Gen-Z, Millennial Opps: TikTok loses marketer (Score 69)

Sales Lead: TikTok recently parted ways with its former global brand and creative head, Katie Riccio Puris.

• For the last two years, she has guided TikTok's consumer marketing by crafting regional and global brand campaigns, leading owned and sponsored events, and developing creative work that supports sports and entertainment partnerships.
• Riccio Puris's role also involved managing and streamlining global and regional agency relationships.
• The brand will likely:
  • Need additional marketing assistance
  • Shift strategy
  • Return to higher spend
  • Seek new agency partners
• Target demographic: 
  • ​​​​​​​Gen-Z and millennials with a male skew

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: So far this year, TikTok has spent approximately $4m on national TV commercials, less than a quarter of the approximately $17.2m spent within the same 2022 timeframe.
  • Last year: The brand spent around $21.9m on this channel in 2022 after having spent 44% more, around $31.5m, in 2021.
  • 2023 ad programming: TikTok's 2023 commercials have targeted male sports enthusiasts watching shows such as the Allstate Super Bowl, the 2023 Pro Bowl Games, the 2019 Home Run Derby, SportsCenter, and the 2020 NBA All-Star Game.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: The brand has allocated roughly $13m toward digital ads YTD, down 32% from the roughly $19m spent by this point last year.
  • YTD data: Since the beginning of 2023, TikTok has earned about 1.6b digital impressions via mobile display (35%), YouTube (33%), Facebook (19%), desktop video (7%), Instagram (3%), and desktop display (3%) ads.
    • ​​​​​​​Top site destinations for this year's mobile display ads have included accuweather.com (12%), dexerto.com, weather.com, ebay.com, and mediafire.com.
  • Last year: The social media platform's estimated full-year 2022 spend of $24.9m reached less than a quarter of that of $106.7m in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The brand utilizes Google Ads along with Facebook, TikTok (ha!), Twitter, Instagram, and online video (primarily via Youtube.com) ads.
  • View an example of TikTok's cause marketing efforts in the video above.
  • TikTok sponsors podcasts such as The Daily, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Glenn Beck Program, Up First, and The Economist Podcasts.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: TikTok may seek new agency partner once it finds a replacement; in the meantime, reach out to get on the radar of Zenia Mucha, its chief brands and communications officer since June 2023.
• Current agency roster:
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Horizon Media​​​​​​​: Creative AOR
  • Zenith Media: Media AOR
  • Sid Lee: Social AOR
  • We Are Social: Social agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser.