TORONTO — With the help of Toronto agency Juniper Park/TBWA, Ontario’s French-language public broadcaster Groupe Média TFO has renewed its branding, while also transitioning to become an omnichannel media company, it was announced Tuesday.
The changes at TFO come as digital education becomes a reality for the thousands of students in the province returning to school in the next couple of weeks amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
“At Groupe Média TFO, this passion for the company’s mission and mandate encourages us every day to adapt to digital changes and to continually seek new, innovative ways of aligning our content’s public value with the needs created by the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. This new positioning will help us create content to reflect the current diversity of the Ontarian Francophonie and equip kids with the employability skills they will need in an ever-changing world,” says Eric Minoli, general manager and chief of operations, in the news release.
With the new brand signature “Enlightening tomorrow”, TFO is emphasizing its role in providing high-quality and trustworthy French-language content to students, educators and parents, says the release. TFO started its digital renewal last year and its content is available across interconnected channels on TV, web platforms and apps.
“This evolution in our visual identity happened completely organically with our traditions,” says Nadine Dupont, chief content officer at Groupe Média TFO. “Our audiences can now recognize themselves in our new niches: the MiniTFO brand for children up to 8 years of age, FlipTFO for preteens aged 9-12, and PlusTFO, our new informational and cultural niche, which also includes ONFR+, our news franchise for Francophone Ontario. The Idéllo platform by TFO will continue to serve teachers and students. This new omnichannel approach will better leverage our audience preferences in our decision-making processes.”
Ahead of the back-to-school period, TFO is offering a new animated short titled L’Écho, an allegory about education and citizenship values, which addresses the importance of pursuing and believing in your dreams, says the news release.
“The idea of L’Écho is the authentic expression of our educational values: diversity and inclusion, non-judgement and self-confidence,” says Carole Nkoa, chief marketing, communications and philanthropy officer at Groupe Média TFO. “Renewing our brands has been the result of exceptional collaborative efforts alongside Juniper Park/TBWA. The collaborative and creative transformation was led by David Toto and his team, whilst keeping our audiences at the heart of our vision. We are very pleased with the final result, which is fresh, rekindled and connected to our audiences across Ontario and Canada to foster their curiosity and desire to learn in French.”
