CLIENT
The only all-comedy network, currently seen in more than 98 million homes nationwide and airs award-winning programming, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, South Park and Tosh.0.
BRIEF
Comedy Central needed a branding solution that more firmly attached the network to their programming while reaching a younger audience. We began with the insights that (1) comedy is inherently social, and (2) the content needed to travel in a branded way across platforms. On a basic branding level, the challenges revolved around issues of scale and transportability that the logo and branding needed to address. Because a network is a brand that houses other brands — shows, content, personalities — we needed to create a system that celebrated the rich content (the programming) without abandoning the providers (the network).
APPROACH
Our logo solution was an autonomous, self-aware mark: the “Comedymark.” It’s a play on the copyright symbol, which fit perfectly as the ultimate satirical, irreverent wink to a corporate, “owned” world. It behaves as a bigger part of the network. It’s interactive. It “tags” content. It allows Comedy Central to sanction their funny content by tagging it and it frees them from trying to make their own logo compete to be funny. The mark creates immediate commentary and punctuation on anything and everything. It contextualizes and displaces. It gives Comedy Central ownership of its content everywhere and anywhere.
