Meet the winners of the TikTok Awards 2022 | UK

Last night saw the first ever TikTok Awards UK winners announced at a special event in London Bridge. Bringing together the TikTok teams, brand and agency representatives and Creators behind the campaigns, the evening was a great celebration of the incredible work that has happened on the platform in 2022.

The panel of 10 judges from across the UK advertising landscape worked tirelessly to review and score hundreds of entries. Here is what they had to say about deciding on the winners:

Why did this set of TikToks, more than any others, cut through?

"Being successful on TikTok means immersing yourself in the platform. The best brands earn their right to show up on the FYP by putting in the hours and understanding the community and creativity that make TikTok unique.

The winners did this and then some. They understood the platform’s culture and married this with an understanding of their own brand’s role in culture. Rather than simply mirroring or mimicking platform codes they used them as a stage to build on – creating TikToks that were truly ownable as well as truly native."

Vairi Maclennan, Head of Content, Mother

How hard was it to pick these winners? Were they easily the best or was it agony to choose?

"The best work stood out pretty clearly – the projects that made us laugh or a bit jealous rose naturally to the top. It was pretty hard to pick the final winners though as there were a number of strong projects in each section."

Eliza Williams, Editor, Creative Review (Chair of judges)

Did anything surprise you about the winners?

"I was reassured that established brands could go toe-to-toe with smaller brands in understanding how to get the best out of TikTok and crucially not just try to apply the same rules as they use in other platforms."

Vicky Fox, Chief Planning Officer at OMD UK

We are delighted to announce the following category winners for the UK:

Greatest Creative Winner

BBH | Tesco | Voice of the checkout

The winner of the ‘Greatest Creative’ category was Tesco’s Voice of the Checkout TikTok. Using TikTok Duet, Tesco invited members of the public to audition to be the new voice of the Tesco self-service tills. As well as talking in time with a loveable and quickly speaking checkout, users were asked to explain why theirs was the right voice for the job.  

Within 24 hours of launch, the content had been viewed more than five million times — without, at that point, any paid promotion. In total, the campaign achieved 43 million views. Almost 3,000 people entered the competition — which was covered in national broadsheets and tabloids.

Greatest Performance Winner

SLG Brands | Johnny's Chop Shop

The campaign’s TikTok featured celebrity barber and brand ambassador Elliot Forbes explaining different brand products. The brand team encouraged engagement with the TikTok community, creating videos which featured Elliot demonstrating how to use different hair products and answering community questions face-to-face. 

The campaign clocked up almost 24 million views, nearly nine million of which were organic. It enabled Johnny’s Chop Shop to achieve significant sales growth, helping the brand to its best sales week in seven years of trading. During the campaign, Johnny’s Chop Shop saw a 52% uplift in brand awareness. 

Greatest Performance Highly Commended

GEN Z TALENT | Lucky Trip

Greatest TikTok Winner

4creative | Channel 4 | Altogether Different

Designed to promote Channel 4’s role in fostering diverse and exciting new voices, the campaign took as its starting point the insight that TikTok is a place where the overwhelming majority of users (76%) feel comfortable expressing their true selves — and where they love to discover new culture.

The campaign riffed on one of the hottest TikTok memes, “tell me, without telling me”. Channel 4 invited its viewers to celebrate and showcase their differences, using the “tell me, without telling me” format. The response was massive, with 287,000 users uploading 827,000 videos, all showcasing their unique talents and personalities. These were viewed a staggering 9.2 billion times, surpassing all the targets which both Channel 4 and TikTok had originally set for the campaign.

Representatives from 4 Creative and Channel 4 will now fly to Amsterdam on 30th November to attend the Grand Prix, competing against the other European winners for the top spot.

Thank you to our UK jury:

• Geoff De Burca - Chief Strategy Officer, MediaCom

• Tom Wilson – Executive Creative Director, Mediacom

• Enyi Nwosu - Chief Strategy Officer, UM

• Vicky Fox - Chief Planning Officer, OMD

• Marcos Angelides - Chief Strategy Officer, Spark

• Jackie Lyons - Head of Planning, Havas

• Will Ashton - Founder/CEO, Nest Performance

• Dillah Zakbah - Creative Director (Technology), BBH

• Vairi MacLennan - Head of Content, Mother

• Eliza Williams - Editor, Creative Review

• Max Balegde – Creator

And finally, huge congratulations to our shortlisted entrants, who all delivered exceptional campaigns on the platform and helped us make last night so much fun, we can’t wait to see what you do next!

You can check out the UK shortlist here.