Marketers should capitalise on an underrated UK export: content
Opinion
US audiences crave TV from across the pond (and beyond), creating a golden opportunity for brands to reach audiences in fresh ways.
A quick internet search will list the UK’s top exports to the US as gold, cars and gas turbines. But sprinkled among the streaming services and video platforms is a far more enjoyable dark horse reaching millions of US consumers every month: British entertainment.
From Doctor Who to BBC Earth, UK entertainment is making major waves stateside. How big are those waves exactly? A full one-quarter of Doctor Who’s views are from US residents — topping 38m — and 20% of BBC Earth’s views are from stateside viewers, or nearly 88m in total.
So rather than talking about tea and crumpets, it’s about time we talk about an export with real size, scale and impact.
For one, the streaming boom has made it easier than ever before to consume content from around the world, opening the veritable floodgates and therefore presenting a golden opportunity for advertisers to reach global audiences.
In the last 15 years alone, content from outside Hollywood has made quite a splash stateside — think Bollywood following the release of Slumdog Millionaire and the Hallyu of South Korean music and dramas, just to name a few.
But British television — as well as series facilitated by British TV providers — have trickled into US households for decades, from the dry humour of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Blackadder to the snarky education of Top Gear, fantastical stories of Doctor Who and the dramatics of Downton Abbey.
Yet, despite the ease of global content consumption, marketers are still overlooking the potential of British entertainment, missing out on a large swathe of consumer interest and an easier way to reach specialised corners of viewer demographics.
If you create it, they will come
US demand for British entertainment has soared in the last three years, due in no small part to changing consumer habits in the wake of Covid-19, which brought British actors and TV out of their niche corners and into the mainstream.
Analysis from Parrot Analytics found that British shows accounted for nearly 6% of total demand for TV series in the US in Q3 2023 — the largest share for foreign content, far outpacing shows from both Japan and South Korea.
And in the last three years, demand for British TV in the US has grown by a whopping 75%.
Viewership numbers from the BBC further back up the idea that demand has not yet peaked. BBC Studios is responsible for bringing beloved Australian children’s show Bluey to US audiences, which accounted for just over half of the 2bn views the series received on YouTube in the last year alone (it’s important to clarify that, while it’s an Australian programme, stateside consumption is made possible via a UK publisher).
While the US entertainment industry may dwarf that of the UK in scale, typically stricter budgets can lower barriers and create room for out-of-the-box ways to tell stories and explore themes. This is just one reason why the UK has been a breeding ground for reimaginings of cult classics like Doctor Who and Thunderbirds.
That sort of experimentation has worked countless times before, when you consider hit shows such as The Office, The Great British Bake Off, Ghosts and Strictly Come Dancing, which all went on to have successful US remakes.
Plus, Brits tend to produce shorter series (typically just six episodes compared with the usual 26), making it easier for US networks to snap up UK shows and get them out into the mainstream.
Reaching new spaces and, ideally, new heights
It’s important to note that nuanced storylines and specialised topics bring marketers closer to curated audiences and even whole fandoms. But it’s up to the marketers themselves to capitalise on the rise of “glocal” content that simultaneously appeals to both global and local audiences.
In the ongoing debate about whether content aimed at the “general market” will continue to be commercially viable in the future, doubling down on content that speaks to whole communities makes solid business sense as well.
Community is the new currency for marketers. There will always be viral moments that resonate with the general market, but people are tribal by their nature. Media owners and content creators need to lean in to the niches and focus on building real depth of relationships with these audiences. Diving into verticals will deliver the returns that media owners and advertisers are looking for going forward.
As British creators, we have made a consistent effort to be thoughtful about our content strategy in the US, intentionally pursuing and elevating content that we feel whole families can enjoy — the sort of content that will resonate across generations and demographics, speaking to areas of interest and passion as opposed to sectors.
Some efforts were more obvious, such as features on US muscle cars or car-modding culture, while others were more subtle, including using more US-based talent. The Doctor Who team went to San Diego Comic-Con this year, partnering with US nerd culture icons, while Bluey Book Reads featured Eva Mendes, Jenna Fischer and Rob Delaney.
But the key to reaching audiences in any location is authenticity. Some brands are successful in the US because they are true to their voices.
Britain may be only the sixth-largest economy in the world, but content and creativity have a role to play in soft power on the global stage. The UK’s history of content export puts it on the map as a cultural superpower.
Nat Poulter is vice-president of digital, commercial, at BBC Studios