Spearheaded by Canoe Ventures, the cable industry announced the launch of “SelecTV,” a consumer-facing brand that will appear on-screen to indicate the availability of interactive television content. For viewers, SelecTV signifies an interactive experience that provides them more opportunity to engage with their favorite content. The SelecTV brand aims for a seamless and secure interaction between the viewer, the cable company and the programmer, advertiser or content sponsor across all major U.S. cable systems.
Canoe Ventures is working with cable companies, programmers and industry organizations on implementation guidelines, processes and solutions to establish ubiquity and standardization, while at the same time maintaining flexibility for how viewers experience ITV. SelecTV is a key first step to establishing a common identity for alerting consumers of the presence of ITV.
The SelecTV brand will be managed by Canoe nd licensed for use by certified cable television providers, their programming partners and advertisers. Canoe is working in concert with the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (CAB), the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs), and the nation’s leading MSOs, including Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems Corporation, Charter Communications, Comcast Corporation, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, as well as national advertising and cable television programming partners.
“Working together, cable is introducing innovative ITV applications across the country with unprecedented scale this year. Canoe spearheading SelecTV on behalf of the industry has resulted in cable taking an important step towards delivering national ITV capabilities with one common face for the viewer,” said Steve Burke, COO, Comcast.
“Canoe’s mission is to advance the digital TV business,” said Vicki Lins, CMO, Canoe Ventures. “Just as we’re driving standardization of technologies to help scale a truly national ITV platform, we’re leading the effort to promote wider adoption of our applications on top of this platform by ensuring a flexible yet consistent, quality user experience represented by the SelecTV brand.”
“The process behind the development of the SelecTV brand is an example of how the cable industry collaborates to provide the best customer entertainment experience,” said Char Beales, President and CEO, CTAM. “From its conception in CTAM’s Advanced Cable Solutions Consortium, through our Branding Committee’s involvement in the name and identity, members contributed to this industry effort. Together we learned from Cablevision’s successful launch of their Optimum Select™ brand which informed our choice of the simple and intuitive SelecTV.”
“We hope that SelecTV will come to signal for viewers the value of interactive television content, and therefore, encourage more viewer participation with ITV. Being brand stewards themselves, advertisers and agencies are gratified by the news that, with the introduction of SelecTV, there will be one uniform branded identity that will signal interactivity and draw attention to advanced advertising applications on TV. Simplicity, consistency and ease-of-use are the ‘must’ attributes we hear most often from advertisers about what should induce a healthy volume of trial on the next TV ad platform,” said Sean Cunningham, CEO and President, CAB.
For more info, see www.selectv.net.
