On The Road With TikTok Australia And Kia

Last week, TikTok Australia launched a huge livestreaming campaign featuring eight different creators taking a road trip in a new Kia Seltos competing in tasks and challenges.

The livestreams took place between 5-6 pm on Saturday through to Tuesday, attracting large audiences thanks to creators’ combined 4.9 million followers.

On Tuesday, the final day of the road trip, Lachy McIntyre and Georgia McCudden — AKA lach_mac and georgia, respectively — went head-to-head to compete for the title of Australia’s funniest TikToker.

To understand more about the collaboration with Kia and the campaign, B&T sat down with Simon Bates, TikTok Australia’s director of content programming.

How and why did the partnership with Kia come about?

Roadtrip Head to Head was an editorial content partnership that we had wanted to get off the ground since pre-COVID. We loved the idea of reinventing the Aussie roadtrip, and giving it a new fresh spin for TikTok in a way that would appeal to our audience.
Kia is a brand with innovation, adventure and creativity at their core and collaborating on a project like this made sense to launch their new Kia Seltos to a younger demographic. Kia was the perfect partner, they understood the platform, and were open to innovation and new ways of storytelling.

What was it about TikTok’s audience and userbase that was attractive for Kia as a brand partner?

For Kia, it was about engaging a younger demographic in a new way and opening up a two way conversation between creator and audience.

How and why did you choose the creators that worked on the livestreams?
The format of Roadtrip Head to Head was to focus on a different popular content theme each day – Sports, Food, Comedy and Art. We selected creators who we knew would create great conversation and content. Creators who had established followers and understood TikTok Live – how to engage with users via comments and maintain engagement.

How did you ensure that Kia’s brand remained safe considering it was a livestreamed event?

We have protective measures implemented on TikTok that combine innovative content moderation technology with a robust human moderation team to enforce our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service as well as to respond to user reports. We also have an established set of operating practices in place to ensure that our teams react appropriately when dealing with content that might violate our Community Guidelines.

Why did you choose the live format for the partnership?

Live is an area of innovation for TikTok, and the technical pioneering of going live from a car stood out to us to see how we could continue to push the capabilities of our platform. It also allowed the creators to engage with audiences in real time, with the creator in the passenger seat reading comments, and asking the audience for input on the conversation happening within the car.

How do you plan to keep this kind of live event novel and new, rather than bombarding users with partnership content which might reduce effectiveness?

The strategy to keep audiences interested was to mix up the creators and content each day, tied back to popular communities and trends on the platform. The content pillars focused on Food, Sport, Comedy and Art with a diverse set of Aussie creators that have won the hearts and minds of Australian TikTok users.

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