The success of Steven Spielberg’s Taken has spurred SCI FI to back for mini-series. All images © SCI FI Channel.

When most people think of sci-fi fans, the first image that comes to mind is a “geek”: the obsessed, perpetually adolescent male, playing computer games or arguing online over the minutiae of Star Trek or The Matrix trilogy. But in the wake of Taken, the Steven Spielberg-produced miniseries that gave Universal Television’s SCI FI Channel its highest ratings to date, the decision was made to update and broaden that image.

The result is “What If,” a Clio-winning re-branding campaign that includes 17 new 10-second IDs, a 90-second narrative spot, Tattoo Man, and a redesign of the channel’s logo, to be rolled out along with a new line-up of shows.

Tattoos come to life.

Roger Guillen, acting vp for creative and the in-house creative director of the spots, suggests the intent of the campaign is to “shift perception,” and move the channel away from its image of being “cold and techie, focused on aliens, UFOs, and monsters.” The new spots, he says, convey the impression of SCI FI as the “channel of imagination, where anything is possible…We want it to be the vehicle to fuel your imagination.”

Each of the 10-second IDs, produced by the channel with the Laimbe-Nairn agency of London, directed by Erick Ifergan with effects by London’s Glassworks, takes an everyday image and makes it fantastical: A cute baby suddenly breathes fire; a woman’s exhaled breath turns into her dream lover; a woman in a stately sitting room kisses her bug-eyed, big eared, genetically mutated pet; a break dancer spins so fast, he ends up with his head facing backwards. The tag line for each spot is the word “if,” which then becomes part of the new, stylized SCI FI Channel logo. “The idea was to make really fantastical, imaginative little mini movies,” Guillen explains, adding the theme that connects them is “imagination. They all ask the question, “What if?”

Redefining pet friendly.

For the spots to be “on-brand,” it was important that the spots be “warm, relatable, human and emotional,” Guillen adds. “You need to be able to watch them and think, yeah, that’s cool, but what if and then come up with your own scenario.” A few of the IDs, such as Warrior may take their scenarios from movies such as The Matrix or 2001, while Guillen admits that movies were “an inspiration” for the spots, “we didn’t specifically want to rip off our favorite movies and do little skits from them.” But market research showed many of the channel’s target audience enjoy sci-fi, even if they didn’t identify themselves among the genre’s fans. “They are the kind of people who have PDAs and other gadgets. They’re not geeks, but they appreciate technology and love visual images. They’re the kind of people that if you ask them if they liked The Matrix, they say they loved it, and isn’t that a sci-fi film?”

It was also important to dissuade viewers from the cliché that sci-fi is something of a boy’s club. Guillen says the channel wanted to target a female audience, “a huge demographic that we don’t really cater to as much as we should.” So some of the IDs (Vapor Lovers, Baby, Pet) were designed to make the channel feel less “guy-centric.”