Richard Farleigh
- Client Richard Farleigh
- Project Always on content
- Partner Richard Farleigh
Background
Former BBC Dragon and serial entrepreneur Richard Farleigh came to Viral Tribe with an established reputation across investment, entrepreneurship and business, but a relatively limited digital content footprint.
Our brief was to translate Richard’s experience, personality and point of view into a contemporary content proposition, building an audience around Richard himself rather than simply trading on his existing profile.
The Challenge
Richard has an unusually broad range of credentials: investor, mathematician, entrepreneur, former Dragon and commentator on business, economics and politics. The challenge was identifying which parts of that persona would resonate most strongly with a digital audience, and creating formats capable of building both reach and sustained engagement.
Rather than assume a single podcast or social format would provide the answer, we needed to test different subjects, formats and editorial treatments to understand where Richard had the greatest potential to cut through.
The Solution
We developed and tested a series of long and short-form content initiatives designed to lean into different aspects of Richard’s personality and expertise.
The Boardroom created a long-form interview format in which Richard sat down with iconic and up-and-coming entrepreneurs, founders and business leaders. Dragon’s Den Watchalong used Richard’s first-hand experience as a former Dragon to revisit pitches and offer the insight, analysis and stories that only someone who had actually sat in the chair could provide.
Alongside these formats, we built an always-on social strategy around Richard’s perspective on major political, economic, investment and business stories, rapidly testing subjects, hooks and formats and using performance data to inform what we made next.
The result was a content ecosystem rather than a single show: long-form IP building depth and authority, supported by highly responsive social content designed for discovery and reach.
The Impact
In just six months, Richard’s social footprint grew by more than 1,000%, transforming his digital presence and establishing a substantial new audience around his ideas, experience and personality.
The content has since generated more than 3 million video views in a 60-day period, while Richard’s LinkedIn content alone regularly reaches 1–2 million impressions per week.
More importantly, the process identified a repeatable editorial proposition for Richard: combining the authority of a highly successful investor and former Dragon with an accessible, distinctive point of view on the people, ideas and events shaping business and the economy.
1,000%+ growth in social footprint. 3m+ video views in 60 days. 1–2m LinkedIn impressions per week.
