Creative Best Practices: From Good to Great!
Learn how to lift your brand to the next level with these 6 creative best practices!
Lift Your Brand Metrics to New Heights with these 6 Creative Best Practices!
Let's face it; simply vying for customer attention over digital mediums isn't the way to building a lasting and meaningful relationship with your brand anymore. Customers know exactly what they want and they now have the freedom and the means to search for alternatives at their fingertips - any time, any place.
That's why the biggest and most successful brands are focused on capturing ❤️ share-of-heart ❤️; with content that engages and encourages the user to take a personal stake in the brand, and the value its products and services add to enrich people's lives. Brands and advertisers are no longer simply communicating with audiences; they're motivating them in new and exciting ways 🤩.
And it all starts on TikTok
TikTok has empowered brands to show up as their authentic selves on the platform. From the emphasis on 💡 creativity, 🏠 community and 🤝 collaboration on the platform itself to the intuitive and unique ad-creative products and creator collaboration tools that allow brands to drive creativity in their messaging and campaigns at scale. Advertisers are aware of this and are already reinventing the way they think of ad creatives by using unique ad products such as the Branded Hashtag Challenge or by partnering with creator's whether through the TikTok Creator Marketplace or even by 'sparking' a creator's branded content using Spark Ads.
And how do brands and advertisers know this works? It's all about the BLS - the Brand Lift Study of course! In pursuit of proving TikTok effectiveness, Brand Lift Studies conducted to date showed that campaigns on TikTok:
💨 Drive ad memorability well above the IPSOS norms: 2.6x higher in Ad Recall & 1.5x higher in Brand Linkage
⭐ Have high-quality creative assets as per IPSOS diagnostics: +21% points interesting, +20% points persuasive, +17% points enjoyable
Seeing an opportunity by combining TikTok's unique value proposition and strong historical brand lift study results, and thanks to IPSOS Brand Lift Studies, we've crafted six creative best practices for advertisers to amplify their brand on TikTok.
1. Use both brand-led and creator led content for the maximum brand impact
While both brand-led and creator-led content work well individually, using them both in the same campaign generates the maximum impact in ad recall. Local creators work even better!
2. Let creators interact with the product and provide information
While using creator-led content is great, having creators share information such as product tutorials, or providing reasons to buy, improves ad recall as well as brand linkage.
3. Include a song in the ad; combine songs with voice-overs for additional impact
TikTok is a sound-on platform! While the creative assets on TikTok have sound, assets with songs (i.e., with lyrics) garner a greater 2% points on ad recall, when compared to assets with no songs (i.e., only music, jingle etc.). This impact is amplified, when songs are accompanied by voice-overs. Moreover, a customized song* and voice-over combination delivers a greater 8% points in brand linkage vs. an established song* and voice-over combination.
*Customized song: custom made song for the creative asset; established song: well-known song used in the creative asset
4. Include a character to drive ad memorability
Creative assets that include characters, whether animated or an actual person, deliver a stronger brand impact than those without.
5. Don't leave branding until the end; include 3 to 5 brand cues
There is a 17% points decrease in Brand Linkage, when branding is left to the end; 3 to 5 brand cues* is the rule of thumb.
*Brand cues include Logo, product itself, sonic cues, jingles, brand ambassadors etc.
6. Showcase the product offer, claim
Higlighting the product offer (e.g., Cheetos's 10% bigger) or product claims (e.g., Clorox's Kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria) amplifies both ad recall and brand linkage.
*Brand cues include Logo, product itself, sonic cues, jingles, brand ambassadors etc.
What's next?
It can be said that creativity sparks joy and entertainment on TikTok, and ad creative fuels brand success. Advertisers now have a guide to take their creative from good to great on their next TikTok campaign, and have an opportunity to amplify brand KPIs such as ad recall and brand linkage. There may not be a one-size-fits-all solution for advertisers; in fact, as digital mediums present more and more opportunities to create unique, one-to-one, moments with their customers you may find that any number of the 6 creative best practices shared in this article - or a combination of a few - can lift your brand to the next level. All you have to do is start making TikToks.
*This meta-analysis covers the period of September 2020 and August 2021; METAP countries incl. KSA, UAE, TR, EG etc.; ~300 IPSOS brand lift studies; ~1,100 creative assets; and +40K respondents.
**IPSOS is a market research and consulting firm that TikTok commissions to run third party brand lift studies.