Submitted by SocialChain

Celebrating birth and driving engagement for the new series of Emma Willis: Delivering Babies

Content Creation

SocialChain worked with poet Jess Urlichs and new-parent influencers on birth story films for UKTV's Emma Willis: Delivering Babies, reporting +6.5m views across organic and paid.

29,966Instagram likes
9,273Instagram likes
£0.26cost-per-engagement
+179kengagements
+62klink clicks

Case in 60 seconds

UKTV needed the fourth season of Emma Willis: Delivering Babies to grow audience engagement after an award-winning third season, which set a bar the new campaign had to clear rather than match.

The campaign appears to turn on the observation, drawn from the agency's engagement data, that audiences respond to birth stories that did not go to plan, because disappointment is the part most birth content omits.

The organizing thesis was one commissioned piece of writing carried by many voices, a spoken-word poem about the power of birth laid under footage each contributor had filmed of their own labour and delivery.

SocialChain commissioned a poem from Jess Urlichs, then influencers and new mothers including oliviadbowen and coleandabbie edited montages of their own labour and birth footage over the poem audio and posted them to Instagram. Instagram's Add Yours sticker invited audiences to add their own stories, while paid budget sat behind the strongest creators and posts and scheduling targeted peak times to drive viewing on U.

SocialChain reports +6.5m views, +179k engagements and +62k link clicks bringing people to the U streaming platform, with a £0.26 cost-per-engagement it describes as its best on U&W campaigns to date.

Strategy Breakdown

The primary strategy-learning section — interpretation, not a press-release summary.

Audiences for UKTV's real-life documentary storytelling, reached in particular through new parents and mothers with engaged followings who had their own birth experiences to share.
Birth is talked about publicly in idealised terms while much of it does not follow the plan, and the campaign placed itself in the gap between the expected version and the lived one.
A returning documentary season has no novelty to trade on, so the fourth series needed a reason for audiences to engage that came from the subject matter rather than from the announcement of a return.
UKTV took the role of the place the unedited version of birth gets told, with the show acting as permission for contributors to say publicly what they had previously kept private.
The Add Yours sticker turns watching into posting at very low effort, which suits a subject where audiences already hold the footage and the memory and need only an invitation to share them.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • UGC
  • montage
  • spoken-word poem audio
  • video

Partners

  • SocialChain (lead_agency), The Fifth (unspecified)

Participation mechanic

  • Instagram's Add Yours sticker, used to invite audiences to add their own birth stories to the creator posts and build participation around the series.

Creator role

  • coleandabbie — creator
  • Jess Urlichs — creator
  • oliviadbowen — creator
  • influencers and new mothers
  • influential new parents with highly engaged followings

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
Instagram likes29,966 likesperformance
Instagram likes9,273 likesperformance
cost-per-engagementachieving a £0.26 cost-per-engagement - our best CPE to date on U&W campaignsengagements
engagements+179k engagementsengagements
link clicks+62k link clickstraffic
views+6.5m viewsvideo_views

Why SocialChain's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Where a category carries a dominant idealised version of an experience, inviting contributors to show what went wrong appears to be what earns attention, because the departure from the expected script is itself the story.

  2. 2

    A single commissioned audio track under many separate edits gives a creator campaign coherence without dictating the visuals, which leaves each contributor holding authorship of material only they could supply.

  3. 3

    Consent reads here as a production dependency rather than a clearance step, because the footage the campaign wanted was private and the work could not exist unless talent and their communities trusted the ask.

  4. 4

    Concentrating paid budget on creators and posts already performing organically suggests the paid layer was used to extend proven content rather than to rescue weak placements, which is consistent with the low cost-per-engagement reported.

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