With people in the UK spending nearly 50 hours a month on the platform*, TikTok is where to go if you want to market to young people. But this audience is more discerning – for them, skipping ads in their feed is simply a reflex. To stop the scroll, your content doesn’t need to stand out: it needs to blend in.
Our recent behaviour change campaign did just that. ‘Think Before You Share’ was produced in partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation to help parents talk to teenagers about the dangers of nude-sharing. But because sharing images online is part of life for many young people, our campaign had to meet them where they are: not shame them, but make them stop and think.
Here’s what worked:
We made content that felt native
Approximately 59% of UK social media users feel there’s too much advertising on social platforms†. Users scroll past inauthentic, repetitive ads. To earn trust, your content needs to feel like it belongs.
What your audience research tells you should shape how you build your campaigns. You’ll likely find that young people trust raw, relatable content over polished productions – which is why user-generated content (UGC) performs so well. Mimic authentic UGC and borrow from trends your audience already engages with, and your ads start to feel less like interruptions and more like organic content.
In ‘Think Before You Share’, we encouraged our teenage actors to improvise the scripts while filming, making 15 second clips that felt more real. We built content around formats such as ‘get ready with me’ and ‘storytimes’, kept the production lo-fi to look like phone footage, and used language and imagery that our audience could relate to.
