TikTok encouraged the use of its platform with a celebration of Malaysia's Independence Day that invited users to create content showing what it meant to be Malaysian.
Objective:
TikTok's "IniStyleKita" campaign ("This is our style," in Malaysian) was designed to tap into the national pride and patriotism of Malaysians on the country's annual independence celebration, with the aim of building a trustworthy brand image, celebrating the platform's community, and driving non-user likability.
By featuring local TikTok creators, the campaign sought to ensure that the nation could relate to the platform and its message of unity and togetherness.
The campaign's strategy was to showcase the creativity and diversity of the platform's community, with a focus on highlighting the talents of local TikTok creators.
By utilizing user-generated content and incorporating a range of fun and interactive elements, such as customized effects and live streams, the campaign aimed to engage and entertain its target audience.
The success of the campaign was measured using a brand health tracker on trust scores with Kantar Research (as well as social listening) and overall reach and engagement metrics. The results were highly positive, with the campaign delivering strong engagement and a significant increase in trust scores.
Target Audience:
The target audience for the marketing campaign was both TikTok users and non-TikTok users with a specific demographic profile. The target demographic was 65 percent female and 35 percent male, aged between 18 and 45 years old. The target audience was identified as being strong users of other social media apps, tech-savvy, digitally-savvy, smartphone-adept, and individuals who followed media trends and had family-oriented lifestyles. Additionally, the campaign was focused on reaching people residing in tier 1 and tier 2 cities.
Creative Strategy:
The creative strategy for the marketing campaign aimed to showcase the diversity and local culture of Malaysians through the talent and creativity of the TikTok community. The campaign featured local TikTok creators and their authentic content, highlighting their strengths and talents. The color choices and creative design elements were based on Malaysia's national colors to emphasize the local aspect of the campaign. The idea behind IniStyleKita was to showcase the beauty and everyday life of Malaysians from different cultures and religions. The creative strategy also included a series of social posts that showcased Malaysian values and were created by TikTok creators.
The media strategy for the marketing campaign focused on digital and programmatic digital out-of-home marketing, including social media and top content portals where Malaysians went for the latest information. The campaign also utilized top video-streaming channels and mobile-centric ad networks. The strategy encouraged the creation of strong user-generated content (UGC) within and outside the app, using the UGC as assets to drive relevance and engagement.
Context:
The Independence Day campaign is in its second year with a more robust execution, including a 360-degree approach both in-app and out-of-app. TikTok's in-app products were fully utilized to drive higher engagement and interest, including custom effects filters, TikTok LIVE sessions, and key influencer partnerships. The campaign showcased the authentic side of the platform through content created by Malaysians. Out-of-app amplification increased with a strong digital focus across mobile and desktop, targeting areas where the target audience was most active.
Overall Campaign Execution:
2022 marks the 65th Independence Day of Malaysia, August 31st, and the government had announced a full transition to the endemic phase of COVID-19 since April 1, whereby gathering and outdoor events were to be fully open. 2022 was the first year of a major "back to normal" national day of celebration.
Media execution focused on TikTok, of course, but also Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, with ads also featured on OTT media and programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH), which together generated 45 million impressions and achieved a reach of 22.5 million.
As the campaign was designed for all the Malaysians, TikTok wanted to use a media mix that would widely spread the content in the market. Thus, the media combination was quite rich, utilizing precise targeting together with content innovations. The creatives included key campaign visuals, rich media videos, and articles.
With the use of DOOH, TikTok was able to reach a more relevant target audience in key areas to improve efficiency. TikTok was able to invest in locations with a greater concentration of the target audience and present digital assets with more flexibility.
TikTok had done minimal brand marketing campaigns prior to this campaign.
The Independence Day campaign for 2022 saw a significant increase in user engagement and growth. There was a 2.5 percent increase in daily active users (DAU) and a 21.7 percent increase in new user acquisition. The 30-day recall rate also increased by 8.8 percent.
The in-app hashtag challenge was a success with 951,000 total posts, 542 million video views, and 873,000 unique visits to the landing page.
On social media, the campaign generated 15.4 million impressions and 8.2 million video views, with 100 percent positive engagement and 25,000 interactions.
Over 20 brands also used the campaign hashtag #IniStyleKita for their own Independence Day campaigns.
The paid media outreach reached 17,635,349 users with a cost per reach of only $0.005 and a 600 percent overachievement on social media with a cost per view of $0.02. Additionally, the campaign achieved a 78 percent video-completion rate.
Kantar research showed significant improvement in trust scores, resulting in an influx of new users and increased time spent on the app.
