How Comic Relief increased YouTube views by 50% for Red Nose Day
CHALLENGE
Red Nose Day is one of the UK’s biggest cultural and broadcast moments, but success on television does not automatically translate into success on YouTube.
Comic Relief wanted to grow its YouTube performance year on year while moving beyond treating the platform as an extension of broadcast. The challenge was to increase content output, find the right balance between long-form video, Shorts and livestreams, and prove that digital-first distribution could create both deeper audience engagement and additional revenue.
Brave Bison needed to develop a YouTube content and channel strategy built around how audiences consume entertainment on the platform.
SOLUTION
Brave Bison increased publishing output by 33% while prioritising formats that could generate meaningful watch time and revenue, not simply reach.
Premium long-form sketches became the centre of the strategy, supported by Shorts and live content designed to extend reach and test new audience behaviours. Long-form videos including The Traitors: The Movie The Sequel and Amandaland became some of the strongest-performing content of the campaign.
By combining YouTube channel management, content optimisation and monetisation, Comic Relief increased views by 50%, watch time by 51%, impressions by 38% and revenue by 15%.
results
This campaign marked a clear shift in how Comic Relief shows up on YouTube, moving from a broadcast extension to a platform-first performance strategy. By increasing output and prioritising high-quality, long-form content, we drove growth across all key metrics and proved that deeper engagement delivers stronger commercial returns.
The results point to a more mature content ecosystem, with premium VoD at the core, supported by Shorts and live as emerging growth drivers. Ultimately, this wasn’t about short-term gains, it established YouTube as a scalable engine for reach, engagement, and revenue and set a new benchmark for translating cultural moments into sustained digital impact.
958K views (+50%)
56.7K watch time (+51%)
£1.9K revenue (+15%)
11.3M impressions (+38%)
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