Bluey’s 2025 Marketing Playbook for UK Small Firms

Most brands chase attention. Bluey earned trust — and then turned that trust into a business.

In Marketing Week’s reader vote, BBC Studios’ Bluey was crowned the top marketing initiative of 2025, beating Pop Mart’s Labubu in the final round. The vote itself is a useful signal: marketers didn’t just reward a clever ad. They rewarded a brand system that keeps showing up, keeps sounding like itself, and keeps giving people reasons to care.

That matters if you’re running a UK small business and trying to make digital marketing pay. You don’t have a £2.2bn revenue engine behind you. But you can copy the mechanics: consistent visibility, emotional connection, and a brand-led approach that makes every post, email and partnership feel like it comes from the same place.

This post sits within our British Small Business Digital Marketing series. It uses Bluey as a case study to answer a practical question: what does “building cultural capital” look like when you’re a local service business, an ecommerce startup, or an independent shop — and you need leads, not applause?

Why Bluey won: consistency beats cleverness

Bluey’s success is the opposite of a one-hit campaign. It’s a compounding strategy.

According to the article, Bluey:

• Airs in 140 countries
• Has audiences consuming 95,000 years’ worth of content
• Is the number one show across all genres in the US
• Is the most-watched children’s show in the UK
• Has over 21 million YouTube subscribers and 13 billion lifetime views
• Has grown into a billion-dollar consumer products and experiences business
• Has a feature film scheduled for 2027

You’re not going to replicate those numbers. The lesson is what creates them: a repeated, recognisable experience across channels.

Here’s the stance I’ll take: most small businesses underinvest in consistency because it doesn’t feel urgent. They post when they remember, update their website when something breaks, and treat brand as a logo file. Then they wonder why leads are expensive.

Consistency is what makes the second, third and tenth touchpoint cheaper.

The small business translation: build a “recognition loop”

A recognition loop is simple: people repeatedly see the same cues, in the same tone, associated with the same promise.

For a UK small business, your cues might be:

• A distinctive visual style (colours, photography, layout)
• A repeatable content format (e.g., “Monday Myth”, “Quick Fix Friday”, monthly case study)
• A single-minded promise (“We fix boilers fast, without upselling”)
• Proof that shows up everywhere (reviews, before/after photos, customer stories)

If someone lands on your Instagram, then your website, then your Google Business Profile, it should feel like meeting the same person three times — not three different companies.

The brand-led shift: stop marketing “services”, start marketing a brand

BBC Studios reportedly moved from a genre-led structure to a brand-led strategy, creating dedicated teams for properties like Bluey, Doctor Who and Strictly. That change is a gift to small businesses because it’s the exact move many need to make.

A lot of digital marketing for small firms is organised like this:

• “Someone do social”
• “Someone do the website”
• “Someone run ads”

That’s channel-led. It produces fragmented messaging.

A brand-led approach flips the order:

1. Who are we for?
2. What do we want to be known for?
3. What must every channel consistently communicate?
4. Then: which channels make that easiest?

A practical exercise: your 3-line brand brief

Write this and keep it visible before you create anything.

1. Audience: “We help [specific group] in [place/UK-wide]…”
2. Problem: “…who are frustrated by [pain]…”
3. Promise: “…by delivering [outcome] with [your differentiator].”

Example (service business):

We help homeowners in Manchester who are stressed by last-minute plumbing issues by providing same-day repairs with fixed pricing and tidy workmanship.

Now your content isn’t “plumbing tips” in general. It’s reducing stress, showing fixed pricing, proving tidiness, and reinforcing speed.

Bluey’s real advantage: emotional connection that scales on digital

The article highlights Bluey’s “cultural capital”. That’s marketing language for something very straightforward: people feel something about the brand, and they want to share that feeling.

Small businesses often avoid emotion because it sounds “fluffy”. But emotion is what makes digital distribution work. Platforms reward saves, shares, comments, and watch time — all driven by feeling.

How to build emotion without being cringey

You don’t need sentimentality. You need specificity.

Here are three emotion-building content angles that work particularly well for UK small businesses:

1. Relief: show the moment the problem is gone (job complete, customer reaction, tidy finish)
2. Pride: spotlight the craft (process videos, quality checks, materials, standards)
3. Belonging: show the community (local customer stories, staff personalities, neighbourhood references)

If you’re stuck, pick one feeling you want customers to associate with you — calm, confidence, delight, safety — and make it the filter for your social media and website copy.

7 digital marketing lessons from Bluey (built for leads)

Bluey’s story maps cleanly onto lead generation. Here are seven takeaways you can actually implement on a small business budget.

1) Frequency beats intensity

One big “push” per quarter doesn’t build memory.

What to do this month:

• Commit to a sustainable cadence: 2 posts a week + 1 short video + 1 email
• Put it in a calendar and treat it like payroll — not a hobby

2) Make one platform your “engine”

Bluey’s YouTube numbers are enormous: 21m subscribers and 13bn views. They have other channels, but you can see an engine at work.

Pick one primary channel based on how customers choose you:

• Local services: Google Business Profile + reviews + local SEO
• Visual trades/beauty/food: Instagram + short-form video
• B2B: LinkedIn + a simple lead magnet
• Ecommerce: TikTok/Instagram + email list

Then use other platforms as feeders, not distractions.

3) Turn content into assets (not posts)

Bluey is a franchise supported by consumer products, experiences and licensing. Translation: they reuse IP endlessly.

Small business version:

• Turn FAQs into SEO pages
• Turn projects into case studies
• Turn recurring questions into reels
• Turn testimonials into a monthly “proof” email

If you answer the same question three times a week, it should be a website page, not a repeated DM.

4) Build partnerships that match your audience

Bluey grows through licensing and partnerships because it meets families where they already spend time.

Small business version:

• Collaborate with adjacent local businesses (not competitors)
• Do 1 joint offer per quarter (bundle, referral, event)
• Swap audiences via email shout-outs or social takeovers

A good partnership is one where the trust transfers.

5) Invest in brand memory structures

Bluey’s long-term ambition (per the article) is 100% awareness, aiming to be “the next Mickey Mouse”. That’s not an ad goal; it’s a memory goal.

Your version: define 2–3 “memory structures” and repeat them:

• A signature service name (e.g., “The 48-Hour Kitchen Refresh”)
• A repeatable guarantee (“Fixed price, or we don’t start”)
• A signature content series (“One-Minute Tax Fixes”)

People remember named things.

6) Measure what creates future leads, not vanity metrics

Bluey can talk about subscribers and views because it’s entertainment. You need leads.

Track these instead:

• Website enquiries (by source)
• Calls from Google Business Profile
• Email list growth and reply rate
• Quote requests
• Conversion rate from landing pages

If you run paid ads, track cost per enquiry — and the close rate, not just clicks.

7) Organise your marketing like a system

BBC Studios restructured and hired senior brand marketers for Bluey. The point isn’t “hire more people”. It’s that marketing needs an owner and a process.

A simple system for a small team:

• One person owns the calendar
• One shared folder for brand assets (logos, colours, templates, photo style)
• One monthly “what worked?” review
• One quarterly campaign (seasonal, offer, new service)

January is a smart time to do this. Everyone’s resetting, budgets are being decided, and customers are making “fresh start” purchases. If you put your marketing system in place now, you’ll feel the compounding effect by spring.

People also ask: “What can a small business learn from a kids’ TV brand?”

A kids’ show seems far from a local business, but the principles are identical.

Do I need a big audience to copy this?

No. You need the right people to see you repeatedly. A few hundred locals who recognise and trust you beats 20,000 random followers.

Is this just “brand awareness” and not lead generation?

Brand and leads aren’t enemies. Brand reduces the cost of leads over time because prospects convert faster when they already trust you.

What’s the fastest win I can take from this?

Get your basics consistent:

• Google Business Profile fully filled out
• 20+ recent reviews (ask systematically)
• Website pages that match what you post on social
• One repeatable content format you can keep up for 90 days

Consistency is the quickest upgrade most small businesses can make.

A simple 30-day plan to apply Bluey’s approach

If you want a practical starting point, here’s a month-long sprint I’ve found works.

1. Week 1: Clarify the brand brief (the 3-line version) and choose your engine channel.
2. Week 2: Build 10 “proof” assets (testimonials, before/after, mini case studies, review screenshots).
3. Week 3: Publish 6 pieces of content using one format (same structure each time).
4. Week 4: Create one lead path (landing page + offer + follow-up email).

If you do nothing else, do Week 4. Content without a lead path is just entertainment.

Bluey didn’t win because it shouted louder. It won because it built a brand people repeatedly chose to spend time with — and that is the core of effective digital marketing.

If your small business marketing feels like starting from scratch every month, your next step isn’t another trend or tool. It’s building a brand-led system that makes consistency easy.

What would change in your lead volume this year if your ideal customers saw (and recognised) your business twice a week, every week, from now until summer?