There’s a huge misconception that TikTok is exclusively for lip-sync and dance videos, but, it’s so much more than that. TikTok caters for every interest that you can think of, whether it’s comedy or beauty and style, animals or arts and crafts, daily life or health and fitness.
In TikTok South Africa’s first ever branded film campaign, we showed people that whatever makes them tick, we have it all on TikTok. We did this by running through a variety of descriptive words that end or feature “-tic” in them. Then, we paired each descriptor with captivating videos that already exist on the TikTok platform. This gave people a sneak peak of what it’s like to use the app and it made the films feel more authentic. For an app as entertaining as TikTok, we didn’t need to shoot anything – our content could vouch for itself. And, by using user-generated content, we showed support for local TikTokers. We also made sure that the films had a unique TikTok flair by adding emojis, interfaces and effects. TikTok is incredibly interactive, so we made sure that our subtitles weren’t just subtitles, they had to interact with the rest of the content.
We released the branded films across other social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which meant that while people were scrolling on more mundane and curated platforms, we gave them a hint of the omg-this-is-amazing content that is on TikTok. By showing people how diverse and entertaining our app is, we gave them intense FOMO and a reason to download the app.
Everything from the robotic voice to the illustrations was created to draw people in and keep them watching, which we successfully did. That’s why our branded content films have had over 1 million views across all of our platforms just 2 weeks, and the numbers are still rising. So, whether someone was intrigued by the quirky script, the colourful animations or they just recognised one of their friends in any of the ads, one thing is for sure: the films broke through the clutter and got people interested in TikTok.