UKTV came to THE FIFTH with a brief to drive awareness of the new series of ‘Delivering Babies’ on W channel. They asked us to reignite excitement amongst previous viewers of the show, as well as driving conversation and intrigue amongst soon-to-be new fans.
THE SOLUTION
Applying UKTV’s ‘Life Unfiltered’ strategy to our #DeliveringBabies campaign, we set about explored the unforgettable moments every new and expecting parent experiences throughout childbirth. Choosing TikTok and Instagram as the home for our honest, raw, and totally unfiltered conversations, we created an open community, recruiting influential mothers to share their own honest and frank experiences, and encouraging our audience to do the same. Through our campaign, we built a safe space, using our content to spark conversation inspired by themes from the show, enabling their followers to open up, support each other, and share their own stories - simultaneously driving awareness of the series. The campaign won Silver for best use of Influencer Marketing at the 2023 Content Marketing Awards.
CREATING A real COMMUNITY
Our primary measure of success was post engagements, however we didn’t just want surface-level engagements from this campaign; we wanted a genuine two-way dialogue between the brand and our audience. Our idea would only work if we got our audience to share their stories too, creating a safe hub of content produced by real mothers. We needed to create a supportive community where everyone shared their birth experiences, which would in turn raise awareness for Delivering Babies as it would resonate with our audience on a deeper emotional level. We wanted the audience to comment on our talent’s posts, reply to their stories and share photos of their own personal moments, so that no mother felt alone during their motherhood journey.
We posted an Instagram ‘Add Yours’ sticker from the W channel account, asking our audience to post their first picture with their baby. This was the pièce de résistance, generating over 17,000+ pieces of UGC, which spread the campaign from mother to mother as more and more people contributed their experiences.
Back for another season
Returning for the 2024 series, we shifted our focus to the "unsung superhero" of the delivery room, reclaiming the narrative for the mother who often feels she takes second place after the baby arrives. I worked directly with viral motherhood poet Jess Urlichs, gathering thoughts from a diverse community of women to fuel a bespoke, inclusive script that celebrated every delivery journey, from C-sections to adoption. I spent extensive time with Jess refining the poem to ensure it captured the raw strength of birth, before collaborating closely with a voiceover artist to produce a powerful, emotive audio track that served as the heartbeat of the campaign.
This audio became a catalyst for a movement across TikTok and Instagram, where we briefed creators to tell their personal stories using our sound. This sparked a massive chain reaction of organic UGC from real women sharing their own signs of resilience, from the first contraction to the moments after birth. By turning the "final push" into a moment of collective celebration, we evolved the campaign to put the mother back on the pedestal, driving deep emotional resonance and awareness for the new series.