Changing perceptions to drive installs for TikTok

Summary

TikTok, one of the fastest growing social media applications in the world with more than 1 billion users globally, needed to accelerate its growth in Europe.

After growing organically with a younger audience after the acquisition of Musical.ly, they needed to appeal to a larger demographic and drive installs amongst 18-34 year olds.

By identifying key areas of interest and influence, we created communications that were relevant to this older audience and as a result we successfully changed perceptions of the platform amongst our target audience and drove installs to beat our target by 30%.

Challenge

Through ethnographic research and by observing people’s digital journey and first impressions of TikTok, we soon identified that not only there was a lack of understanding of what the app did but also it failed to make a connection or appear relevant to our target audience of 18-34 year olds with a “not-for-me” perception. Further research into social conversations and emotional topic analysis also revealed some key areas – such as frequent advertising –evoked strong negative reactions to the brand.

Solution

We ensured relevance throughout our media approach from content, creative, context and channels, which was all executed at scale.

Through our initial social listening research we created a campaign that focussed on three key areas that the 18-34 yr old audience was talking about; Fashion, Health & Fitness, and Food. We had content created for each vertical, key influencers identified in each area, and chose relevant channels (OOH, Display & Social Media) and environments for each theme.

The campaign was spearheaded by Joe Wicks, an influencer of mass appeal within this group, who created content and amplified it on all his social channels and encouraged people to download TikTok to get more bespoke content.

Results

The campaign was extremely successful in driving installs where we over-delivered our forecast of close to 100,000 installs by 30% and despite a brand led campaign delivered a CPA in line with performance channels.

The full campaign, complete with user generated content, celebrity shoots and influencer content was delivered all within 2 weeks, from planning to delivery and delivered a total reach of 4.1 Million, 803K Video Views, a CPV of £0.03 and an above industry engagement rate of 4.8%.

Ipsos research also suggests that our efforts successfully contributed in shifting perceptions away from it being an app for lip-syncing for a young audience amongst 18-34 year olds.