Social video content is governed by the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) and CAP who provide clear guidelines on the positioning of commercial relationships and Vloggers' editorial content. The guidelines outline that commercial involvement needs to be obviously identifiable and labelling must be timely and clear. However, the reason brands wish to work with Vloggers is to engage with their active community and deliver the brand message in an authentic and compelling way. The skill comes from delivering content within these guidelines that remains editorially robust as well as authentic to the Vlogger's style/channel. If the content is not perceived as credible and relevant, the Vlogger is at risk of driving away their fans and the brand loses all benefit of the association and positive sentiment amongst the audience. Aside from the governing bodies, the audience themselves are harsh critics and positive sentiment is a clear indicator of whether a brand has helped produce content that is deemed relevant.

We recruited eight vloggers who made videos about LifeSkills that were aired on YouTube channels and promoted via Global’s radio, online, and social channels.

The vloggers directed viewers to Instagram, inviting them to post selfies about a LifeSkill they would like help developing - and they did so, in their thousands.

Then we contacted all of them, offering advice and course enrolment and selected a lucky few who received a week's work experience with their favorite vlogger.

They co-starred in the vlogger’s next video, demonstrated the new LifeSkills they had learned and were showcased to millions of followers, who in turn, could find out more about LifeSkills they had seen.

We smashed our awareness targets, our Vlogger videos were watched 1.8 million times, generated over 31,000 likes and received hundreds of positive comments.

Over 3,000 teenagers entered a selfie, with over half opting in to find out more about Barclays LifeSkills when we re-contacted them.

Best of all, we over-delivered on our 25,000 target sign-ups by 10%.

And signups are still coming in months later, as the power of word of mouth and a very different approach to Bank communication continues to work its magic.