Level up your ad creative with the help of award-winning brands on TikTok

Take inspiration from the 2023 winners of the TikTok Ad Awards Greatest Creative category, which celebrates the brands and agencies that push the boundaries of creativity on the platform.

The TikTok Ad Awards are back in full force for 2023, with brands and agencies across Europe being recognised for amazingly creative, high-performing campaigns. Launched in 2022, TikTok developed this awards program to showcase the campaigns that are embracing the platform and have incredible results to show for it.

This year, following ceremonies in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the Nordics, the winners of the Greatest Creative category are being celebrated for daring to push the boundaries of creativity with TikTok ads that felt truly native and custom to the platform. All of the winning campaigns have leaned into the five data-backed principles for creating effective ads for TikTok — you can read more about them here.

Together, the following brands provide a blueprint on how to unlock TikTok's true potential by leaning into the platform's unique elements to unleash creativity and authentically connect with audiences. Want to follow in their footsteps?

Greatest Creative UK

Lidl | Coolr | OMD UK

Driving a conversation and growing brand love with a custom jingle

A sound-on experience is key for TikTok users, and an engaging sound has the power to take a brand's content to next-level performance and spark a viral moment. Lidl harnessed this power to launch its brand on TikTok, drive new followers and foster brand love in the process. The "Ode to Bakery" campaign featured a re-recording of an iconic 90s hit, with lyrics based on real customers' tweets about their love of the Lidl Bakery. To make the jingle more interactive and really engage the TikTok audience, Lidl bolstered the campaign with an interactive Open Verse Challenge, encouraging users to duet the song with their own lyrics. To drive impact, the brand boosted the videos as TopView Ads, Top Feed Ads and In-Feed Ads, driving 85,000 likes and 5,500 shares and smashing engagement with a view-through rate of 39% and a click-through rate of 1%. Beyond the platform results, a brand lift study also showed that the campaign resonated incredibly well with the target audience, with a massive 32.3% ad recall uplift as well as a positive shift in favourability and recommendation of Lidl's bakery. Yum!

Greatest Creative Italy

Fiat Stellantis | Leo Burnett

Telling the story of a community and engaging millions with TikTok-first content

How do you take a 40-year-old product and refresh perceptions for a new audience? Fiat decided to usher in a new era of excitement and interest in the Fiat Panda by using TikTok to tell the story of Pantelleria, an island in Italy where the Panda car is so popular that one in three people drive one. The 'Fiat Presents: Pandelleria' campaign put popular TikTok creator Gabriele Vagnato in the driver's seat and used a Branded Mission to spotlight the story of Pantelleria (which the campaign renamed Pandelleria) and its Panda-loving inhabitants, dubbing them "Pandistas". With 55 million views, 146 million interactions, 132,000 reposts, a 400% boost in brand loyalty — and multiple petitions to change the name of the island for real — Pandelleria was cemented as one of Fiat's highest-performing campaigns with a 38% view-through rate, beating their average of 32%, and showcasing the power of performance-driven TikTok-first storytelling.

Greatest Creative Nordics

Cloetta Suomi Oy / TV Mix | Bängeri Oy | ToinenPHD

Broadening appeal by working with TikTok creators and tapping into trends

Successful TikTok campaigns embody the platform's ethos of authenticity and creativity, so working with creators and staying close to trends is a surefire way for brands to engage audiences. Confectionary brand Cloetta wanted to broaden the appeal of its Nomppa candy, so the brand developed an innovative creator-led campaign to engage the TikTok community. The brand incorporated a playful Live format and invited users to discover the candy's inner secrets. With platform-native content like an ASMR eggshell-peeling livestream parody video boosted as Spark Ads, the brand reached more than 986,000 customers and achieved a staggering average watch time of 7.3 seconds.

Greatest Creative Poland

MASPEX | SPACE CAT INDUSTRIES

Building a community with enticing TikTok-native content

Just imagine the sounds of butter melting in a pan, eggs breaking, a sharp knife slicing through a slice of freshly toasted bread... MASPEX evoked all this and more with their ASMR–themed culinary videos in its quest to create the best FoodTok channel in Poland. MASPEX launched Uwielbiam.pl (translating to I love food.pl), a food channel hosted by TikTok creators @Foxx.gotuje and @Damian_Tkaczuk, who riffed off each other and created a fun, relatable atmosphere to inspire and motivate viewers. After gaining almost 2 million impressions, MASPEX launched a TopView Ad, which was a compilation of the best moments from the set and organic videos, and generated 11 million impressions.

Greatest Creative Spain

Samsung | BE A LION

Building sustained interest with a killer hook and long-term content strategy

To showcase the quality of their Galaxy devices and generate purchase consideration, Samsung launched [LOCK], a TikTok-first horror saga filmed entirely on Samsung devices. Working with native creators, the brand developed a number of short, mobile-first and sound-led videos and released them regularly and consistently throughout the campaign. The brand leveraged TopView Ads and Spark Ads to boost the campaign's reach and engagement, resulting in 238 million views, 295 million impressions, and an increase in followers of 550%. Further, a brand lift survey revealed that, following the campaign, 66% of users remembered seeing Samsung content and 67% thought about buying a Galaxy Z Flip or Z Fold.

Greatest Creative DACH

Ford Deutschland | ODALINE & Justaddsugar

Harnessing viral moments to shift brand perception and drive differentiation

To transform the brand's image and combat low market share in Germany, Ford developed a TikTok campaign that centred around "adventurous spirit". The brand launched its presence on TikTok with a tag team of 15 "Ford Adventurers" sourced from the TikTok Creator Marketplace and by jumping on the viral "Ford GT guy" video, which featured a Ford enthusiast who is crazy about the brand. After encouraging the community to help find him, the brand were inundated with comments and engagement, with the "Ford GT guy" being tagged several hundred times in the comments. The brand then released a video where the team invited him to Ford and showed him around his dream car. Further content was served as Spark Ads and In-Feed Ads to enhance reach. After just three months, the brand saw a 24% increase in the association of Ford with "adventure" — more than any other car brand. The content positioned Ford as a brand that understands the TikTok platform, interacts with the community, and responds quickly as well as entertainingly to viral moments.

Greatest Creative France

BNP Paribas | Jellyfish | Havas

Building trust and deepening relationships with consumers by serving them with content that resonates

Banking brand BNP Paribas wanted to be front-of-mind for a new generation of banking-weary users. Using the Creative Center as part of its research, the brand identified the hashtags its target audience was using about housing, their biggest expense. This led to BNP Paribas launching the "Vise l'appart" ("aim for the apartment/flat") campaign to promote their flat-hunting solution. Partnering with TikTok creator and rapper @officieldace, the brand created a soundtrack and video inspired by the difficulties of finding a flat that also offered viewers a concrete solution, showing them that a bank could understand them and be there for them. The brand then launched a lip-sync challenge, with €1,000 up for grabs for the winner, and boosted it with In-Feed Ads and Spark Ads. The campaign generated 69.5 million impressions on the platform in one month, with an average watch time of 14.3 seconds. The brand's flat-hunting solution webpage also recorded record traffic of 77,000 visits, with a significant increase in subscriptions, helping Paribas make life-long connections with a new audience.

Ultimately, the TikTok Ad Awards and the incredible selection of brands that were shortlisted show that the advertising industry is embracing everything that the TikTok platform embodies, leaning into entertainment, culture, creators, and relatable creative to build campaigns that truly resonate with their audiences.

Could you be next? TikTok has a host of tools and resources designed to make creating for the platform easy.

For more tips, explore their Creative Center or check out their Creative Codebook. If you'd like to learn more about TikTok and the TikTok Ad Awards, sign up for their newsletter.

Read about the winners of the Greatest Performance category at the TikTok Ad Awards 2023.

This post was created by TikTok for Business with Insider Studios.