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 New Zealand team was under 50 people. No playbook, no category case studies, just a platform growing faster than anyone could explain.

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 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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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 or production frameworks other people could pick up and run with.

• Creative Codes: the editing guide for what works creatively on the platform.
• Recut Remix Reimagine: a creative production and implementation system for making and scaling content.
• Creative Jam: rapid idea generation, 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

The frameworks were simple. Getting there wasn't.

‍

#2 Creative case studies

Across the role, I supported thousands of people at brands and agencies, co-creating ideas and strategy. Specific problems, briefs, creative strategy and ideas. Not generic platform advice.

Few roles give you that range. Beauty, entertainment, retail, fashion, finance, FMCG, tech, you name it.  

I worked directly with brands like Mecca, Nike, IKEA, ZURU, eBay, L'Oréal and CommBank to create world-first work on the platform.

I also worked alongside agencies, not to replace them but to help them get more out of the platform for their clients.

‍

#3 Industry belief

Frameworks don't spread by themselves. I represented TikTok within the marketing and creative community, delivering keynotes and anchoring panels at major industry events and TikTok-hosted showcases, translating what we were seeing on the platform into something creatives and marketers could use on Monday morning.

I also partnered with cross-functional leads on go-to-market projects that drove TikTok's local market penetration and growth. That extended to the tools too. Educating brands and agencies on TikTok's creative toolkit, CapCut, and generative AI image and video tools, not just the theory.

This resulted in helping clients and their agencies win at Cannes Lions, D&AD, Effies, AWARD and more.

‍

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 appreciate the oportunity to have had.

‍