Submitted by SocialChain

Helping Gen Z find their next favourite creators through the ones they already love

Influencer Marketing

SocialChain scaled YouTube's Edition series for UK Gen Z with 6 hero creators and 30 featured creators, and the agency reports +76.8m views.

+572.6kengagement
+76.8mviews

Case in 60 seconds

YouTube Edition already spotlighted the UK's favourite creators, and YouTube asked for more reach, more relevance and more meaningful engagement from the series, while ruling out a corporate campaign in favour of culture and connection.

The campaign appears to turn on discovery working as a transfer of trust rather than as a recommendation from the platform, because Gen Z audiences reach new creators and niches through the accounts they already follow.

The organising thesis was to let real voices from the platform carry the discovery, casting creators already established amongst UK Gen Z so the series arrived through credibility rather than through brand assertion.

SocialChain cast 6 hero creators and 30 featured creators with an authentic presence across YouTube and Instagram, and produced six 3-min long episodes featuring emerging creators alongside +200 pieces of promotional content. The 360 campaign ran across four weeks on multiple platforms and launched with paid media, OOH, a YouTube live-stream and a networking launch event with a Q&A, while The Fifth licensed and cleared 30 pieces of video content including music, brands and gaming IP.

SocialChain reports +76.8m views and +572.6k engagement for the four-week campaign, which carried the Edition series across YouTube and Instagram with paid media, out-of-home and a live-streamed launch behind it.

Strategy Breakdown

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

Gen Z audiences in the UK looking for new creators, communities and content, reached through creators with an established presence on YouTube and Instagram and a loyal UK Gen Z following.
Discovery on YouTube and Instagram runs through personal recommendation, so a platform promoting its own series risks reading as corporate marketing, which is the outcome the brief ruled out from the start.
A platform advertising its own content series has no outside endorsement to borrow, so the credibility has to be supplied by the creators appearing in it rather than by the brand's own claims.
YouTube set the objective and let creators carry the message, positioning the platform as the place where discovery happens rather than as the voice making the recommendation.
Based on the available evidence, Gen Z audiences move outward from accounts they already trust, so pairing 6 hero creators with 30 featured creators uses existing loyalty as the route into unfamiliar niches.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • +200 content
  • OOH
  • YouTube live-stream
  • networking launch event and Q&A
  • six 3-min long episodes
  • video content

Partners

  • SocialChain (lead_agency), The Fifth (production)

Participation mechanic

  • A YouTube live-stream and a networking launch event with a Q&A gave audiences a live point of contact with the cast, while the series episodes themselves were watched rather than joined.

Creator role

  • jessechuku — creator
  • unjadedjade — creator
  • 30 featured creators
  • 6 hero creators
  • emerging creators featured in the episodes

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
engagement+572.6k engagementengagements
views+76.8m viewsvideo_views

Why SocialChain's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Casting for credibility with a defined audience rather than for follower scale gives a discovery series a way in, because the recommendation arrives from an account the viewer already chose to follow.

  2. 2

    Splitting a cast into hero and featured tiers lets a series carry recognisable anchors while surfacing the emerging creators it exists to promote, which spreads attention across niches rather than concentrating it on a few names.

  3. 3

    Rights work sits inside creator strategy rather than beside it, because a series featuring music, brands and gaming IP cannot run at scale until each of those 30 pieces of content is licensed and cleared.

  4. 4

    Surrounding creator content with paid media, out-of-home and a live-streamed launch extends a platform-native format past the creators' own followings, which matters when the objective is reach into audiences the cast does not already hold.

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