BBC WORLDWIDE YOUTUBE

BBC Worldwide, 2007

Communications for the launch of BBC Worldwide's YouTube channel, one of the earliest major media brand activations on the platform. YouTube had no established idea yet of what a broadcaster's presence should look like: no benchmark for tone, frequency or format.

That absence of precedent was the actual job. There was no existing playbook to adapt, only a judgement call about what BBC content should look like on a platform built for viewing behaviour nothing like scheduled broadcast.

Launching it the same year as PR support for TopGear.com, LoveEarth.com and BBC Motion Gallery meant learning, in real time, the difference between putting a brand somewhere and building a brand for where it now was.

Being first onto a platform only counts for something if you resist copying what worked somewhere else.