The biggest TV series of all time* deserved a campaign that matched its epic scale. A series five years in the making, the Planet Earth III social campaign sought to match the scale of the production, and hit our target demographic – global U35s – while tapping into the nostalgia of generations of fans.
The Planet Earth III campaign was all about collaboration: featuring multi-award-winning music artists (RAYE, Bastille, Hans Zimmer), gaming platforms (Minecraft), digital publishers (LadBible), influencers, environmental activists (Shailene Woodley) and an epic soundtrack launched on Greg James’ Radio 1 show. We strategically worked with talent who were ‘stretch’ for our typical audiences, enabling us to reach new fans in new spaces. We highlighted the beauty of our planet, and the humour we can find within it via the incredible footage from the Natural History Unit and through innovative partnerships. We wanted it to feel fresh and unexpected.
Internet sensation Mamadou (16M+ TikTok followers) collaborated with us on a green-screen-style explainer video on one of our epic sequences where, in a rarely captured behaviour, a mob of seals turn on a shark. Make-up artist Alice King (3.5M TikTok) created and filmed a beautiful eye design inspired from episode 1 of a flamingo and its chick. Comedian and writer Hayley Morris (4.5M followers on TikTok) settled down to watch the series in a skit where her 'heart, hormones and brain' have a lot to say about the emotions of watching a Sir David Attenborough show. At the premiere, we were on a green-carpet mission to speak to as many influential faces as possible in ‘vox-pop’ style interviews for TikTok.
We were also smart with our manipulation of vertical video. We took premium sequences and awe-inspiring animal behaviours, such as a leopard leaping the equivalent of two double decker buses from a tree to ambush its prey, and swapped Sir David Attenborough's voiceover for a 'Gen-Z' style narration: ‘This leopard came to serve'. Audiences saw their hearts melt to “a day in the life" TikTok video of a tapir nicknamed Gonzalito who crashed filming sets and befriended crewmembers. We also partnered with TikTok to create a bespoke CapCut template inspired by the beautiful Planet Earth III artwork and made the #PlanetEarth3 into a homepage on TikTok.
We commissioned behind-the-scenes videos for BBC Earth AVOD channels for which we also created vertical, trend-based cutdowns. We drew upon both the humour of filming wildlife, and some of the more hard-hitting stories. Exclusivity wasn't 'exclusive' to video either – we interviewed producers and directors for the BBC Earth website too, these articles were featured as exclusive excerpts within ‘fan club’ newsletters. Audiences got a glimpse into what really happen to a rare maned wolf den and got insight into how a PlayStation controller was formative in the filming of a deep sea octopus 'brooding' spa.
We reached 71% more U35s on BBC Earth’s Meta channels than the platform’s average and 23% more U35s on BBC Earth’s TikTok. Our #PlanetEarth3 TikTok homepage amassed 50.6M views and our CapCut template was launched on a platform that has 200M active monthly users. This template was launched at the Strictly Come Dancing final and featured Bastille performing the #PlanetEarth3 Pompeii cover, reaching an audience of 516,000. The digital campaign overall achieved 311M impressions and 8.4M engagements, and most importantly, raised awareness about the plight of our planet. Through innovative digital activations that spoke to a global audience, we were able to shine a light on the incredible habitats and wildlife we share the planet with, and have inspired future generations to protect it.
