Scaling Creative at the Speed of TikTok

Last week, we delivered two webinars with our partners at TikTok on, you guessed it, "Scaling Creative at the Speed of TikTok." These sessions aimed to empower marketers with the tools and knowledge needed to excel on the platform. Jesse Ketonen, our co-founder and CEO, along with Giorgio Scarabattoli, Head of Partnerships, shared the challenges, key insights, tactics and strategies needed to drive growth through short-form video.

TikTok’s impact on consumer behavior is profound and the platform can’t be ignored or underinvested in. It reshapes how users discover and engage with brands and how they move down the purchase funnel. Not only is it the number one media destination from a Time Spent POV, but recent data reveals that 81% of users who made a Back to School purchase acknowledged that TikTok influenced their decision-making process. This statistic highlights TikTok's pivotal role in the consumer journey, from awareness to conversion, making it an indispensable channel for performance marketers aiming to drive sales and build brand affinity. As we approach BTS planning season, this data is hyper-relevant and actionable.

The Importance of Creative Performance Management

Creative performance management emerged is a critical theme in our presentation and a critical component of our platform. According to a Nielsen / NCS study, advertising creative drives nearly half (49%) of incremental sales. An earlier NCS study actually found that, when strong, creative is responsible for 89% of in-market success! These data points underscore the necessity for high-caliber creative in achieving effective advertising outcomes. It’s that simple. CREATIVE MATTERS! But coming out of the display era, brand and agency productions haven’t shifted fast enough.

Marketers must focus on systematic planning, production, and analytics to manage creative performance effectively, ensuring their campaigns not only attract but also retain audience attention and drive meaningful engagement.

Key Components of Creative Performance

To excel in short-form performance video advertising, marketers must master several key components Each component addresses platforms' unique consumption patterns and user expectations, ensuring that content captures attention and sustains engagement over time.

Here are a few of those critical elements:

• Velocity: On TikTok, content is consumed incredibly fast, with the average burn rate of a creative being just 7 days. Therefore, maintaining a steady stream of fresh, engaging content is essential. Our methodology emphasizes the interlinking of creative strategy with media planning to keep up with this fast-paced environment.
• Authenticity: User-generated content (UGC) is highly valued on TikTok. About 59% of consumers say UGC is the most authentic type of content, and 79% state it significantly influences their purchasing decisions. Brands should leverage this by encouraging authentic, relatable content that resonates with their audience. But even more simply, tactical UGC works better than traditional brand content.
• Variety: A diverse range of creatives is necessary to avoid ad fatigue. For a typical campaign, we recommend producing 12-16 videos per month, considering that content needs to be refreshed every week to maintain engagement.

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Strategies for Effective Creative Production

Achieving high-impact creative production on TikTok requires more than just understanding the platform’s consumption dynamics; it demands innovative strategies that streamline content creation and enhance efficiency. Here are some of the key strategies we discussed:

Modular Production: This approach involves breaking down videos into modular components—such as hooks, body, and calls-to-action (CTA)—which allows for the creation of multiple variants. This modular strategy enhances content flexibility, enabling rapid adaptation to different audience segments and campaign objectives. By creating a library of modular assets, brands can mix and match different variations to produce fresh content quickly. This method not only saves time but also ensures that the content remains new, relevant and engaging. Additionally, modular production facilitates more personalized marketing, allowing brands to continually tailor and optimize their messages towards specific audience demographics, preferences or performance, thereby increasing the likelihood of improvement on key performance indicators.

Rapid Iteration: Focusing on quickly producing and deploying new creative variants allows for swift adaptation to audience feedback and emerging trends. This rapid iteration process helps brands align with TikTok’s fast-paced environment, ensuring their campaigns remain engaging and impactful. By continuously refining and testing new ideas, brands can stay ahead of creative fatigue and keep optimizing towards the consumer personas. This method also facilitates quick recovery from underperforming content, enabling more agile marketing strategies.

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Test-and-Learn Methodology: Our approach emphasizes continuous performance testing and learning. By systematically analyzing the effectiveness of various creative elements, we refine our strategies and improve future campaigns. This data-driven iteration helps identify what resonates best with the audience, driving higher engagement and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). To read more about one of our approaches, please take a look at this post on creative frameworks.

AI Integration: Leveraging AI tools for scriptwriting, scene-planning, video editing, voice-overs and language dubbing enables us to scale creative production efficiently. These tools facilitate quick turnaround times and enable localization for different markets, enhancing the personalization and relevance of the content while maintaining high production standards. The possibilities for efficiency gains utilizing a suite of tools are astronomical.

To showcase some of our work with real examples and results, we highlighted a few recent case studies.

HelloFresh partnered with us to expand their brand visibility and engage a broader audience on TikTok through a dynamic and data-driven creative strategy. Utilizing Shook’s Creative Optimization Platform to drive leads, we produced a wide range of performance creative based on a test and learn approach. By incorporating the new methodology, HelloFresh was able to optimize its media spend and deliver high-performing content to drive results with their target consumer and have their ads perform within the top 6% of their very competitive industry. Read the full case study here.

Another client we featured in the presentation was Bolt, a prominent ride-hailing service. Bolt sought to run a brand awareness campaign in eight countries and four languages. The campaign's goal was to effectively reach TikTok users, increase engagement, and showcase Bolt's services in a relatable way.  Shook designed a comprehensive strategy, delivering assets modified for each country and language to ensure smooth execution across all markets. Key elements included creator collaboration, AI voiceover localization, dynamic creative concepts, and a localized implementation strategy.

The focus was on producing localized content, ensuring smooth integration with TikTok's dynamic platform, and achieving significant reach while maintaining a low cost per acquisition.

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Bolt aimed to elevate their user acquisition efforts by tapping into TikTok's viral nature and engaging content formats. Our strategy involved leveraging TikTok's trends and creating user-generated content (UGC) inspired campaigns that resonated with local markets. By utilizing a test-and-learn methodology, Bolt quickly identified high-performing content variations. The campaign delivered impressive results, showing significant improvements in many key metrics, including:

• 20.0% lower cost per 1,000 users reached
• 55.9% lower cost per complete view
• 19.7% lower CPM

The campaign’s success demonstrated the power of localized, trend-savvy content in driving user engagement and acquisition, proving TikTok’s effectiveness as a platform for rapid growth and market penetration. Explore the full case study here.

The "Scaling Creative at the Speed of TikTok" webinars provided invaluable insights into effectively navigating TikTok's dynamic advertising environment. By focusing on creative performance management and adopting strategies such as modular production, AI integration, rapid iteration, and a test-and-learn methodology, marketers can significantly enhance their campaign effectiveness on TikTok and other short-form video mediums. As consumer behavior continues to evolve, these strategies will be essential in staying ahead of the curve and driving results.

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If you'd like to learn more, book a demo today!

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