TellyCast Digital Video Awards 2026 has named Love Is In The Blood from Channel 4 and Word On The Curb as the winner of the Branded Content Series category.
The award recognises series that build sustained audience relationships through entertaining, story-led branded content, with judges looking for formats that successfully combine engagement, creativity and long-term audience value.
Created for NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), the series is a blind dating format set inside a Brixton blood donation centre and fronted by Channel 4.0 regular Adeola Patronne. Each episode pairs donors on dates that last exactly the duration of a blood donation, using romance and human connection to reframe blood donation as something accessible, relatable and culturally relevant for 18–34-year-olds.
The campaign was designed to address low donor uptake among young people, particularly in urban and ethnically diverse audiences, by moving beyond education and instead showing what donation feels like in practice. The creative hook plays on the idea of “types” in dating and reinterprets it through blood types, using a familiar concept to introduce unfamiliar health behaviour in an engaging, non-clinical way.
Across the series, daters are separated by a divide and take part in ice-breaking games while giving blood, allowing conversation and chemistry to develop without visual distraction. The format surfaces discussion around donation experiences, including themes such as sickle cell awareness in the Black community, low iron deferrals and personal motivations tied to family health experiences.
Produced by Word On The Curb, the series was built as a YouTube-first format with an always-on rollout strategy, supported by short-form content across social platforms to drive discovery and reach. The edit is structured for strong retention, building towards a recurring emotional payoff where participants decide whether they would like to meet face-to-face after donating.
Judges praised the series as a “fun and creative” approach to an important subject, highlighting its strong talent-led execution and smart brand integration, with clear potential to evolve into a long-term returning format.
