewers wanted or needed.

This audience  felt left behind by the constant noise and disruption that dominates the technology industry and yearned for something which met their needs. All they really wanted was their TVs to work for them, not the other way around. And so our brand proposition was born – that Manhattan TV will always work to give you The Simplest Way to Watch.

A sexy new strapline is one thing, but it’s nothing if it’s not brought to life through the rest of the brand. So we worked hand-in-hand with the team at Manhattan to apply the new brand positioning from top to bottom – helping them create a new brand identity and a  new website which presents a striking contrast with the rest of the TV industry. We didn’t just stop at giving the website a new lick of paint – we carried out a top-to-bottom review and refresh of the site’s contents to ensure it delivered exactly what a visitor would require – whether that was a new customer looking for the right box for them or an existing customer looking for to find their next favourite TV show.

We complemented this with the development of a fully integrated marketing strategy to bring the new brand to market and deepen Manhattan’s relationship with their target audience. This considered every channel at Manhattan’s disposal and ensured that they all played a part in the marketing jigsaw – from turning existing customers into potential advocates through a newsletter and Facebook campaign, through to acquiring a new audience through a tightly-targeted digital advertising campaign. And of course, we developed a PR and media strategy which focused on delivering two clear benefits for Manhattan – fame and backlinks.

It’s early days for the new approach, but we’re already creating some great content, building backlinks for Manhattan and finetuning our approach to customer acquisition through digital advertising. As for what’s next? Watch this space.

Simplicty isn’t stupid. In fact, it’s a compelling brand proposition and one which gives us all kinds of creative freedom to keep telling Manhattan TV’s brand story. And working in close collaboration with our clients makes it easy to tell the brand’s story consistently across every touchpoint with their customer.