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This week I’ll be hopping across the pond to Merrie Olde Englande to cover one of the most exciting brands I’ve talked about in a long time.
Now, my British readers—cheerio to both of you—might scoff at the notion of this week’s brand being described as ‘exciting.’ Preposterous, they’re surely harrumphing! Much dropping of monocles into tea, etc.
At least that’s how I picture things in the U.K. That’s probably wildly inaccurate, but keep in mind that most of my knowledge of culture and geography is based on cartoons.
And why do I have such a pitiful grasp of culture and geography? Because here in Merry Contemporary America (ha ha ha), we don’t have an equivalent to the brand I’m featuring this week. Apologies to PBS, because my knowledge of phonics and basic math is in fact based on Sesame Street, but there’s a reason y’all are doing pledge drives all the time. Last I checked, there’s simply no stateside equivalent to a brand that can boast:
Call me when you get a logo with two eagles and a lion, PBS. I bet you don’t even have a single staff orchestra! But you do have Big Bird, so let’s call it a draw.
Anyway, I don’t care what those imaginary monocled Brits say—all these pieces add up to a very exciting brand. There’s just one question: how’s their creator marketing?
Debuting in its current incarnation in 1927, and still not looking a day over 95, the Beeb (I’m told people call it that) is the oldest, largest, and most renowned broadcaster on planet earth. But it’s never had a snarky newsletter look into its influencer program—until now!
Our data on the BBC’s digital performance metrics—social media mentions of the brand in earned content from creators all around the world—dates back to 2022. Let’s take a look at the BBC’s performance during the last four years across key categories, and analyze the key themes and signature moments that characterize its creator strategy.
We’ll start, as we always do, with creators, given that the industry is called “creator marketing:”
BBC Creator Count, 2022 - 2025
Pretty straightforward and steady growth, with a particularly pronounced jump between 2024 and 2025.
BBC Post Count, 2022 - 2025
We see a corresponding pattern with the number of posts being created about the BBC, which stands to reason. However, we do sometimes notice brands that have a drastic spike in post count growth compared to creator count growth, and BBC is not one of those. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily: just something to keep in mind.
BBC EMV, 2022 - 2025
It’s especially un-bad because we do see a more pronounced spike in other metrics, including Earned Media Value (EMV), which reflects virality and buzz within social media conversations. BBC’s EMV (say that five times fast) more than doubled in four short years, demonstrating that despite modest increases in the brand’s creator and post counts, the BBC is being talked about more than ever.
BBC Impressions, 2022 - 2025
And if you’re being talked about more than ever, there’s a very good chance that you’re also being seen more than ever. That’s borne out by the BBC’s impressions count, which tracks total exposure for all the social media posts that mention the BBC. Pay attention to the scale here: the BBC garnered 13.6B impressions in 2025, nearly twice the global population. That was also a nearly 3x improvement from just four years earlier. My guess is that there’s more than just nature documentaries at work here.
BBC Engagements, 2022 - 2025
Engagements is a bit of a fly in the ointment, though we’ve also seen this trend amongst other growing brands as of late. Things are still up overall, but there was a drop between 2024 and 2025 that implies a slight disconnect between how many people are seeing content that mentions the BBC and how many people are interacting with it. That’s a key point to consider later, as we look into who is, and isn’t, posting about the BBC.
As you’d expect of an omnichannel behemoth, the BBC covers not only every traditional media stream, but every social media stream, with multiple channels claiming a piece of the impressions pie:
BBC Share of Impressions by Platform, 2025
This is a far more evenly divided picture than I’m used to looking at. YouTube just barely squeezes past Instagram for a plurality, but TikTok and Facebook are also drawing their fair share of eyes.
How do things break down when we look into YoY growth in impressions count for these channels?
With that kind of growth, it’s no wonder that YouTube has claimed the top spot overall. Still, this is healthy growth across each category, demonstrating that the BBC’s creator marketing strategy and message is versatile.
And don’t sleep on Facebook! This is the second week in a row, after Caesars Entertainment, where I’ve seen surprisingly large numbers for the platform. Is a comeback afoot?
BBC Share of Engagements by Platform, 2025
It’s a more lopsided picture for the BBC’s share of engagements in 2025. Instagram is the undisputed leader, with YouTube shrinking dramatically. Here’s the growth situation:
The smaller the total share, the greater the YoY growth. It looks like the BBC is headed for an even more multi-polar approach to its engagements, which should spark growth following a general decline sparked by middling Instagram numbers.
All of that provides a picture of the BBC’s creator marketing program at large, but what about the specifics? Who’s driving this growth? It can’t all be cult-favorite sitcoms from the 80’s with like twenty total episodes, right?
As with any global brand of this size, there’s a lot of noise to sort through. That noise is especially loud in the media and entertainment space, where actors, newscasters, program-affiliated accounts, and other non-creators are authoring a steady stream of content about the BBC. Once you factor in the considerable growth in the total number of accounts talking about the BBC—in 2025, the Beeb saw $531.2M EMV from accounts that hadn’t mentioned the brand in 2024—and it’s difficult to discern how much growth is coming from the BBC’s expanding cultural arms versus from social media creators directly.
Naturally, this presents an opportunity for the BBC to tap into yet another content stream. With a portfolio that encompasses pretty much everything under the sun, there’s almost unlimited potential, and the BBC is already at the top of the list for creators across multiple fields:
But what we don’t see is a concerted creator marketing strategy that consistently cuts through this noise. The BBC is often appended as a catch-all term on viral-slop content that has little or nothing to do with the brand itself. Forgive me for sounding like AI in this sentence, but that’s not just a missed opportunity for the BBC to leverage its brand identity—it’s also a brand safety risk.
When I look at the BBC, I see a brand that hasn’t needed creators to grow into a global powerhouse, but also one that needs creators to maintain this edge in an ever-noisier world. If your goal, as the BBC states, is to Inform, Educate, and Entertain, in this day and age, you can’t do that without creators. In order to up its engagements, and not just its impressions, the BBC can forge ties with a host of passionate creators who dedicate themselves to substantive content, rather than content with incidental mentions that doesn’t inspire deep resonance amongst digital audiences.
In short, I also see a brand with almost unlimited potential to leverage creators to an even greater extent. And I don’t care what the folks in monocles have to say—to me, that’s pretty interesting.
Plus, again, they have a coat of arms with eagles on it. I mean come on.
*All data, unless otherwise specified, stems from CreatorIQ's public-facing brand leaderboards. We will never share performance metrics from a customer's CreatorIQ profile, or any brand's private information.
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