This year has marked a new era for the UK's number one TV platform. Launched last month, Freeview Play is the biggest development in the brand's history and to celebrate its arrival we've unveiled our biggest ever advertising campaign, Set Yourself Free.
Following Freeview's rebrand earlier this year, coupled with the launch of Freeview Play, we wanted this ad to make a real impact; we wanted the public to sit-up and listen and re-evaluate the most loved TV brand in the country. We are offering UK viewers the ability to access catch-up television subscription-free via one unified platform. It is a big step forward for free-to-air television and we believe that it is set to become the new normal way to watch TV.
The new advert presents the viewer with a dystopian world set to a reworking of I Dreamed a Dream. It focuses on a young Hero TV, at odds with all the other TVs around him, and a girl with her dog who long for a better, easier way to watch TV. As the Freeview Play Hero TV escapes the dystopian world, the viewer follows his journey and realises that Freeview Play offers a whole new world of TV content. The multifaceted nature of the campaign - from the teaser ad which saw our much loved cat and budgie interrupted, to the full narrative advert, to the product ads which highlight the benefits of the platform - not only educates viewers about the Freeview Play product, but demonstrates the journey of the brand itself. Just as we took the nation from analogue to digital, so we are now helping the UK population to move from digital into the connected world.
We hope our campaign challenges category norms to show UK viewers that there is a better, savvier way to watch TV through a visually striking and compelling narrative. Freeview Play will provide viewers with the vast majority of the content that they want, but it can easily be topped up with one of the growing number of "pay as you go" offerings if that's what they choose.
Yet, whilst this advert is an exciting challenge to today's norms, it is as much a renewed strengthening of the pillars that the Freeview brand has built itself on from its very beginnings: a subscription-free service that gives viewers the freedom to choose the TV service that best meets their needs.
Of course, with Freeview Play, choosing subscription free TV is now becoming a positive and active choice, rather than it just being "in your television". We've received some fantastic feedback on the advert and hope that this campaign not only shows UK consumers that there is a better and savvier way to enjoy the great content that they love, but that it highlights how you really can "Set Yourself Free" with Freeview Play.