Showed brands how to be creative on TikTok before there was a playbook

TikTok's Creative Lab; Four Years Inside

I get asked a lot: "what does a creative leader inside a big tech company like TikTok actually do?" I was lucky. The role went well beyond any typical creative director or brand strategist job.

I joined when most people still thought TikTok was a dancing app for teens. We were in lockdown. The Australia & New  Zealand team was under 50 people. No playbook, no case studies, just a platform growing faster than anything before it.

By the time I left, the local office was over 1,000 people. I didn't just watch that growth. First as a creative strategist, then leading the team, I helped build the creative support function inside it.

Along the way, I watched TikTok become something else entirely. A short-form entertainment platform rivaling Netflix for people's time. An advertising behemoth. Then TikTok LIVE became a phenomenon, TikTok Shop launched, the creator economy grew up around it and AI entered the picture too.

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The Challenge:

Most brands didn't think TikTok aligned with who they were or that it could carry real marketing messaging rather than noise. Overcoming that, brand by brand, industry by industry, was the actual job.

A lot of that came down to onboarding brands. Taking businesses who'd built something distinctive offline or on other channels and translating it into a social-first, video-led, creator-supported strategy that still laddered back to what the brand stood for.

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The Task:

As the Head of Creative Lab, reporting directly to the General Manager for Australia & New Zealand. I led a team of creative strategists, brand strategists, creative agency partners and a creative performance analyst.

We sat within the commercial side of the business. Part of the job was showing brands how to creatively express themselves on a  new platform, so they'd back that belief with real media investment. The team's work had a direct impact on revenue. Can't put a number on it here, NDA, of course, but it was significant.

But I also stayed hands-on. Alongside running the team, I kept an individual contributor role, supporting 400+ fast-growing DTC brands in the ecommerce enterprise channel, plus the largest account in Key Accounts. Same job either way: creative strategy by response to briefs, brand audits, creative roadmaps and 1:1 sessions with clients.

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Three Big Results:

#1 DECODING THE PLATFORM:

Before you can advise a brand, you have to understand the machine. I spent a lot of my time studying what made content move on TikTok, working with platform data and marketing science. Not vanity metrics. Actual behaviour. Sound, pacing, culture, the split-second decisions people make while scrolling.

Then I turned what I learned into actionable strategy, inspiring narratives or production frameworks other people could pick up and run with.

• Creative Codes: the editing guide for what drives attention and view-through-rate on TikTok.
• Recut Remix Reimagine: a creative production system for making and scaling content.
• Creative Jam: rapid idea generation session built for speed over job titles.
• Innovation Day: an immersive and collaborative strategy process for our biggest advertisers.
• The Next Episode: a playbook and workshop to help brands launch content series and micro-dramas.

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#2 CREATIVE CASE STUDIES:

Across my roles, I supported thousands of people at brands and agencies, answering specific briefs and developing creative strategy and ideas.

Not generic platform advice. We created world-first, category-first and brand-first campaigns on TikTok. The kind that moved marketing and business objectives, not just views. It even helped clients win at Effies, D&AD, Cannes Lions, AWARD and more.

There's no way of showing the full breadth of the hundreds of briefs and hundreds of workshops a year where we impacted the work. So here are a few pieces I'm proudest of, made alongside our creative and media agency partners:

Nike - #1000victories

TikTok partnered with Nike to launch the #1000Victories campaign which included the world-first "tokumentary" to inspire the next generation of female athletes to celebrate their victories on and off the field. Credits: Amplify.

Modibodi - I'm Dying Inside

TikTok partnered with period underwear brand Modibodi to make a 5-part TikTok micro-drama that follows four housemates navigating young adult life and synchronised periods to launch their ModiBasics collection. Credits: Howatson+Company

IKEA - Meatballs At Mine

TikTok partnered with IKEA on a branded content series filmed in an IKEA store where couples competed to host an evening with the best meatball meal mixed with a little mayhem and minor meltdowns. Credits: Havas.

We Are Mobilise - Nedd Brockmann's Uncomfortable Challenge

TikTok live-stream Nedd Brockmann's 1,000-mile run, engaging 4.7 million viewers and raising $4.9m for homelessness, showcasing how endurance can inspire collective action. Credits: Bursty.

Consent Labs - #ClassifyConsent

TikTok partnered with not-for-profit organisation Consent Labs to petition the Classifications Board to introduce a classification to call out “Lack of Consent” in film and television. Credits: TBWA.

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#3 INDUSTRY BELIEF:

The narratives and frameworks I built didn't spread by themselves. I represented TikTok within the marketing and creative community, delivering keynotes and anchoring panels at major industry events (Advertising Week APAC, SXSW Sydney, CMO Summit) and TikTok-hosted showcases, translating what we were seeing on the platform into something creatives and marketers could use on Monday morning. I did enough speeches with a Britney mic that my friends assumed public speaking was the actual job.

I also partnered with cross-functional leads at TikTok on go-to-market projects that drove TikTok's local market penetration and growth, from marketing campaigns to community initiatives.

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Looking Back:

It was the fastest-moving company I've ever worked for, with the most interesting creative challenges I've had in my career. I grew more in that period than any other.

Getting to help define what creativity actually looked like on a brand new platform like TikTok was a genuinely fun ride that I will always appreciate the opportunity to have had.