Showcase introduced a new look and new slogan on Aug. 3.

‘It’s less of a relaunch and more of a consolidation of the brand that we have been working on for the last year,’ says Janet Eastwood, Showcase’s vp, marketing and communications, adding that ‘A lot of people watched our programs but they didn’t realize they were watching Showcase.’

Showcase’s primetime audience has grown 18% over the last year, according to AC Nielsen (viewers 2+, winter 1997 to winter 1998).

After one year on the air, Showcase’s initial slogan, ‘What the world is watching,’ went through the focus-group mill to reveal that a lot of viewers misunderstood that to mean that Showcase was a network that was carried around the world, says Eastwood.

The new slogan, ‘Television Without Borders,’ is ‘speaking to what is already working well on Showcase,’ Eastwood explains. The specialty net is well known for its programming such as the edgy prison drama Oz and airing indie flicks Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kalifornia.

‘For the last year, we had been trying to establish Showcase as a destination without making any particular statement about the network,’ Eastwood says. ‘We wanted to make sure before we came out with a new line on Showcase that it was something that was clearly understood and spoke directly to benefits that were viewer-driven benefits.

‘It isn’t a move to where we’re going to, it’s a consolidation of where we’ve come to on a programming front.’

The advertising

The national campaign will include tv, radio, outdoor media, and magazines such as TV Guide, urban weeklies and tv books, according to Eastwood.

The advertising campaign is a tongue-in-cheek ‘Am I As Hip As I Think I Am’ quiz. For example, one of the outdoor ads reads: ‘Think Cronenberg is a trendy German beer? You need Showcase.’

The tv and radio ads will be in multiple-choice format, rife with humor and quirky characters. One ad has a guy in an outdoor lounge chair, wearing a neck brace and large cast on his arm. While chomping on potato chips, he listens to the quiz. ‘De Palma is: a) Italian for `The Palm,’ b) How Brando says diploma or c) An acclaimed film director.’ He responds matter-of-factly, mid-chew, ‘I’m drawing a blank.’

‘The humor comes from the fact that the viewer, our target audience, is in on the joke and can appreciate the fact that [the spots] are talking about the kind of directors, titles, movies that they are familiar with and would want to be watching,’ Eastwood says.

Showcase’s overall target audience is 18-49 urban adults or ‘sophisticates,’ but can be broken down into two segments: 18-34 and 25-49.

In general, the 18-34s live downtown, are single, and are out in the evening, often going to movies and film festivals.

The 25-49 group is, for the most part, married and likely to have small children and is at home most evenings watching tv. ‘We are targeting the portion of this [25-49] group who are looking for cooler, edgier programming,’ she says. ‘They are looking for something more than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Segal movies.’

The tv campaign is national while the outdoor campaign is targeted for Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. There will be English-language radio and tv spots in Montreal, but no outdoor media. ‘We would have had to translate to French,’ Eastwood explains, ‘and I don’t think these jokes would have [translated] that well.’ (Showcase doesn’t provide a French service.)

There will be ‘a limited amount’ of cross-promotion during certain History Television programs that would skew to Showcase’s target audience, but Showcase is looking to buy or trade time on other networks, such as The Comedy Network and cfto.

The new Showcase look for the network ids, bumpers and promos uses images and people in various situations throughout a sophisticated, urban hotel. The hotel is infused with various tv and film elements such as bellhops carrying tvs with program pics and schedules.