Bravo To Change Name In Football Promotion

The start of this year’s Football Italia series will see Flextech-owned Bravo embark upon an extensive marketing push, renaming itself “Bravissimo” and colouring its familiar branding with the green, white and red colours of Football Italia.

The broadcaster’s high-impact marketing campaign reflects the channel’s increasing sports entertainment output, and its ambition to become the nation’s leading men’s entertainment channel.

The glossy Italian campaign will run across TV, radio, print and online media, kicking off with an in-house produced 30-second TV commercial, premiering on Sky Sports tomorrow.

The creative theme of the TV campaign is “the language of football” with Italians passionately arguing about football in Italian, in romantic Italian settings, to operatic audio backgrounds. The campaign is fronted by host James Richardson, formerly presenter of Channel 4’s Gazetta Football Italia.

Coinciding with the TV campaign, 27 August will see Bravo running an interactive radio promotion on Talksport for 6 weeks. The promotion will involve Talksport interviewing authentic Italian café owners and restaurateurs, discussing their favourite Italian football heroes. Talksport listeners will be invited to guess who they are talking about to win game tickets.

Commenting on the promotion, Anna Felcey, marketing communications manager at Bravo said: “We are reviving everything that was great about Italian Football, James Richardson and Gazzetta, and demonstrating our commitment with a campaign which captures the passion and excitement of one of the most famous leagues in the world. Our goal is to position the channel as The Football Italia destination and give Bravo the permission to engage real football fans.”

The marketing campaign will echo the channel’s strategy to create “Talkabout TV” to change public perception of its output. The broadcaster is currently increasing investment in sports programming, factual entertainment, observational documentaries and comedy.

Earlier this week, American media giant Viacom became the latest broadcaster to show interest in Telewest’s Flextech television business, which is believed to be on the auction block ahead of the cable firm’s merger with rival ntl.

The company joined other possible bidders, including ITV, BSkyB, Discovery Communications and RTL Group ahead of a bid for the broadcaster, which could total more than £1 billion (see Viacom Preparing Bid For Flextech).

Bravo: 0870 043 4029 www.bravo.co.uk