License to Thrill: The BBC Stands Up for Itself
BBC
What has the BBC ever done for me?
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In 1986 the BBC, under fire from the government of the day, fought back with a classic ad starring John Cleese. He riffed on the great Monty Python sketch, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”, to introduce a parade of celebrities pointing out the many great things the BBC produced, and why it was well worth the license fee.
Fast forward 40 years, and times and the BBC have changed, but when it comes to advertising a great idea is still a great idea. In “What Has The BBC Ever Done For Me”, a new short film from the BBC, comedian Romesh Ranganathan follows in Cleese’s footsteps, starting in the Queen Vic and meeting celebrities, actors and BBC legends.
It comes as the corporation gears up for its latest charter renewal, at which questions like the future of the license fee and the status of the BBC’s various digital services will be answered. So this ad is a PR effort at heart – reminding people of the BBC as a brand, the breadth of its offering, and creating positive emotional response around that.
The advertising element it draws on most heavily to fulfil that brief is, not surprisingly, cultural references. Cultural references in an ad are a proven route to emotional effectiveness – they’re part of what Orlando Wood calls showmanship, the idea that an ad’s mission is to entertain, and that entertainment factor drives long-term impact.
And who has more cultural references at their disposal than the BBC? The ad features iconic characters from the Daleks to Pudsey Bear, legendary locations from the Eastenders set to the Traitors castle, and beloved presenters from Claire Balding to Louis Theroux. And that’s even before we start on the radio stations and online offerings from 6 Music to BBC Bitesize. It’s a far broader mix of channels than the BBC had in 1986, and the campaign is designed to be adaptable to all of them, running at different lengths and in different formats.
On our Test Your Ad platform, the new ad’s most striking successes come in the short-term metrics of Spike Rating and Brand Fluency – the film does a great job of reminding them what the BBC is and does and the range of entertainment it offers. It also does a fine job of creating positive emotional response, with a 3.4-Star Rating putting it in the top quartile of all TV and streaming ads.
One of the most interesting outcomes, though, is in Test Your Ad’s new demographic indicators – a breakdown of responses to the ad by age and gender. Base sizes here are small so these are only indicative but it’s very noticeable that the ad does exceptionally well among younger (18-34) viewers compared to the older ones. This is a very positive result for the BBC. Younger people who didn’t grow up in the terrestrial TV era might be the ones who most need a reminder of what the BBC does for them, and everybody else. This ad fits the bill.
