Full Slate Media
Case Studies
We run the same playbook for creators and brands, audience-led formats, data-led packaging, TV-grade production and a commercial strategy built for the platform rather than borrowed from television.
Below are two case studies one from the world of horizontal long form content (Charlie DIYte) on YouTube and one focused on vertical short form content (Nelly Ghaffar) on Instagram and TikTok.
Case Study 01 · Longform · Creator Growth · Brand Partnerships
Charlie DIYte
How we're growing one of the UK's most trusted DIY channels, and turning it into a premium brand partner.
+87%
Views per video since FSM
Median, last 5 uploads vs the 9 before · YouTube Studio
The channel
A trusted DIY voice. Run by one man.
Charlie White, an ex-lawyer and self-taught renovator, built one of the UK's go-to DIY channels from a half-finished country cottage.
88M
Lifetime views
Built on evergreen, project-led DIY
488K
Subscribers
On YouTube, Sep 2026
795K
Views in 28 days
26 Aug – 22 Sep 2026
62.5%
UK audience
The core home-improvement market
2014
Channel founded
Every method tested in his own home
The challenge
A one-person operation. Charlie filmed, edited, presented and managed everything himself, sustainable at a 2–3 week cadence, but with no room to grow without help.
What we did
Stories first. DIY second.
Our read of his channel data: Charlie's top videos aren't DIY videos, they're stories that happen to involve DIY. So we rebuilt the packaging around stakes.
01 · The trigger
Who's affected
A person the viewer cares about, like Charlie, his mum, his home.
02 · The stakes
What went wrong
A disaster, a mistake, a race against the clock.
03 · The pull
The open question
Can it be fixed? What should you never do?
In practice
“I RUINED my Patio — Don't Make These 5 Mistakes!” · 186K views · top video of the last 12 months.
The growth plan
01
Sharper packaging
Titles, thumbnails, descriptions
02
More views per video
Stories that travel further
03
Bigger brand deals
Proposition, rate card, deals
04
A funded editor
Charlie out of the edit suite
05
Faster cadence
A banked, two-week pipeline
The results
Views per video, up 87%.
The five videos made with FSM run at a 90K median, up from 48K on the nine videos before.
Typical views per video · median · views to date
+48%
vs the 12-month median
61K → 90K
89%
Evergreen
Last 28 days' views from older videos
Views to date, 24 Sep 2026. The FSM videos are the newest and still climbing, so the uplift is conservative.
The commercial upside
Brands pay more to reach DIY buyers.
More views in a premium niche means every brand partnership is worth more, and the proof sits in the numbers.
YouTube ad CPM by niche · £ per 1,000 views
Nearly 3× entertainment. Home-goods retailers and tool brands push DIY's CPM ceiling to £10.58, against £3.78 for entertainment.
US-audience ad CPMs · Brightbean, Mar 2026 · converted at £1 = $1.32
Engagement rate · 1.5×
Education & how-to median · SociaVault, Apr 2026
Average retention · 1.8×
Educational how-to · Retention Rabbit, 2025
78%
of Charlie's viewers are in the UK, US, Australia & Canada, top-tier ad markets (vidIQ).
Premium niche. Engaged audience. Rising views. Above-average value per video.
Case Study 02 · Shortform · Creator Growth · Audience Build
Nelly Ghaffar
How we took a 250k side-hustle following and built it into 7.6 million views a month across two very different audiences, in six weeks, without asking her to post more.
7.6M
Views in a month
Instagram 2.94M · Facebook 4.70M · Organic · No paid support
The creator
A Bake Off name. Built around night shifts.
Nelly Ghaffar, Great British Bake Off 2024, New Year's Bake Off 2025, author of Be Free. Slovak-born, based on the Dorset coast. She built a quarter of a million followers around a full-time nursing job.
260.3K
Instagram followers
Sept 2026
2024
Great British Bake Off
Plus New Year's Bake Off 2025
Be Free
Published author
Part memoir, part cookbook
12
Months she's given herself
To turn this into a business
Zero
Brand partnerships
Nothing signed, ever
The challenge
Inconsistent, not lazy. Something strong would go out, then a gap, then something that didn't look much like the last thing. No fixed formats, no calendar, nothing banked, and views that were unremarkable outside a couple of viral hits.
What we did
She didn't need to work harder. She needed rails.
Nobody had to tell Nelly to post more. She was already posting plenty, and she was good at it. What she didn't have was a system telling her what to make, so we spent six weeks on audience mapping, formats and packaging before a single new video went out.
01 · The shapes
Strict formats
A small set of repeatable, recognisable builds. Hooks that land inside three seconds and structure that holds past the usual drop-off.
02 · The cadence
A fixed calendar
Dates she doesn't get to move. Most creators treat cadence as optional. We treat it as the product.
03 · The bank
A safety buffer
A recording pipeline with banked content behind it, so she never scrambles for a slot and never posts filler to fill one.
04 · The order
Sequenced launch
YouTube deliberately held back until the audience build was done, so long-form launches into an audience that already exists.
In practice
Same person. Same workload. Clearer instructions. Nelly did not pause posting during the build, the only thing that changed was what she posted.
The results
2.94 million views. Thirty days. Organic.
Instagram, 15 August – 13 September 2026. No paid support behind any of it, and an audience that comes back roughly four times a month.
2.94M
Views
15 Aug – 13 Sep 2026
735K
Accounts reached
Unique
141K
Interactions
Rounded
19.2%
Engagement by reach
Interactions per account reached
23.4K
Profile visits
Driven organically
The funnel · Instagram · 30 days
The second channel
Instagram is who she reaches. Facebook is how many.
The same formats pushed through Facebook Reels produced a bigger number than Instagram, and a completely different audience. Two channels, two products, two price tags.
4.70M
Facebook views
17 Aug – 13 Sep 2026
4.19M
Viewers reached
Near-single exposure
+574%
On the prior 28 days
Spike-weighted, see note
99%
From Reels
Zero paid promotion
Engagement by reach · interactions per account reached
How we sell it
Depth on Instagram, breadth on Facebook. Blended into one number, both get mispriced. Sold separately, awareness budgets buy Facebook scale and brand-affinity budgets buy the Instagram audience.
The commercial upside
The audience brands actually pay for.
Overwhelmingly female. Overwhelmingly 35-plus. US-majority, UK-second. In grocery, kitchen, homeware and food, this is the household decision-maker, not the bystander.
Instagram audience · Insights export · Sept 2026
Nelly Ghaffar in numbers
7.6M
Views in a month
Instagram + Facebook, organic
19.2%
Instagram engagement
By accounts reached
88%
US + UK on Instagram
85.8% women, 73.1% over 35
6
Weeks to results
Strategy to first uploads
Start the conversation
Want results like these?
Whether you're a creator ready to grow or a brand ready to be seen, let's talk.
Full Slate Media Ltd · 10 Upper Grosvenor Road · Tunbridge Wells · Kent · TN1 2EP · Company No. 16340968