3 Tips to Maximize Creator Collaboration for More Authentic Social Ads

Brand geniuses, creators, and performance marketers came together for the ultimate industry event in New York City: Advertising Week. The beautiful activations amaze; the helpful insights inspire; and the networking helps keep the industry on its game.

Smartly.io had the privilege of speaking at the event alongside our customer and partner. Smartly.io’s Head of Creative, Sarah Hiraki, moderated a panel with Adrienne Lahens, Global Head of Operations for TikTok Creator Marketing Solutions at TikTok; and Jasmine Rayonia, Brooklinen’s Director of Growth Marketing.

The panel explored ideas and strategies driving the evolving relationships between creators, authenticity, and performance (one of our favorite words here at Smartly.io!) “We've all been along for the journey of the rise of vertical video. We see the dominance of creators and culture and commerce, TikTok hit 1 million users in 2021. And since then, I think we've all felt that marketers have really started to stand up and take notice of that.

“Creator marketing as a format has grown tremendously over last several years. Creator marketing is growing at a rate four times greater than ad spend. It’s incredibly effective for upper funnel (awareness) which is well known,” said Lahens. 

Quick stats from TikTok:

1. 71% of audiences are buying from TikTok because of the credibility built from creators’ authenticity
2. Brands advertising with creators on TikTok see a 26% lift in brand favorability 
3. Brands advertising with creators on TikTok see a 22% lift in brand recommendations 
   

According to Nielsen, 70% of ad performance is now driven by creative. As a result, brands are increasingly placing more value on their ad creative because they know that it's the creative itself, the nature of the content, that's garnering engagement, clicks and views. 

We pulled 3 key takeaways from the inspirational session “Creator Commerce: Authenticity Meets Performance Rigor” to help you maximize your creator collaborations. 

1. Choose your collaboration/creator relationships carefully: The experts suggest brand marketers scan the existing content on Tiktok to start engaging with the comments section to find potential collaborative creators well aligned with their values. This can help in developing the right content personality and partnering with a creator who's already doing great work in that vertical or in a format relevant to your brand.

“At TikTok we're just seeing such a diversity of different types of creators that have really exploded on Tiktok and there's so many different formats – it has really commoditized discovery,” noted TikTok’s Lahens…”So it's really about the passion points, the interest that you have as a consumer and as a viewer that are really serving up the content to you in a way that's really going to resonate. And so we're seeing so many different formats and so many different forms of communities that are starting to really take off on the platform.”

2. Capitalize on trends and relevant engagement opportunities.  - Brands are moving at the speed of culture to recreate TikTok moments and trends that are relevant to global audiences. Lahens noted an example of Neutrogena, which is a brand that showcases their chemists as a means of educating audiences on how products are formulated. 
   

“As a brand today you really need to be a storyteller if you’re going to be a successful marketer,” Lahens said. “You can’t just go in and create market research, launch a product and do ad and marketing. Transactional approach is not effective today. You need to offer the audience something of value to get them ot genagage and partnering with creators is the best way to do that. 

3. Tap into the cultural zeitgeist of the different social platforms to effectively engage audiences throughout the funnel  > Brands are more strategically  considering the stages of the buying and shopping funnel to bring content that offers different perspectives for their audiences. 

“There’s an increased interest in creative diversification across areas. It's important to have both. Creator marketers can take someone from the upper funnel discovery moment all the way into conversion in under 15 seconds because creators are so great at telling the story in a way you never could with a static ad.” Rayonia noted. As creator marketing continues to grow at a rapid rate, the opportunities for brands to create more effective and compelling content are endless.‍

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