Kemistry set for TV branding experiment

Kemistry has been appointed to create onand off-air branding and naming for ‘Romania’s Channel Four’, in a project believed to be worth close to £500 000 in fees to the group.

The consultancy will present a logotype for the TV start-up, likely to be called National TV, next week. The channel is scheduled to launch in September and will broadcast from a state-of-the-art facility in Bucharest. It will also transmit via satellite.

At present, the country’s terrestrial broadcasting sector is rudimentary, despite two public service channels and three commercial stations. Cable and satellite operators are more numerous. Several foreign channels are also targeting the country, including HBO, and MTV plans on entering the market.

‘It’s an early-developing landscape – nothing like as sophisticated as in the UK,’ says Kemistry managing director Ricky Churchill. ‘So the opportunity is to create a station that’s forward-thinking, modern and progressive.’

According to Kemistry creative director Graham McCallum, the station will target a highly educated, 18to 45-year-old urban audience that is ‘positively critical’ of news and cultural output but conscious of boosting ‘national esteem’.

‘The positioning is probably between ITV and Channel 4,’ he says. ‘Romania’s a very poor country, [but] there’s an appetite for change. It’s moving forward big time [and is] joining the EU in 2007. We need to design a European [style] channel.’

Kemistry, which will retain a consultancy role with the channel post-launch, was approached around six weeks ago.

The client, Viriel Micula, a foodand-drink magnate keen to develop his media interests, is also believed to have sounded out Lambie-Nairn and a number of German design groups.