Report Highlights The Role Of Creators And Creative Elements In Brand Success on TikTok

TikTok videos don’t need fancy production techniques to perform well on the platform. But that doesn’t mean brands should ignore creative elements completely when working with creators on promotional campaigns.

A recently released white paper from CreatorIQ and TikTok outlines the best ways brands can get the most out of creator partnerships on the platform. The report explains how the right creative elements are essential to effective creator-led ads.

For instance, Vitaminwater worked with comedian Jonathan Bynoe on a laughably relatable TikTok sketch in which one character berates another for keeping him from his Vitaminwater, with Bynoe playing both characters.

On one hand, the video is rather raw and unpolished. But a closer look reveals the smart choices made in sound, text overlay, and pacing based on the findings in the CreatorIQ report.

• Sound: Brands accustomed to advertising in sound-off environments need to shift their approach with TikTok. Nine out of 10 users say sound is vital to the TikTok experience, while creator ads that feature music drive a +61% uplift in brand recall and +177% uplift in purchase intent.
• Text overlay: Ads that feature text overlay are 1.4x more likely to hook a user than ads that don’t, and the presence of captions leads to a +31% increase in likeability and +95% in brand affinity.
• Pacing: Beauty ads that are high energy see a +162% uplift in recall compared to other ads, while ads featuring seamless transitions from one shot to another have a +60% uplift in recall.

Vitaminwater’s Bynoe video leverages sound effectively, as the comedian’s voice playing both characters is critical to the experience. Meanwhile, the perfectly timed cuts between the two characters “lands” the gag. The fact that both are almost unnoticeable speak to how critical the execution was to the ad’s effectiveness.

The ad was an ingenious fit for Vitaminwater’s #NourishEveryYou campaign, which sells the drink as the ideal way to nourish and support the varied roles we each take on in our lives. In just two months, the campaign drove over $1.6M EMV across all platforms (CreatorIQ’s proprietary metric for quantifying the value of social media content). Jonathan’s two TikTok posts accounted for $391.5K of that total.

CreatorIQ and TikTok’s joint white paper dives much deeper into tactics for getting the most out of creator ads. Download 5 Keys to Successful TikTok Creator Ads to learn more.