From Show to Shelf: The Marketer Building BBC Brands

Shelley Macintyre may now be immersed in a world of talking dogs, CGI dinosaurs, and Daleks, but her path to becoming the SVP of marketing at BBC Studios has been anything but conventional. Before stepping into media, she commissioned award-winning animated gin-drinking swans — and has even helped market Viagra among other things.

Her instinctive curiosity has always been there, even before she recognised marketing as a profession. From the moment she could crawl, she was fascinated by human behaviour, especially the mystery of what women carry in their handbags, and why. “It’s a mystery that’s never been solved,” she says, admitting that it remains a fascination to her to this very day. That inquisitiveness, in its own roundabout way, has guided her career choices.

She retains an early memory of meeting her dad off the train from work and being impressed by all the smartly dressed business people stepping off alongside him - “They looked like they’d been doing something fun.”

At school, she kept her options open, choosing subjects such as maths, art, dancing, economics, and sport, to keep open “a clear lane” for her future. The same was true when she opted for to study a business degree at University, selecting one that explored psychology, consumer behaviour, and financial maths.

“I thought I’d go into finance, I was good at it, and it paid well, but after a dry placement, I realised I wanted to be in the thick of the action, not just advising from the sidelines,” she explains. “My second placement was in PR at Pfizer, working on Viagra, and I absolutely loved it. I helped set up a sexual health summit based on global research into the habits of over-60s, and found myself immersed in human behaviour, cultural nuance, and commercial strategy. I knew then I wanted to work in a consumer-facing role, in service of an organisation’s goals.”

The early stint working on the PR for Viagra came before she realised her calling, taking her to Canada to study marketing at Schulich School of Business, run by York University, and then onto Unilever’s graduate scheme.

After six-and-a-half years, she left to join Coca-Cola, where Macintyre spent a similar length of time, latterly as European marketing manager for Coke Zero, she moved onto marketing director roles at Sipsmith, Suntory, and Allplants before joining the commercial arm of the BBC in July 2024.

She has recently returned from San Diego Comic-Con, where the BBC was promoting long-running series Doctor Who to its US fanbase.

“It's the privilege of my career to work for a business like BBC Studios. You look at the variety of quality on YouTube and in the era of AI, and then you look at what BBC Studios stands for, value-wise and quality-wise, and its investment into culture. The creative industries and the economic value that we create, it feels important.”  

Macintyre has also given back some of that experience through a two-year stint as the chair for Talent Sessions at WACL and now as an advisor to Male Allies UK.

The world of marketing, according to Shelley Macintyre

What do you enjoy most about being a marketer?

Well, I would say it's changed over the last 20 years. The thread has been curiosity and really tuning into why people do what they do, and how we can better serve people. What I love about how the industry has pivoted and again, has guided my choices, is that we have a real responsibility in society as marketers to build brands and to shape and nudge people's behaviours in a way that's positive for society.

I'd say 10 years ago, there was a lot more spin and what claims can you get away with to serve the business. That hasn't changed across all verticals, but certainly in the choices I've made, this is much more about how you genuinely and authentically show up to serve people for what they need. And I'll always make my career choices based on, ‘How do we positively nudge into culture?’. Because that's the right and ethical thing to do, but I would say marketing has, and is, massively improving its reputation in that respect, although not in all verticals.

What are your main aims at BBC Studios?

The real focus for the Brands and Licensing division is connecting and how we partner internally in BBC Studios, as well as outside of BBC Studios. How do we drive our positive cultural impact through the content and transform our world-class shows into world-class brands?  There is a difference. A BBC show’s founding principle is to inform, educate, and entertain and there's a strong connection into how we build and support British talent and invest back into the creative industry. That's still at the heart of everything we do. But transforming those shows into brands is another thing. It’s taking the show or the brand, beyond the screen and into people's lives where they can either express their fandom for that show or actually shape how they are viewed the world and then how they exercise that through their other choices.

We've got fantastic titles that sit under BBC Earth: Frozen Planet, Planet Earth, Walking With Dinosaurs, and Solar System. We have 10 million subscribers on YouTube who are there to learn and inspire their curiosity in the natural world. We have a strong program for taking that into STEM education and learning for families and parents, and their children, and exploring that globally.

So how do we take the fantastic knowledge and expert content into practical things to support education and learning, and also into physical STEM kits that you can buy off the shelf in-store? From show to shelf. How do you take the goodness of the show and transform those into either products or further content that people find useful and engaging and entertaining, but in an active way, rather than passively, when they're sitting on their sofas watching the show?

If you take an example like Bluey - a cartoon that you could just sit and enjoy and have a laugh along with - but actually, we see millions of parents inspired by the antics of the Heeler family and Bandit, the dad dog, who is, for many, an inspiring role model, and we're shaping people's approach to parenting and encouraging that strong emotional bonding and learning together with their kids. How do we take that into our commercial partnerships? We have a big global partnership with Lego Duplo - the additional content we make off the back of that supports parents and children learning together and bonding. That's taking the show to shelf.

At a holistic level, I talk about what's going to be the cultural value that we create, and what is the commercial value that we create for BBC Studios, but also for our partners. So Bluey is one of the big success stories for businesses we've built for other people as well. For our licensing partners - we have over 450 of them - we've built businesses for them with Bluey. It's not just commercial value for us, but it's commercial value in society more broadly, so that that really matters and that's why I love getting up in the morning to be part of that success story.

Can you learn lessons from 'Bluey', or is it just too much of a phenomenon to transfer elsewhere?

I'd say both. Definitely. It's a phenomenon inspired by Joe Brumm’s absolute creative genius, but creating a successful brand beyond that show takes craft and talent. We have an incredibly talented team, and there is the science that sits behind it because you have to be really clear about what that brand stands for and be clear what you're saying ‘yes’ to and what you're saying ‘no’ to. And we say ‘no’ to a lot. We could be doing a lot more, but then you're going to stymie the brand life cycle. You don't want to overextend and overexpose a brand. And you need to keep that good, healthy growth so that people return, because if you show up everywhere but without meaning, you start to erode that brand power in the market. It's only a seven-year-old show/brand, so it’s still early days.

The approach I'm taking is: How does 'Bluey' become the next Mickey Mouse? A true icon for generations to come? And that takes discipline. It takes longer than seven years as well. Part of Bluey’s success is its multi-generational appeal. That's what's taking it to scale.

How do you deal with the voracious Fandom of some of these brands, though? Doctor Who, Top Gear, Bluey?

You've hit the nail on the head. This is no longer a top-down approach: the brand is at the top, and it communicates out. That's not how the world works anymore. You give your brand into the hands of the fans, and then they can create their own content very easily now.  It has to come back to core principles: What's happening in culture? What does your brand stand for, and how? Where do you find the point of connection? And you remain clear as a business what your brand stands for, and navigate your choices and decisions. How the fans then choose to create content and conversations out in the community, you have to let those roll. If the brand comes in and tries to control it, it generally doesn't work out well. The brand can be part of the conversation but not controlling the conversation. So we need to ensure we're showing up in the right places, in the right way, to be part of the conversation.

I’ve recently come back from San Diego Comic Con and to be there with the fans, to see the incredible Dugga Doo [Doctor Who] outfits that people have created and puppets. Just to see the extreme lengths that people have gone to to celebrate their favourite elements of Doctor Who and to be there, close and personal with them, that is truly people taking on the brand.

What excites you as a marketer?

I always I think marketers/business people, you have to think about the delivery of today, but also what's coming in two or three years. I split my time working on what's coming down the pipeline. For us, it's building current business, for example, keeping Bluey healthy, whilst looking at how we're building out the rest of our portfolio, where we're going to invest next, how we're going to continue to be a leader in kids and family, but also bring through shows that we don't even know are coming yet.

That's where we work, really, in close partnership with our production team to shape the concepts and look at where a show has the potential to become a brand. We’re building out the future portfolio whilst keeping the current one thriving.

Is there a particular campaign you're proud of in your career?

The Sipsmith work that we did with Ogilvy that won three Cannes awards, was a hugely proud moment. Being a start-up to then, having produced a piece of communication that's been acclaimed in that way, is incredible. I'm very proud of that.

I'm also really proud of my Coca-Cola days, when we massively exploded the growth of Coke Zero because it was very small in Western Europe. Diet Coke/Coke Light was enormous. I’m really proud of the work we did on that campaign.

What excites you most about the future of marketing?

The thing that's genuinely frustrating in the industry, is that everything is moving so fast. How do you move fast enough as a business to keep up with the pace of change? But I say that with a caveat, it's also knowing what you need to move faster versus what you don't, because one of the most valuable ways to build strong brands is to maintain consistency. How do we move and innovate fast enough as businesses to have first-mover advantage, be relevant in the market and shape and be part of emerging cultural trends, and do that in a way that's true to the brand? And you're not just being tokenistic and moving so fast that you lose your way.

But also, are we moving fast enough on the right things? It's complex, and you just have to keep on coming back to asking, ’What's the science stuff that we know, and we have to really remain doggedly true to?’ and then, ‘What's the art stuff in the creative, like the magic sauce that's going to make this suddenly take off?’ You don't always get it right. Rory Sutherland talks about it - he talks about it as an alchemy, and it really is an alchemy of all those things.

What is it you look for when you're appointing an agency or working with an agency?

For me, it's always come down to the people I partner with and problem-solving together and working with a team who are as passionate about getting the brief right as they are about the creative solution. It astounds me, even to this day, how much marketers and agencies can rush through that briefing phase. I try not to write the brief on my own. I'll give a general ‘This is our business challenge. This is what we're looking for. This is what we know strategically about our brand and that we never want to change. This is what we know about the audience. This is what we know about the commercial context.’ But then getting in a room and thrashing through that with an incredible planning brain to co-own the writing of that brief, for me, I'm looking for a partner who wants to work like that.

And then, maybe controversially, I do think creative agencies tend to have a house style, even if they say they don't. I know all agencies can do everything. My Spidey sense – and I've worked with a lot of creative agencies – is that there is a house style. And so it’s finding the right people married with the type of house style you're looking that will work for your brand in question.

Ogilvy was fantastic for Sipsmith because they're so brilliant at British brands, whereas Mother were absolutely brilliant for Dr Pepper because of their Irreverence and willingness to really push the envelope on creative bravery. Again, all creative agencies, I'm sure will say they're creatively brave, but some just do it slightly differently.