Wildlife channel Animal Planet kick-started its 20th anniversary celebrations in India on July 15. As a part of the celebrations, the channel will adopt a new Animal Planet mark, incorporating a fresh and distinctive image of a leaping elephant. The new identity aims to keep the childhood joy and wonder of animals alive by bringing people close to animals in every way with content that explores undeniable bond forged between animals and humans. The channel aims to galvanise people power to promote animal conservation in a big way. The channel will launch multiple initiatives through the year to achieve this objective.
Animal Planet will offer all new/ refreshed programming as part of the celebrations. The channel will increase focus on blue chip programming related to Indian wildlife. It has also launched a new YouTube channel, ‘Animal Planet India’, with an aim to build an online community, which is passionate about wildlife. It also launched Tamil language audio feed in addition to existing English and Hindi.
“We are kick-starting the 20th anniversary of Animal Planet in India by refreshing our brand identity and brand personality. The channel’s mission is to celebrate and explore our vital, enriching and ultimately humanising connection with the animal world. The new-look Animal Planet will offer a trusted heaven for the whole family to enjoy the best of wildlife content. To make the connect deeper with our younger audiences, we will introduce a dedicated weekend programming slot,” said Megha Tata, Managing Director, South Asia, Discovery Communications India.
“Animal Planet will sharpen focus on stories linked to animal conservation as it aims to awaken viewers to the need for animal welfare and conservation. We will launch multiple initiatives to harness the power of millions of animal lovers across the country for the cause of animal conservation. As a corporate, we are already taking affirmative action to help conserve world’s most iconic and endangered creatures. Through Project CAT and our partner WWF, we have made progress in our goal to help double the world’s wild tiger population by 2022.”
“Animal Planet will engage with super fans in a new way with the launch of the ‘Animal Planet India’ YouTube channel, which will offer short form visually stunning exclusive wildlife content with an underlying brand message of ‘Animals are Human like Us’. “The launch of a digital channel is a strategic step to support our linear feed; the aim is to congregate animal over digitally at one place so that we engage and converse in a deeper manner as we intensify focus on conservation-led messaging,” said Tata.
As a part of the revamped programming strategy, Animal Planet will offer globally acclaimed content produced by the best production houses. There will be increased focus on content based on Indian wildlife starting with anthologies such as 100 Days 100 Tales S2 and Animal Planet Presents. Starting August 2019, Animal Planet will premiere India-based shows, including Snake Squad, a show that reveals some of the riveting stories of snake rescue in India; Heroes of the Wild Frontiers — stories of forest guards from various national parks/reserves in India who are working on the ground level to secure and conserve Indian wildlife, followed by season two of the extremely popular franchise Lion Queens. The channel will also premiere the third Season of Mission Big Cat – an anthology of shows dedicated to big cats.