McCann Worldgroup Taps Into the Creativity of TikTok

McCann Worldgroup Taps Into the Creativity of TikTok

August 11, 2020

Announcements

Agencies are the cornerstone of creativity and TikTok is always looking to partner with leaders that are discovering new ways of inspiring creativity and bringing joy to our platform. We partnered with McCann Worldgroup, the world’s premier advertising agency, to roll out a global creative competition. Called Inspire with TikTok, the competition aimed to give McCann Worldgroup’s 20,000 employees across the world a chance to explore TikTok’s creative possibilities and uncover how the platform could help its thousands of clients engage with our unique content type and audience.

Launched in late 2019, the competition allowed McCann teams one month to develop a TikTok Branded Hashtag Challenge, a unique format on TikTok that allows users to create content under a hashtag, let content find its right audience, and gather users with shared interests into communities. The competition received almost 100 entries from countries across North America, Europe, Middle East, South America and Asia. The McCann teams' creatives were also encouraged to create a Branded Effect, another format on TikTok that enables advertisers to have deeper engagement with users via interactive and creative effects. Every entry should be designed to drive awareness for a brand or a product of one of McCann Worldgroup’s clients. The Grand Prize winner would have a chance to turn their idea into an official TikTok Branded Effect.

The judging panel – drawn from senior TikTok and McCann Worldgroup staff around the world, as well as Cosette Rinab, @cutiejpp, @afshanrooh, TikTok's top creators from the US, Japan and India – was impressed by the entries as they evaluated the work against five criteria: storytelling, creative idea, visual design, brand relevance, and soundtrack.

After reviewing countless amazing submissions, the judges selected the top three entries:

1. In third place was #SongLanguage, a campaign entered by McCann Birmingham (UK) on behalf of a lollipop brand. The goal was to bring home the challenge of living with deafness. With more than half of people admitting to feeling uncomfortable communicating with someone who is deaf, the campaign aimed to teach people basic sign language by showing them every day phrases taken from music tracks.

2. In second place was a Hashtag Challenge for a shoe brand, an entry from McCann’s team in Oslo (Norway). Using the tried and trusted jump cuts challenge, the idea gave users the chance to show their week’s footwear with a simple-to-use lens set to Craig David’s 7 Days. The challenge was a perfect way to showcase the brand’s wide range of budget footwear styles.

3. The grand prize winner also came from McCann in Oslo, but this time on behalf of The Munch Museum in Oslo, which celebrates the works of Norway’s most famous artist. The new Museum will open in the summer of 2020. #MunchScream took as its inspiration Edvard Munch’s most famous piece – The Scream – and gives TikTok users the opportunity to turn their own screaming faces into an interpretation of the painting.

The judges loved the winning idea and praised it for the “eye-catching idea” and as a “fun way to get people to connect personally with art.”

Our team is now working closely with McCann in Oslo to turn the winning idea into a Branded Effect; watch out for #MunchScream challenge coming soon.

Visit TikTok's site to find out more about Branded Effect and other creative ways to reach your audience with TikTok.