C5 15m launch blitz shuns ITV

Channel 5 has paid back ITV for its months of attacks by deciding this week to exclude ITV airtime from its 10m to 15m launch advertising campaign.

Instead the new channel has decided to concentrate its budget on satellite TV, press and poster advertising.

The launch campaign will break in March in preparation for the channel’s launch on March 30.

C5 decided that using ITV would undermine its own claims to be a young, modern channel.

“It is the wrong kind of environment to advertise a new brand in,” says a C5 source.

“Why would we want to use what is, in effect, an ageing, downmarket and declining audience.

The posters have so far been effective, we couldn’t replicate them on TV anyway and ITV would be poor value.”

The move signals a toughening of C5’s stance towards ITV after suffering attacks from ITV broadcasters about its retuning campaign and the quality of its proposed programming.

The C5 campaign will use a series of high-impact statements about the channel to set its positioning.

The work has been created by what the channel is now calling Team Five, the combination of new agency Mother, design company Wolff Olins and media consultancy Michaelides & Bednash.

Channel 4 has denied speculation that it is to run TFI Friday, hosted by Chris Evans, four nights a week to challenge Channel 5’s 11pm chat show.