The Objective
Boost Gen-Z awareness & engagement
f'real foods started producing it's own relevant and engaging branded content on TikTok in-house after observing that one of the platform's organic trends, #frealmilkshake, was taking over the “For You” Page. TikTok became a testing ground to increase awareness among the brand's target Gen-Z demographic.
f'real leaned into its initial organic traction on TikTok and partnered with Later to better understand the influencer marketing potential behind TikTok and its Gen-Z audience. Knowing that Gen-Z despises ads and understanding that trends on TikTok happen moment-by-moment, f'real wanted to engage high-energy, self-expressing TikTokers to drive brand awareness through #freal moments that matter.
The Solution
Authentic Tiktok campaigns
f'real engaged Later's strategic services and extensive influencer platform capabilities to execute a series of TikTok campaigns to reach their target Gen-Z demographic, who comprise 69% of TikTok users.
By allowing Creators to express their authentic styles and creativity, f'real aimed to differentiate from other brands on the platform that used strict content guidelines, prescribed themes, and challenges.
Getting to know Gen-Z
A deep dive into Gen Z was conducted to align future f'real TikTok content with their values. A study by JWT Intelligence revealed that Gen-Z is skeptical, independent, wary of deceptive marketing, does research before making a purchase, and prioritizes brand values.
To maximize brand awareness with their newfound understanding of Gen-Z, f'real wanted to seamlessly integrate the brand with TikTok's feed and algorithm. Later leaned strategically on TikTok's Creator Marketplace to identify Verified and popular creators with 200K to 7 million followers who were trending among TikTok's core Gen-Z user base.
Encouraged to tap into TikTok's trending meme content, life hacks, challenges, sounds, and topics at the moment of content creation, f'real then directed and activated creators to capture #freal moments in fun and unexpected ways.
Going viral
Three videos in this campaign reached viral levels of reach and engagement, with each video garnering over 1.5M likes. The campaign also resulted the @therealfreal TikTok account being verified and coverage of the campaign in Business Insider.
TikTok leads to sales growth
Paired with f'real's organic TikTok social strategy, a usage study conducted by Seurat Group indicated that the largest growth in sales for f'real in 2019 consisted of 13 to 17-year-old consumers. Awareness amongst 13 to 17-year-olds increased by 6% from a previous study in 2017, indicating a direct impact from the efforts made through TikTok.
The Results
Unit sales lift for f'real
21.4M
Impressions
7.8M
Engagements
36.45%
Average engagement rate
$0.82
Average CPM
In Q4 2019, activating 39 verified and popular Creators on TikTok resulted in:
- 21.4M impressions;
- 7.8M engagements - 420% above Later's TikTok campaign benchmarks;
- 36.45% average engagement rate - Almost 30% above Later’s TikTok benchmark for this vertical; and
- $0.82 average CPM - a 35% decrease compared to the $1.27 CPM f'real spent on its paid social ads in 2019.
Most importantly, since the brand's TikTok was created, there has been a staggering lift in unit sales. After a sales decline in the first half of 2019, f'real has seen a staggering uptick in sales velocity, averaging a 7.1% lift per month.