The American Revolution, a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt premiered in 2025 on PBS. The PBS marketing campaign aimed to drive linear and cross platform viewership and spark and facilitate a national conversation about the importance of understanding U.S. history, the country’s founding and the values associated with liberty, democracy, and self-governance.
The campaign targeted history lovers and Ken Burns documentary fans in the core PBS audience, but crucially aimed to dramatically expand its reach towards younger and more diverse audiences. The campaign strategy called for PBS to develop a multi-phase campaign aimed at the target audiences with the goal to make the familiar feel fresh again:
· What you didn’t learn in school
· Fresh (and surprising) perspective on the war
· Little-known stories and experiences of the real people behind the myths and famous quotes
· Stories and themes that feel timely and relevant to America today
· Stories about everyday people – including indigenous, the enslaved, and women – who participated in and witnessed the war.
For Ken Burns’ The American Revolution, PBS set out to do more than launch a documentary—we set out to create a national moment. In a politically charged year, our goal was to spark a broad, bipartisan conversation about the nation’s founding and ensure that audiences across generations saw this series as essential viewing.
To position The American Revolution as required viewing, we executed high-impact print and digital takeovers across The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal; captured millions’ of viewers attention in CBS’s 60 Minutes; and ran across cable networks spanning the ideological spectrum. More than 100 million impressions were intentionally placed in trusted, bipartisan news sources to align the lessons of 1776 with today’s headlines. The result: cultural traction that extended beyond media metrics. Google search interest for “Ken Burns” and “American Revolution” peaked in mid-November, and PBS earned its highest one-week streaming total ever.
To deepen that resonance and tap into multi-generational appeal, we partnered with creators Kahlil Greene, Jon Townsend, and Renée Elise Goldsberry, whose content generated 3.6 million views and drove authentic engagement with younger audiences. Their storytelling reframed the Revolution not as distant history, but as living context.
On social, the organic campaign strove to spark interest in the subject and sustain a national conversation around the importance of understanding U.S. history, the nation’s founding, and the enduring values of liberty, democracy, and self-governance. We produced 100+ unique social assets of various formats, sharing them across Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Facebook. Campaign creative not only spanned platforms, but also reached many audiences across the United States, inviting both new and longtime viewers to reconnect with new perspectives of America's story.
PBS social followed the film’s directors as they toured America – visiting PBS stations and holding event at iconic locations from the Revolution. PBS partnered with historians at both Mount Vernon at Charlottesville to create original social content, show our history with modern eyes and bring the characters and locations to life.
The American Revolution website aimed to deliver SEO results within a crowded genre, deliver a deeper streaming experience for history super fans, and drive engagement across PBS.org and YouTube. In addition to streaming the episodes, clips and additional features, the site showcased a suite of interactive and fun features, including a battle map, timeline and a brand-new history trivia game.
In the end, The American Revolution wasn’t just a premiere—it was a cultural event. By combining scale with intention, premium journalism with modern creators, and bipartisan reach with generational relevance, PBS proved that 250-year-old history can still unite—and captivate— a nation.
The American Revolution was the most-successful cross-platform campaign ever for PBS.
The series crossed the 4 billion minutes watched mark, a testament to it’s impact in culture. The paid strategy focused on relevance, context, and cultural impact. We met audiences of all ages and political leanings—trusted news environments across the political spectrum—delivering more than 200 million impressions and 22 million video completes over the course of the campaign. In total, the campaign reached 15.6 million people—95% of our addressable audience.
The series ultimately surpassed its streaming benchmark by 160%, generating more than 11 million streams and becoming PBS’s first series to break into Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 streaming rankings. Pre-premiere media drove a 26% year-over-year lift in PBS app installs, with more than 150,000 installs during opening weekend alone—demonstrating that audiences weren’t just interested; they were preparing to watch.
The social campaign was the most successful ever for PBS, with 23M organic impressions, 13.4M organic video views and an engagement rate more than double its benchmark.
The website delivered immediate SEO power – ranking for 16.1M non-branded search terms and appearing in more than 23M search results. Interactive features for the series drove significant engagement, and the battle map is the most popular digital feature ever for a Ken Burns film.
Perhaps most meaningfully was who engaged. Contrary to expectations, audiences under 45 and over 45 engaged with our digital and social content equally, proving that history—when framed with urgency and authenticity—resonates across generations.