Been craving pizza lately? If you’ve spent any time on TikTok, you can probably blame DiGiorno. The Nestlé subsidiary’s “DiGiorno Made Us Do It” campaign, run by Reach Agency, took the short-form video platform by storm earlier this year, captivating audiences and prompting renewed interest in the frozen food aisle staple. According to market research firm Kantar, content from the initiative saw a VTR (view-through rate) of 22% after two seconds, and resulted in a 6.8% improvement in consumer attitudes towards DiGiorno.
So, how did DiGiorno get the creator community so excited about frozen pizza? Let’s take a look at three key ingredients in the TikTok campaign’s success.
TikTok may be an impactful marketing engine, but it’s also a playground for creators. TikTokers are most interested in consuming and interacting with content from one another, so it’s crucial for brands to put creators at the center of their campaigns.
Reach Agency understood this principle when it invited TikTok star Kyle Exum to produce “DiGiorno Made Us Do It,” a dynamic, humorous song that became the official soundtrack for the initiative. Notably, this represented the first time that any Nestlé subsidiary had leveraged original, branded audio on TikTok, and the innovative decision paid off. Audiences overwhelmingly welcomed the catchy track, which reflected Kyle’s own unique personality, with one user calling the song “a masterpiece.”
When planning creator-led TikTok campaigns, brands need to remember that they’re not simply buying ad space. Influencer marketing managers can, and should, set expectations and guidelines for paid content, but it’s naive to expect creators to adhere to a script (and elicit a positive response from their followers). That’s partly because TikTok audiences are quick to recognize content that does not align with a creator’s original style, and may read this departure as inauthentic. Additionally, creators have an intimate understanding of their fans’ preferences, and know what types of messaging will resonate with viewers. Rather than restricting TikTokers’ imagination, brands should respect creators’ expertise by letting them put their own distinctive spin on open-ended concepts.
DiGiorno followed this best practice by empowering campaign participants to incorporate Kyle’s “DiGiorno Made Us Do It” song, along with its frozen pizzas, into their content however they saw fit. While Dimitri Beauchamp staged a “dance battle” with himself, Erin Robinson and her friends threw a high-energy pizza party, complete with glow sticks, blacklights, and pizza-patterned onesies. As a result, posts associated with the TikTok campaign remained authentic to creators’ identities, and held the attention of their audiences.
There’s no denying that “DiGiorno Made Us Do It” was a winning TikTok campaign idea, and Reach Agency had high hopes for its success. However, any marketer knows that instinct alone can only carry you so far: consistent, reliable measurement is key to identifying which aspects of an initiative are working, and which could use improvement. For enterprise brands like Nestlé, it’s also imperative that influencer marketing managers and agencies are equipped with secure reporting tools in order to share campaign performance data with stakeholders across their organization.
CreatorIQ’s end-to-end campaign management features enabled Reach Agency to evaluate the impact of “DiGiorno Made Us Do It” using customizable KPIS, and identify top-performing creators and posts. Additionally, the agency could provide relevant insights to stakeholders at DiGiorno and Nestlé thanks to CreatorIQ’s reporting capabilities, which are built specifically with enterprise businesses in mind. Equipped with real-time data on the TikTok campaign, Reach Agency was able to optimize a first-of-its-kind initiative, and easily showcase its results.
With TikTok only growing more integral to enterprise brands’ growth strategies, teams need the industry knowledge to plan compelling, creator-first campaigns—and the software tools to understand their success. As TikTok’s first SaaS-only influencer marketing platform partner, CreatorIQ is uniquely positioned to help the world’s largest businesses build and scale impactful creator programs on the channel. Learn more about how CreatorIQ can equip your organization to excel on TikTok using the link below.