Cablevision Unveils New Branding Campaign

Cablevision Systems unveiled its first new logo and branding campaign in nearly 10 years, complete with television spots that focus on the customer and the simplicity of the cable company's products.

Initial ads will begin airing in the New York metropolitan area Friday and will continue for several weeks,  followed by a second round of television spots later in the year. Cablevision said in a statement that the new logo and design program will be implemented across all customer-facing platforms and executions, including field service trucks, employee uniforms, Web properties, direct customer communications, and marketing efforts.

"Cablevision, at its core, is a customer-focused company that provides essential services connecting each of our more than three million customers with their world," said Cablevision's senior executive vice president of product management and marketing Kristin Dolan in a statement. "Our new logo and branding campaign reflects our commitment to honesty, transparency, the quality of the services we provide and -- importantly -- how we interact with our customers. We could not be more pleased or proud to be taking our marketing in this new direction, underscoring our leadership position in the markets we serve as the provider of the best TV, phone and Internet available anywhere, at any price."

The logo was developed by COLLINS, a New York-based marketing firm run by Brian Collins, in cooperation with Cablevision's internal marketing team. The television spots were created by the company's new branding agency, Mother NY, and include both 30- and 60-second "anthem" spots and a series of four 30-second spots focused on customers dealing with life's incremental and highly personal challenges without having to worry about their Optimum-provided cable, phone or Internet service. Mother has most recently done extensive branding work with Virgin Mobile and Reading is Fundamental.

Cablevision hinted last month that it was developing a new branding strategy, with CEO James Dolan stating on Cablevision's second quarter earnings conference call that the relaunch of the Optimum brand "is an important part of our overall strategy of putting the customer first."

After leading the industry in virtually every subscriber metric for the past several years, Cablevision has hit a snag as its industry leading product penetrations make it difficult to grow. In the second quarter, net basic video subscriber growth was flat.

"My hope is that with the re-branding efforts and with some of the other new products that we're launching that we'll begin to entice new customers and grow the subscriber base," James Dolan said on the August conference call.