TikTok Creative Playbook | Fashion 2.0

👠 The TikTok Guide To Creative Tips For Fashion & Apparel

Welcome to the Fashion 2.0 Creative Playbook! This playbook is designed to inspire and guide advertisers who want to create for TikTok, and includes key observations from our Creative Expert team. To clarify, these are observations that the team has noticed, and are not rules that must be followed. We're not trying to box you in and impose a formula for how to succeed, but instead encourage advertisers to think outside the box and test a variety of creative ideas in order to maximize their chances for success.

1. Intro & Overview: The TikTok Creative Journey

POV: You need to create some new fashion videos for TikTok, but don't know where to start, how to produce a high volume of assets, which creators represent your brand, or which communities and trends to tap into.

Get Creative: The #1 factor for advertising effectiveness on sales is Creative [1], so this is the perfect place to start for a spark of creativity that can help you boost campaign performance.

How-To: TikTok's Creative Experts are here to share insights, thought-starters turned, and actionable tips, in addition to a refresher of TikTok's creative resources you can use to achieve success.

It's Proven: Performance advertisers who engaged with last year's fashion tips to improve their creative education saw CPA decrease by -16.31%, ROAS improve by 147.53%, CTR increase by 4.1%, and CVR increase by 14.19%. [2]

This playbook is structured in 7 parts:

1. Intro & Overview
2. Audience & Market Insights
3. Creative Refresher
4. Fashion Forces
5. Fashion Creative Tips (By Funnel Stage)
6. Creator Insights
7. Where To Start

So stop scrolling, and get ready with us as we unbox the latest fashion-focused creative strategies, outlined by objective type & stage of funnel.

TikTok Tip: Use this fashion playbook to get inspired and elevate your creative assets for TikTok!

Advertiser POV: Hold on, I'm a more visual learner, do you something more visual instead?

2. Audience & Market Insights: Creativity Is Always In Fashion

First, let's take a behind-the-scenes look at how TikTok is enabling lower funnel purchasing success for fashion apparel and accessories brands, while keeping their audiences engaged with original content:

• 53% of users have discovered at least one luxury fashion product on TikTok. [3]
• 59% of TikTok users shopping across verticals online bought apparel and footwear essentials. [4]
• Fashion and Clothing are number 1 in the top 3 categories where TikTok played a role in holiday purchases. [5]
  

TikTok Tip: If you're not already creating fashion content for TikTok, now is the perfect time to start!

But what about how the what types of content different generations are engaging with, what they value most, and how they’re shopping?

Additionally, each generation of TikTok fashion audiences are engaging with brands in different ways to inform their purchasing decisions:

TikTok Tip: Edit your messaging to speak to each generation based on their unique habits.

Taking this one step further, it's important to remember TikTok's global impact to understand how your users around the globe may interact differently with fashion content and Creators.

TikTok Tip: Tailor your content to each market, tapping local creators to support with content production.

To better understand what fashion users are engaging with on TikTok, you can easily tap into these communities by understanding the trending hashtags, products, keywords, selling points, target audience callouts, and CTAs that are helping advertisers and creators to captivate their shoppers. TikTok Creative Center helps to aggregate these trending features that will inspire you to create at scale. Within TikTok Creative Center, you can explore the latest trending elements:

TikTok Tip: Leverage TikTok Creative Center's Trends tools to get inspiration for your next set of TikTok videos. Once you've identified a few key trends that resonate with your brand or product, consider how you can include these in messaging, and where in the purchase journey to communicate each point.

So what does the fashion journey look like for TikTok users at each stage of the advertising funnel?

As you finalize your own objectives and shake up your media plan to create a more robust purchase experience, you'll need to lead with a creative mindset. That's where our TikTok Creative Refresh comes into play.

3. Creative Refresh: How To Piece Together All of TikTok's Tips

We know you're probably a TikTok pro at this point, but it's always good to go back to basics. Before we dive into creative tips for the fashion vertical, it's important to remember the essentials that make a good TikTok.

Always come back to laying the foundations of TikTok creative best practices by following these 3 foundational guidelines:

🎵 TikTok Creative Codes
🖇️ The Golden Formula (Script Structure)
🎬 Creative Best Practices

TikTok Creative Codes

First and foremost, get familiar with the six principles for creating effective ads for TikTok—all backed by data. These will help you to get inspired, unlock your creative potential, and start creating today.

🟡 Think TikTok-First: Build a variety of content that creates value and connection with the TikTok community.

🟣 Connect With Trends: Leverage trending content to create relevance for your brand.

🔵 Be Production: Principled: Land these fundamentals and expand as your brand takes off.

🟢 Stick To a Structure: Follow formats that are proven to deliver engagement and action.

🔴 Hold Attention With Stimulation: Grab attention and create engaging viewing experiences through dynamic editing and assets.

⚫ Build With Sound: Tune into communities through music, voiceovers and sounds.

Golden Formula Script Structure

When it comes to structuring your content and creating a script, follow our golden formula for captivating ad messaging, with each section having a unique purpose that supports the whole video.

Creative Best Practices

Increase your chances of higher-performing creative content by producing a larger quantity of videos across a diverse pool of creatives and storylines.

Keeping these three essential creative methodologies in mind will help to solidify your expertise and ensure that you're thinking TikTok-first to create compelling content that's built on proven data-backed approaches.

4. Fashion Forces: Recapping TikTok's Original Fashion Tips

Assuming you're a fashion advertiser, you may be familiar with tips from our original fashion creative playbook, which now still stand as evergreen forces you can explore and experiment with.

Remember that TikTok identifies Creative Patterns, which are split into two main groups:

🟢 Video Format 🟢 Visual & Audio Elements

Video Formats:

Consider the story you're looking to tell (or sell), and how to best communicate it on TikTok. Our Creative Experts previously identified 5 primary video formats for the apparel & accessories vertical, and how to action them.

Graphic & Text

Emphasize your key message on a single image or mix of images, plus effects.

Product Showcase

Make your product the focus, introduce it in a dynamic way.

Community Engagement

Share real experiences with the product, what it looks like on.

Try It On

Piece videos together to show various products, or one product in various settings.

Storytelling

Introduce your product benefits in creative and unexpected ways or perspectives.

Audio & Visual Elements:

Combine these video formats and creative ideas with compelling audio & visual elements that help to captivate audiences in TikTok's full-screen sound-on environment.

Special Effects

Stand out on the For You Page by making users look twice.

Trending Audio

Follow trending audio and experiment with various sound effects.

Repurposing Assets

Find ways to reuse assets you already have, or shoot additional TikTok-style videos during bigger productions, and edit them to fit TikTok's formats and trends.

While many of these methods still stand true today, TikTok content is constantly evolving, innovating, and even iterating upon what's worked in the past. For this reason, we've chosen to refresh our fashion recommendations to include some new thought starters.

5. Fashion 2.0 Key Creative Thought-Starters: What's Hot Right Now

Upon analyzing thousands of top-performing TikTok videos, we've identified several new key observations and thought-starters within the fashion apparel & accessories vertical. Here's what you can expect:

🟣 Fashion Creative Thought-Starters: Awareness
🟣 Fashion Creative Thought-Starters: Traffic
🟣 Fashion Creative Thought-Starters: Conversion
🟣 BONUS Fashion Creative Thought-Starters: e-Commerce / TikTok Shop

In an effort to help advertisers easily produce new TikTok videos, we'll also break down an action plan for each stage of the funnel, outlining how to produce videos by following these frameworks:

🔵 Creative Ideas: Summarizing top-performing trends by vertical into one main idea.
🔴 Creative Formula: How to capture attention, sell your key message, and encourage a next step to be taken.
🟣 Creative Elements: Providing guidance on where to shoot, visual & audio styles, how many people to feature, and whether or not to include branding.

Fashion Thought-Starters: Awareness

Purchase journeys that include TikTok are 1.7x more likely to be the source of product discovery. [22] Here are 3 ways to create videos to help get your brand or product discovered...

Unveil It On The TikTok Runway

Find ways to reuse assets you already have, or shoot additional TikTok-style videos during bigger productions, and edit them to fit TikTok's formats and trends.

Put a Face To Fashion

Feature immediately recognizable faces who represent your brand or product, whether they're celebrities, models, or creators.

Be Inclusive To All or Many

Showcase your product from a brand-to-all perspective, where it's displayed in a variety of environments and options.

How To Achieve This: Awareness

🔵 Creative Ideas: Feature professionally-shot glamour and vanity shots of individual hero product(s) in action, or a small selection of hero products. Showcase brand and lifestyle campaigns, similar to a produced brand commercial. Leverage creator, model, or celebrity endorsements as familiar faces, and use special effects that make a visual impact.

How To: Creative Formula
Structure your TikTok video using this winning golden creative formula.

How To: Creative Elements
Piece together a mix of these creative elements to create meaningful TikTok videos for this stage.

Action these tips in an effort to improve brand performance. Remember that other advertisers have measured 40% better brand recall for brands seen during their experience. [23]

BONUS CREATOR TIP: Use TikTok Creator Marketplace to partner with Creators who specialize in art, animation, cinema, and design to create visually-engaging branded content.

Fashion Thought-Starters: Traffic

Purchase journeys that include TikTok are 1.2x More likely to actively visit a store/online retailer for more information. [24] Here are 3 ways to make TikTok videos that can drive engagement and traffic...

Get Real (POV Style)

Leverage relatable storytelling that ties your brand or product to everyday consumer situations, organically including products.

Disrupt The Fashion Feed

Grab the senses and stop users from scrolling by doing something that sets you apart from the videos around you.

Get Creative With Collections

Generate interest by teasing new product collections and encouraging viewers to click through to explore more.

How To Achieve This: Traffic

🔵 Creative Ideas: Produce Creator-led and consumer POV videos that organically incorporate products into their daily routines, showing how it's used in specific reality scenarios. Additionally, include professionally-shot lifestyle campaigns visualizing the functional or fashionable elements of product collections.

How To: Creative Formula
Structure your TikTok video using this winning golden creative formula.

How To: Creative Elements
Piece together a mix of these creative elements to create meaningful TikTok videos for this stage.

Action these tips in an effort to improve traffic performance. Remember that other advertisers have seen 29% stronger emotional responses and engagement to ads and content on TikTok than other platforms. [25]

Fashion Thought-Starters: Conversion

Purchase journeys that include TikTok have 33% of users buy a product because they saw it on TikTok. [26] Here are 3 ways to encourage users to buy a product...

Sellers As Creators, Supporting Shoppers

Put people first, even for product-first content. Start videos with human face before moving to product closeups.

The Fashion Essentials It-List

Demonstrating a shortlist of the best products, communicating the occasions one might use the product for.

Experiential Immersive Shopping

Put viewers in the shoes of the shopper by sharing visuals of the shopping experience, whether in a retail setting, or online.

How To Achieve This: Conversion

🔵 Creative Ideas: Blur the lines between real people and creators for an authentic-feeling video where the subject advocates and demonstrates key benefits of specific products, while lightly selling. Come back to tried-and-true winning fashion thought-starters (product demonstrations, try-ons, reviews, GRWM, OOTD), and shoot single-frame videos often in store or online in the setting someone would make a purchase within, while also mixing in some home and outdoor lifestyle aesthetics.

How To: Creative Formula
Structure your TikTok video using this winning golden creative formula.

How To: Creative Elements
Piece together a mix of these creative elements to create meaningful TikTok videos for this stage.

Action these tips to in an effort to improve conversion performance. Remember that other advertisers have seen +10pp higher purchase intent for brands seen on TikTok. [27]

Want more creative tips on how to move the needle and sell products when running performance campaigns on TikTok? Keep reading! Conversion-stage ads directing shoppers to an advertiser's website typically include a handful of the creative ideas, tips, trends, and formats we discussed. However, e-commerce & TikTok Shop videos offer even more creative insight on how to speak directly to your audience.

BONUS: e-Commerce & TikTok Shop Creative Tips

As TikTok Shop continues to grow, our team has begun to identify creative trends unique to these e-commerce videos. Remember, conversion-focused ads can use these methodologies as well, but more sparingly and naturally, rather than "selling" by including all of them in the same ad, like TikTok Shop ads. Here are 9 creative ways to drive product sales on TikTok Shop...

Social Selling

🔵 Creative Ideas: Feature a creator demonstrating a product, either already wearing it and speaking about its features, or trying it on and reviewing or reacting to it in real time. Respond to comments to include the community, and speak about many/all selling points. Emulate the style of a TikTok Live by shooting one shot all the way through, or mixing single frame clips.

How To Achieve This: TikTok Shop

How To: Creative Formula
Structure your TikTok video using this winning golden creative formula.

How To: Creative Elements
Piece together a mix of these creative elements to create meaningful TikTok videos for this stage.

The best-performing TikTok Shop videos included all 9 creative thought-starters, in addition to the recommended creative formula and elements. Why is that? It's likely because they were mostly all produced by talented Creators, who are extremely adaptable, experimental, and most of all creative.

6. Creator Insights: Why You Should Work With Creators In 2024 and Beyond

While most ads in the awareness stage are brand-owned assets, a bulk of the ads in the traffic and conversion stages are Spark Ads, a format that allows you to create TikTok In-Feed Ads or TikTok TopView Ads using your organic posts or content made by creators (with their authorization).

5 Reasons To Work With Creators

1. Creators on TikTok are considered trustworthy sources of information, and their word of mouth generates a FOMO effect.
2. Use of creators in campaigns can lead to +20% HIGHER Relevance. [28]
3. Ads with Creators on TikTok drove a 17% increase in purchase intent among social/video platform users. [29]
4. 53% of social/video platform users have purchased a product after seeing a creator/influencer video. [30]
5. Gen Z TikTok users are 2.0x more likely to join a LIVE to buy something promoted by a creator/influencer (vs. non-TikTok users), while Millennials are 1.6x more likely, and Gen X are 1.8 more likely. [31]

7. Where To Start: How To Create TikTok Videos Using Trend and Creator Tools

Get started by taking a deep breath to letting all of that sink in, with some abbreviated creative key takeaways that summarize the full fashion journey:

AWARENESS: Tell your brand story in an innovative and disruptive way that captures attention. Feature new hero products, familiar faces, and multi-generational inclusivity showcasing how you have something for everyone.

TRAFFIC: Encourage real people and Creators to share their real life experiences using products, or working them into daily routines. Selling points should focus on product usage in real life, featuring a range of multiple product categories.

CONVERSION: Feature real people and Creators at home, or sales associates in a store or online demonstrating the shopping experience. Mention 4-6 selling points for one product or a shortlist of top products and their benefits.

TIKTOK SHOP: Tap a Creator to film product try-ons in a bedroom or living room setting following all 9 thought-starters, while reviewing it and mentioning all the selling points for one singular product, or a single product in a variety of colors or sizes.

If you made it this far, you're already on the right track! Explore the rest of TikTok Creative Center for creative inspiration, guides to success, and to reduce both costs & time. In case you're wondering how effective Creative Center has been for others, we've seen a 5 hour reduction in time to find inspiration, with +21% number of effective creatives. [32] Start there to establish your creative ideas; move into a production-mindset utilizing Creative Codes, Script Structure, and Quantity & Diversity; layer in vertical-specific patterns, tips, and thought-starters; and partner with creators by leveraging TikTok's suite of creative tools.

Creators and External Partners

To begin your own creator marketing journey, explore our 3 main tools for creator and external partnerships:

TikTok Tools & Education

If you're looking to be more hands-on in creating TikTok videos, use these tools to get educated and inspired:

If you're looking to maximize your creative potential, consider using TikTok's educational tools to help inform the brief you'll provide to creators and partners through one of these programs. From there, remember to continue testing, monitoring, iterating, creating, and innovating.