TikTok Ad Awards 2023: Learn from 7 award-winning campaigns
On TikTok, 64% of people want brands to push creative boundaries, and the TikTok Ad Awards are shining a light on the businesses that are doing just that, bringing entertaining content to the TikTok community and driving bottom-line results [1]. Following ceremonies in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the Nordics, top local winners came together in central Amsterdam for the Grand Prix to see who would be crowned the overall Greatest TikTok Europe, and take home bragging rights as the brand that "gets" TikTok.
Keep reading to see the brands that were in the running and who took home the night's top prize. Together, these brands give a masterclass on what it takes to succeed on TikTok, showcasing campaign strategies and ad solutions that drive remarkable results. Could your brand be next?
Greatest TikTok Nordics
IQ | ABBY.WORLD | Wavemaker
Tapping into culture and scaling an important message
Trends that start on TikTok have the ability to move off the platform and create real cultural moments. That's why Swedish brand IQ, armed with an important message, leveraged the platform to launch a culturally defining campaign that empowered young people to drink more responsibly. The brand developed a 10-part TikTok-first drama that portrayed the complex relationships between youth and alcohol, and by utilising TikTok's Duet feature, invited people across Sweden to audition for a role in the drama. The campaign generated hundreds of entertaining videos and leaned into TikTok-first practices such as breaking the fourth wall to engage directly with viewers, using native text and creating a lo-fi aesthetic that felt authentic and allowed the audience to connect with the topic on a personal level. These videos were then promoted using Spark Ads, TopView Ads, Top Feed Ads and In-Feed Ads. The campaign ended up generating enough audition videos to surpass the brand's target by 910%, and to help source the perfect candidate to play the role in the drama, all through TikTok. All in all, the campaign drove more than 16 million views, 156,000 likes, a 447% increase in followers, a 13.9% increase in ad recall and 13.6% increase in awareness.
Greatest TikTok Italy
Barilla | LePub | OMD
Building an audience of millions and starting a movement
Pasta brand Barilla wanted to build an audience and start a movement around leftover pasta and food waste. On TikTok, content with #pasta has around 30 billion video views and an engagement rate of 9.6%, so the brand chose TikTok to launch their #SecondLifePasta campaign. Using a TikTok-native feature, the Stitch tool, the brand jumped on the most-loved pasta videos already on the platform and partnered with food creators who 'stitched' brand new recipes from their leftovers onto the videos, creating hundreds of delicious inspirational videos for saving pasta, available to everyone around the world. The brand leveraged a number of solutions including TikTok Lead Generation, TopView Ads, Top Feed Ads and In-Feed Ads to increase awareness and engagement. The campaign drove over 110 million video views, resulting in approximately 500,000 dishes being saved per year. Due to the brand's success on TikTok, #SecondLifePasta recipes became a digital cookbook, a restaurant experience, a cooking show and a masterclass, showing that brands can harness TikTok to create relatable and inspirational content that truly makes a difference off the platform as well as on it.
Greatest TikTok France
Burger King | Buzzman | Kr Wavemaker
Creating a viral moment with an unexpected campaign
How do you get one of the most famous brands in the world to follow you on TikTok? Burger King harnessed TikTok to create a fun, viral moment by partnering with an unexpected creator (trading content creator @masdak_trading) to encourage users to try and get their attention to win a free Whopper. But they could only get the brand's attention by creating content! And this led to amazing engagement – users had to get noticed without knowing how to do it, so they had to use all the creativity that the platform allows, for example liking all the videos on the account at once, creating special "Burger King subscriber accounts", singing, making logos, and so much more. In the end, Burger King's campaign achieved more than 20 million views, one million likes, 20,000 comments, 15,000 shares and netted them over 100,000 new followers, showing that having a playful approach to community engagement really works for the TikTok audience.
Greatest TikTok DACH
Nikon Europe | charles & charlotte GmbH + ODALINE GmbH
Partnering with creators to revitalise brand image
A brand's image is important – and no-one knows that more than camera brand Nikon Europe. To transform their image and increase awareness and consideration among a new generation of photographers and videographers, Nikon launched their TikTok "Mystery Box Challenge". The brand sent a number of creators "Mystery Boxes" – which were filled with a handful of mirrors, yellow paper and the Nikon CI – and asked them to create a photo or video shoot with the Mystery Box. The campaign was TikTok-first from start to finish: the brand used Creative Centre to explore and discover trends, Creator Marketplace to source creators, the Commercial Content Library for music and CapCut to edit. The result? Authentic, innovative and artistic shoots that really positioned Nikon in a fresh light. And drove incredibly strong results: over 25 million views, 177,700 likes, 1,875 shares and 554 comment. Further, the brand saw a 16.8% lift in brand awareness, a 19% increase in users seeing Nikon as a modern video brand and a 4.55% increase in users considering buying a Nikon camera.
Greatest TikTok Poland
Rossmann Polska
Spreading awareness for a unique value proposition and reaching new customers
Through the power of sound, TikTok gives brands an easy and fun way to connect with new communities, become innovative storytellers, and scale messages. Rossmann Polska knew that catchy sounds have the potential to spark movements so they centred their awareness campaign around a fun rap that they knew would resonate with their target audience. Leaning into the entertaining and dynamic elements that TikTok is known for such as dance routines and scrappy visuals, the brand put their iconic Rossmann fleece front and centre of the campaign and filmed the videos in a Rossman drugstore. The brand used CapCut to edit the videos and then boosted them as Spark Ads, resulting in the videos being viewed more than 13 million times, receiving a total of almost 350,000 likes and being saved more than 35,000 times, showing that thinking TikTok-first is a surefire way to connecting with consumers.
Greatest TikTok Spain
TOUS | Está Pasando
Leveraging engagement and creativity to launch a new product
TikTok is the home of joy and creativity, which is why nail jewellery brand TOUS harnessed the power of the platform and the TikTok community to not only launch a campaign but to help create a new product too. The brand partnered with lifestyle creator Gigi Vives and leveraged TikTok ad solutions including Instant Page, Spark Ads and Interactive Add-ons to drive awareness for their campaign, thereby boosting their reach to over 30.5 million users. To create their new TOUS Claws jewellery kits, the brand collaborated with two popular nail artists, Nails Galore and Divine Nails, who co-created the kits in two live sessions. Then, more than 40,000 people voted for their favourite creation. The demand for TOUS Claws exceeded all expectations: stock quickly sold out and the brand added thousands of new followers to the TOUS community, demonstrating how businesses can leverage the platform for community building and ideation all the way through to purchase.
Greatest TikTok UK
Glow For It | Develop Digital
Fostering community loyalty and driving sell-out results
TikTok can be used by brands big and small to drive business impact. Small business brand Glow For It created authentic, TikTok-native content for their conversion campaign by sharing real results from real customers, and fostered trust and intimacy by speaking directly to camera. To scale their messaging, the brand boosted their content as In-Feed Ads and Spark Ads, resulting in a 9% purchase rate and a 4.58x ROAS, more than double their target. At the beginning of their campaign, the brand sold over one month's worth of stock in less than 48 hours, and in the last year, the brand has been able to launch over 12 new SKUs, with a further five launching before the end of the year. The brand has also been able to hire a team of over 6 employees and move into a full-time office space, all due to TikTok's ability to empower brands to foster deeper relationships with their customers.
This campaign has allowed me to scale my small business more than I could have ever imagined. It has propelled my business years ahead of where we planned to be. The return we have seen from this ad spend has provided me with the profit needed to invest in new product development and expanding our team of native TikTok creators. I will be forever grateful to this platform and all that it has offered.
Greatest TikTok Europe
And the winner is...
In the end, Barilla were given top honours by the jury for their #SecondLifePasta campaign and took home the coveted Greatest TikTok Europe prize! Barilla perfectly showcased how to use the platform to build and engage an audience and spread an important message far and wide.
What a year it's been for creativity on TikTok. Brands are continuing to develop a greater understanding of the community and how to reach them, while pushing creative boundaries, allowing them to build deeper trust and connections and produce undeniable results. All the brands and agencies nominated have truly captured the authentic, joyous, and entertaining content that is the bedrock of TikTok – but Barilla really harnessed the community, creating a two-way conversation, not only to create some incredible meals, but also to drive a sustainability message. Creative that's made with a TikTok-first mindset drives the strongest results for brands big and small.
Ester Miozzo, Global Brand Equity and Communication Director, Barilla, said: "There is an amazing idea at the heart of this project about reducing food waste and we're immensely proud to have delivered a meaningful message in an entertaining way with our campaign. The magic was created when we bought our team, our Agencies Partners, together with TikTok to ignite a creative spark, crafting something perfectly in keeping with the nature of the brand. We activated TikTok first for the campaign because it gave us the opportunity to connect with people that we may not normally reach and, importantly, have fun with them – while landing an important message that in the end is about a 'Sign of Love'."
Ultimately, the TikTok Ad Awards and the incredible selection of brands that were shortlisted show that the advertising industry is embracing everything that TikTok embodies, leaning into entertainment, culture, creators and relatable creative to build campaigns that truly resonate with their audiences.
Could you be next? We have a host of tools and resources designed to make creating for TikTok easy. For more tips, explore our Creative Center or check out our Creative Codebook. If you'd like to learn more about the TikTok Ad Awards, sign up for our newsletter.
Sources:
1. TikTok Marketing Science EU Understanding TikTok’s Impact on Culture 2022 conducted by Flamingo Group