The Objective
Stelo Stories (An Israeli-based award winning global production company) and the DuSable Museum of African American History partnered together with the goal of raising awerness for Black history and bringing to life the incredible true story of a child who changed history. They were looking to showcase the story Olaudah Equiano, a child who was taken into slavery in the 18th century, in a relatable and authentic way that would help get the young generation involved and engaged. The main goal for the activity was to raise awareness and get people talking about this important and sensitive topic.
The Solution
Resonating with the typical way people experience each other's lives today (social media), they wanted to tell Equiano's story the same way - the idea was innovative yet straightforward - What if a kid in Africa in the 18th century had TikTok?
The videos, which were produced based on the true-life events written in the memoir by Olaudah Equiano, were distributed as sequential stories throughout the TikTok For You feed. Using a native creative approach, the client took its completed film and adjusted the edit to fit TikTok’s platform and audience, with support and advice from TikTok’s cLab.
The story was divided into 5 chapters (each chapter includes several videos) airing one after the other on the organic page in different time slots, driving the community to consume the full story.
Since the main goal was to raise awareness and generate conversation, TikTok's team created a detailed media plan that mainly focused on Reach & Frequency and retargeting tools. After the first round of promoted videos attracted a wide audience to the organic page, additional parts of the story were promoted, via retargeting campaigns, using Sparks Ads. Additionally, to raise engagement, the hero character (Equiano) replied to selected comments. All of the actions above, helped grab the community's attention, making them watch the full story by revisiting the organic page.
The Results
The campaign was a massive success generating results way beyond expectation. During the first phase of the campaign, using TikTok's Reach & Frequency tool, Equiano Stories reached more than 13 million people with more than 23 million views in just 3 days, also generating 750K new followers to the organic page. The data collected during the first phase, allowed to create new lookalike audience clusters, reaching more relevant community members and activating an impactful retargeting campaign. generated additional reach of 4 million.
Besides the numbers, the TikTok activity was able to achieve other important goals the client was aiming for. 'Equiano Stories' on TikTok succeeded in driving meaningful discussion around a serious and sensitive topic, getting the audience to learn about an important topic that is not easy to bring up. More importantly, the story was told in a unique and authentic way, rather than traditional documentary storytelling, resulting in a high engagement rate of 7.3% with more than 4.9 million likes, 38,000 comments and 79,000+ shares.
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