Five takeaways from our time at CreatorFest
CreatorFest 2025. Bigger crowds, bolder ideas, and one session that had everyone leaning in: Using Audio-First Social to Turn Real Birth Stories into Real Connection with UKTV.
If you missed it, here’s your fast, no-fluff roundup of our time at CreatorFest, featuring insights from our business director Jess Myers and UKTV’s head of social Georgia Quantrell-Cousins Langan.
Building on the success of our campaign for the documentary series’ third season, we uncover how we brought the fourth season of Emma Willis: Delivering Babies to life for UKTV’s owned channel U&W, driving over six million views and over 179,000 engagements.
1) Lead with feeling, not footage
When the creative team developed the campaign’s concept, emotion, not aesthetic, was the starting point. They commissioned a bespoke poem from Jess Urlichs — a soundtrack to parenthood that captured the beauty and chaos of childbirth — and made it the heartbeat of the campaign. That audio unified every creator story while leaving space for their truth to come through. The lesson: decide how you want people to feel before you decide how it should look.
“Think about how you want the audience to feel before you’re thinking about how you want the visuals to look.”
Jess Myers, Business Director, SocialChain
2) Be the vessel, not the hero
Childbirth is one of the most personal stories a parent could ever share, meaning brands in this terrain need to tread carefully. UKTV and SocialChain worked to build a brief with loose guardrails that prioritised sharing only what creators were comfortable with.
This resulted in raw, intimate footage (straight from the delivery room in some cases) that audiences trusted. Brand safety wasn’t about sanitising stories; it was about respecting boundaries and creating a space where creators could share on their own terms.
3) Make participation simple
Content paired creator Reels with a platform-native “Add Yours” sticker inviting parents to share what childbirth meant to them. Over 4,000 uploads later, the community had clearly found its voice.
Jess and Georgia’s top tips for community engagement:
- Commission bespoke audio (not a trending track) to anchor your story.
- Use native features (stickers, sounds) to reduce friction.
- Keep the ask clear and achievable. One prompt, one action.
4) Mix trusted talent with new voices
UKTV and SocialChain returned to proven partners like Olivia Bowen and Cole and Abbie for the fourth season of the show: creators whose audiences were already familiar with the content. New creators were introduced to keep the work fresh and broaden reach. This blend resulted in continuity and discovery, ensuring many different birth stories were heard and shared.
5) Let the sound travel
Parents downloaded and reused the audio for their own stories — not in the brief, but a brilliant signal that the idea had cultural legs. It’s why this work ladders perfectly into U&W’s Life Unfiltered platform: embracing imperfections, finding joy in the everyday, and celebrating raw honesty.
TL;DR?
When you lead with humanity, your content finds its audience. This campaign proved that bespoke audio can transform UGC and organic reach, that unpolished can be powerful, and that brands win when they act as a vessel for real, human stories.
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