Creativity builds trust

“A brand without trust is just a product and advertising without trust is just noise." So says Keith Weed, president of the Advertising Association between 2019 and 2021.

Public trust in advertising is low, but brands that embrace their unique, authentic, creative skills can bring about a double win: greater consumer confidence and more effective campaigns.

The Advertising Association's research project to rebuild public trust in advertising, first reported at its LEAD conference in 2019, showed that public trust in advertising - and the ad industry itself - is consistently declining. When compared to other industries, including finance, energy and telco, advertising is the least trusted. 

However, there is hope - and it rests with creativity. As the AA reports: “Advertising that people find emotionally engaging, entertaining, and enjoyable" is the most positive driver of trust in advertising.

Which leads us to TikTok. And creators. TikTok creators are the lifeblood of the platform, entertaining users and brands alike with their unique, authentic creativity. 

The creator effect
We tend to be most comfortable with people like us. We’re not just saying this, there’s a whole body of work on how people build relationships to back this up; it’s called The Familiarity Bias.

But, interestingly, this bias also comes into play when people are similar in uncommon ways.

This explains how creators can forge fans quickly on TikTok, because no matter whether they share the same background as their community, whether they look like them, or have the same lifestyle, their likability and easy going nature are personality traits that TikTok users instantly bond with. 

It’s those creator personality traits that generate brand likeability - and trust.

We see the evidence in a growing community of advocates. Research finds that 57% of users rank TikTok as the number one trusted platform, and one in two users say they trust a brand more when it partners with creators (TikTok Marketing Science Understanding EU TikTok Audience Research 2021 conducted by Clear M&C Saatchi; TikTok Marketing Science EU Native vs Creative advertiser content research 2021 conducted by MindLab.).

And another indicator that creators build brand trust is the positive impact they have on brand perception: this increases by 5% after viewers watch a TikTok creator ad (TikTok Marketing Science Global creators Like Me Study 2021, conducted by Hotspex).

So what is the best way to tap into this influence and trust that creators cultivate? As creator Star Holroyd told brands at a recent TikTok Download Creators event: giving creators their creative licence is the key to succeeding on TikTok.

Native advertising wins
Ad creative has always played an essential role in the effectiveness of any marketing strategy. But it’s even more important on TikTok.

TikTok-branded content that features creators is what drives real results: the amount of time videos are watched for and audience engagement are all positively impacted. In TikTok Marketing Science EU The importance of Native content and TikTok creators’ proprietary creative analysis, 2021,  TikTok-branded content that features creators was compared with branded content without creators (between October 2020 and May 2021). We found the former generated:

• 27% higher ad recall
• 91% higher six-second view-through-rate
• 83% higher engagement rate

The study also found that making TikTok-specific content and partnering with creators  brings the strongest opportunity within In-Feed Auction Ads for video views and engagement objectives. The results?

• +193% higher six-second view-through-rate for TikTok specific branded content and partnering with creators
• +93% higher engagement rate for ads in collaboration with creators

A  TikTok Marketing Science global study, conducted by Hotspex  (Global Creators Like Me, 2021), revealed that seeing a creator video drives a 21% increase in brand favourability.

However, simply creating TikTok-specific ads or partnering with creators isn’t necessarily enough to ensure a lift in all metrics. Brand awareness, click-through rates and so on will, of course, also depend on other factors such as call-to-actions and messaging.

Self-regulation
Another driver of trust in advertising is consumers’ awareness of advertising regulation. Public tracking data in the AA’s report Rebuilding Trust in UK Advertising 2021 shows a consistent correlation between those who trust the ad industry and those who believe there is an appropriate level of regulation of it.

We know it’s important for the public to understand that there is a self-regulatory system in place to support any concerns they may have about branded content on TikTok.

To that end, TikTok worked with the Advertising Standards Authority and, together, partnered with nine creators in a new initiative to help raise awareness of the ad rules and to help creators stick to them.

Each creator was given a topic, such as misleadingness or body image, plus some guidance on what the ad rules say, and then asked them to put together a TikTok video. The films are now hosted on the ASA's TikTok page, and the ASA website.

It is by working together - TikTok, the ASA, TikTok creators and brands - that we can give adequate reassurance of regulation and use this new creator-led creativity to reboot public trust in advertising. After all, no-one wants a noisy product but everyone loves advertising, done well.