His Blog: The Purposes Of Idents (Sue) LO1

The purposes of Idents

“The ‘ident’ is the first clear message to the viewer of what a channel stands for”(Quoted from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42WejuBMEgY&feature=player_embedded).

An ident is a form of identification (Thus the name) in which the consuming audience can then use to quickly and clearly tell who the product belongs to or what the ident represents. They can come in all kinds of forms, a logo being the clearest example of an ident. These idents can range from the products use of colour to the use of dialogue (maybe being a catch-phrase) or even the use of sound and movement.

An ident is what makes the show who they are and without it, even if the show was loved by many it would be near to impossible to track down and keep up to date with/recommend through word of mouth. This would result in poor marketing and little amount of people sharing or having much of a role to the success of a series or show. So in bringing in the use of idents the company/product aims to make their product stand out and be accessible through memory and word of mouth marketing as well as through the use of adverts.

Idents over the years have become a much harder act to pull off as the typical view on idents is that people will tend to go with the more trusted companies with longer track records and more recognisable names, logos etc. For example a super market sells hundreds of thousands of products, but still have name brands with longer track histories that are easier to sell due to their consumer’s trust. However if the package didn’t have the company’s ident the product would appear useless, boring and not have interest to the buyer. This is the same affect with video as well as music. The company gains trust by the use of their ident through its constant reminder and reference. This can be seen between most television shows as well as radio (The BBC for example).

Between shows the BBC will have an announcer who will immediately start making reference and reminder to olds episodes, series or shows as well as their up and coming, brand new and other episodes included on the channel. This simply keeps the audience they’re distributing to actively updated in whatever shows they have to offer, this keeps them interested and tuned into the channels before the current show ends and before the adverts or following show begin. As if it wasn’t enough for some, the show then plays adverts with the same purpose and with high use of idents, which are then followed more commonly by the channels ident.

BBC One ident

By constantly enlightening the audience on what the show is represented by and what shows, time and dates they have their shows on, the audience arguably become target to a form of brainwash in which they can literally remember at least a tune if not the visual imagery they’ve seen without even knowing or thinking to hard which plays in high advantage to the companies broadcasting their channel.

Companies know that an audience isn’t going to just fall into their laps so in order to boost their fan base and view counts per hour the use of these idents are thrown in because an audience just is NOT going to choose someone who they don’t remember or isn’t as trusted as their usual home of viewing.

The identity has to be unique which is why the companies spend so much time in ensuring it’s uncommon features are noticed often more commonly allowing these idents to take a weird and abstract form but never too much for the audience to feel confused or put off of the advert/ident and company responsible.

Nickelodeon ident

Another approach to an ident can be a more comedic/humorous take on the audience’s requirements to smile, laugh and joke to enjoy themselves and be in a happier mood. When a product or animation has the ability to bring a smile on your face regardless of what a person may be going through it’s automatically and almost instantaneously a good look and a good reaction to be responsible for. This almost ultimately promises and makes it near certain that the viewer has enjoyed that part of the ident.

The moonwalking Pony (3 Advert's use of humorous ident)

Idents like the moon walking pony had gone as far as to people even making their own, making the horse a typical ident not because of it’s wide spread continuity and consistency but simply because of it’s viral audience reaction and how credited and relevant it became even on social networking sites like twitter and the company’s own web-page designed for people to go along to creating their own one. Things like this made this pony an ident because near to everybody had seen, enjoyed or at least heard of this one character. The advert’s ident brought along a unique and never before seen take on advertisement (Arguably) which made it both a brilliant way to boost the advert’s product as well as the overall traffic on it’s websites as well as other websites (mainly social networking) and any buying or selling which may take place after that advert would have been raised due to the number of new potential customers. Making this a successful use of idents as it was highly recognizable and enjoyed.

From the continuity announcers role to ensure the audience stays locked into the channel to the channel design all include idents; this makes idents literally everywhere where ever you look meaning companies are spending hard amounts to make and maintain their ident success making it nearly as important as the channel itself.

Ident examples: