In 2024 an Ofcom report found that the publicly funded BBC was the most used UK media brand across TV, radio and online. Some 61% of adults said they viewed the BBC favorably, according to the regulator.
When BBC chief brand officer Charl Bassil started in-post in March 2024, those around him had warned that the organization is “an ivory tower institution that is very British and very institutional,” but what he is found is that it’s run by “down to earth” people willing to embrace change, he says.
The role was conceived by director general Sir Tim Davie and chief customer officer Kerris Bright. “In a media landscape where you’ve got a lot of money being invested in building brands from the big American media streamers, there was a need to kind of reframe the BBC as a challenger brand and to start thinking about ourselves in the UK and then internationally,” says Bassil.
While the role is global, “it’s 90% focused on the UK and public service at the minute,” according to Bassil, who is hoping to build consistency of both brand offering and perception.
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Bassil’s background is largely in senior marketing roles within the drinks industry, most recently as Absolute Vodka’s global CMO. Part of his BBC recruitment process saw him interviewed by Davie.
“Right at the end he asked me one question. ‘What do you want your legacy to be? Do you want to be remembered for? Another flavor of vodka or fighting for democracy?’ That really affected me as it does feel like we’re trying to do something more meaningful than sell booze.”
In a wide-ranging remit, everything in Bassil’s role comes back to, “‘How do you ensure your relevance to audiences?’ he says. “If you are relevant to audiences and have public service values at heart, you’re fulfilling your mission”.
This means that the brand has to be developed with balance in mind. The pursuit of “algorithms and personalization” alone could mean losing sight of public service values.
Despite Bassil’s role having a fair bit of clout, particularly because he’s working with a brand marketing team and, by extension, an in-house creative team (BBC Creative), there are limitations to how he can affect some of the big challenges, like funding models.
“What we have done, though, is prove that there’s a connection between strong brands and a consumer’s willingness to pay for a brand or product,” he says.
More specifically, he says: “We've done a study internally and we’ve looked at the willingness of audiences to pay the license fee when you have certain factors that lead to a strong brand.”
Working from the likes of Kantar and WPP industry data, Bassil has been able to advocate internally that investing in a brand to make it salient, relevant and distinctive will ensure it pays off. “Once you make that link, the board thinks it’s worth investing in.”
Meanwhile, Bassil is trying not to get carried away with the idea of growth. “Globally, everyone’s obsessed with it. In commercial organizations, people think high growth will lead to profitability or that, in a public institution like ours, growth is going to lead to proof of relevance, proof of usage and justify the license fee.”
While he does see the obvious merits in this school of thought, he thinks it can also be a distraction. More important for Bassil is identifying and building a new focal point – “brand power.”
“The thing I got worried about when I joined was the obsession with growth,” says Bassil, who identifies that the short term question that the BBC is trying to ask itself is, “Are we trying to get audiences to enter the digital streaming space through the likes of BBC iPlayer and Sounds, which we’ve had for a long time, or are we trying to keep them there and not lose them to other streaming services?”
This kind of attitude, he says, can mean getting bogged down. “It’s like not being able to see past quarterly sales figures,” he says. The answer is focusing on “brand power” for the foreseeable. “Now it’s common language for the organization and, in July, ‘brand power’ will go into the corporate dashboard as one of three key measures of success.”
Beyond the strategic view comes the practical endeavor of evolving and strengthening the brand. Part of this is focusing on what Bassil calls the ‘brand story.’ This means “telling positive stories in a unified, cohesive way,” particularly when the prevailing narrative has often been “a defensive position, dealing with idiots and their bad behavior, which the current administration is having to sort out,” he says, adding that there is a culture project “uprooting all that.”
He’s also looking to better identify what makes strong brands. “Really, I’m talking about successful programs like Eastenders and Planet Earth that could become more franchised and lent into,” Bassil says.
While these brands have relevance and distinctiveness, they don’t yet have enough salience despite being potentially very resonant brands globally. “We just need to invest more and let people know about them,” he explains.
Content and editorial teams are focusing on this side of things while also thinking about how the programs should be packaged up and taken to market, according to Bassil, who believes precision and growth marketing will play a part in this.
The BBC’s head of creative and the rostered agencies and production houses it works with are set to have a decent amount of work coming their way as a result of Bassil’s strategy.
“The idea is to invest as much into the UK creative economy as possible. It’s part of our mandate,” says Bassil, who adds that for Uefa’s upcoming Women’s Euros 2025, it has been working “on a TV commercial in collaboration with Aardman.”
Taking the example of sport, Bassil again picks up on this idea of a cohesive strategy across the BBC, to “coalesce” around, for example, the England Women’s football team’s Euros campaign.
“As well as advertising, we’ll look to get our news teams involved, other programs like the BBC One Show and even Bedtime Stories. You need to bring the players in and think about the brand not just as advertising but something you can build that’s more connected than ever.”
In the past, campaigns could be quite siloed from programming, but Bassil says: “Once you realize you can go to market as one whole entity, that’s the power of the BBC.”
Standing behind this are three aims: “The pursuit of truth with no agenda – be that commercial or political, fighting for homegrown storytelling and the creative economy and telling the stories of the people from the UK.”
Part of this storytelling brief means thinking less about algorithms driving people to their own devices and more about building audiences around shared moments such as Glastonbury or Wimbledon.
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Driving Bassil’s plan forward are his central brand marketing team, as well as content marketing, news marketing and what he calls the nations marketing team, which looks after England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. There’s also an in-house media team (as well as Havas), an audience team, a content team, a product team looking at UX and a corporate affairs team.
The corporate affairs team, for example, is looking at “how the brand narrative shows up at different points throughout the year.” He adds: “We’re looking at how to work with them more closely.”
Bassil also says he is thinking about how relatively new subbrands, like fact-checking service BBC Verify, “fit into the broader narrative.”
Then there’s the likes of BBC Studios, which leads the franchising program and is “thinking about what the next Dr Who or Strictly might be,” but again, this is tied back to the overall brand strategy.
The exhaustive list of brands and departments that he works with directly or indirectly – a list that goes on – serves to show us how far brand building is being pushed across the organization.
In a moment of self-reflection, Bassil suggests he sees himself as a steward with this task in hand. “We could be setting the tone for the next 10 to 20 years. I want the BBC to be relevant while retaining its values as a publicly funded organization. As much as I had fun in the alcohol industry, I have a real sense of responsibility now,” says Bassil.
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