SheaMoisture

Objective

SheaMoisture, a Unilever brand and global leader in hair-, body-, and skin-care products, has been making sustainable products with organic shea butter for generations. The company operates with a purpose-driven business model and made it an explicit part of its mission to empower Black communities.

When SheaMoisture sought to strengthen its perception as a brand with the best natural hair care products for women with curly hair, they partnered with TikTok to create an innovative campaign that would drive sales and expand their market share.

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Solution

To inform their campaign strategy, they started with social listening, monitoring and assessing what was being said about the brand across different online platforms. This led to the insight that lots of customers and influencers are on TikTok to share their positive experiences with SheaMoisure. They also saw that bi-cultural women in the Netherlands are increasingly using the platform and that TikTok has become the place to be for hair care, with the #haartok community seeing a constant growth in viewers each year.

These data points showed the great potential of TikTok as a platform in their media mix. However, they knew that to fulfil this potential they needed a TikTok-first creative approach, with consistency and collaboration across paid, owned, and earned media.

To realise this, they partnered with agencies Mindshare and Aidem, to build an innovative campaign strategy centered around creator collaborations, experimentation and learning. At the foundation of their creative approach were three principles.

First, having dedicated creative formats for each of the biggest TikTok sub-communities they had identified within their nice target group of women with curly hair. These included festival-goers, children and couples. Second, actively monitoring the comment section, responding to and creating content around questions. Third, striking a balance between brand recognition and authenticity. Each video would also be linked to another, helping to drive overall views, and include smart copy optimised for findability in TikTok Search.

Based on these principles, SheaMoisture collaborated with TikTok creators to create its first batch of videos: 30 videos with a brand awareness objective, and 30 videos with the goal of driving traffic to the website of Kruidvat - the Dutch retailer that sells their products.

They first published these videos on their own TikTok channel, allowing viewers to discover them organically. The brand awareness videos would be uploaded first, followed by their traffic-focused videos. The video upload dates were aligned with the timeline of Kruidvat promotions, to maximise their business impact.

The organic videos that performed the best, were used as creatives for Spark Ads and In-feed Ads that they would run in flights. After a flight ended, they synthesised the learnings to improve the creatives of the next flight. When Awareness objectives were met, they switched to the video views objective, which drives brand impact by targeting users in the TikTok feed who pay greater attention to your ad.

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Results

SheaMoisture's TikTok-first creatives, continuous test and learning mindset, and toggling between different campaign optimisations, delivered outstanding results on and off the platform.

While TikTok only made up 12% of the total media budget, it significantly outperformed other channels in the media mix. TikTok scored the highest recognition among heavy users (38% certain) and also the highest product awareness among heavy users (55% - 57%). This translated into the highest purchase intent of all channels (44%-55%).

From the brand lift study that SheaMoisture ran, they saw a 6.9 pts uplift in Ad Recall and a 7.4 pts uplift in brand association on natural ingredients, exceeding the benchmark. The awareness flights exceeded the impression target by an average of +97.5%. By optimizing Reach to Video Views, the completed view rate increased from 1.3% to 4.7% and the average watch time from 2.59 seconds to 7.98 seconds. The Traffic-oriented flights exceed the click target to retailer Kruidvat by an average of +126.5%.

Ultimately, this helped SheaMositure to increase its sales and market share in the Netherlands. Their campaign was also recognised in the 2024 AMMA Awards - where they won a prize in the category 'best use of a medium'.

"Our TikTok campaign was a hit thanks to the perfect synergy between organic, paid, and owned. By harnessing the power of the community to develop relevant content, we created a wave of interaction. And by continuously testing, learning, and optimising, we got the most out of our campaign. A lesson for everyone: success on TikTok is about collaboration, listening, and constant evolution." - Carli Luteijn, Senior Social Specialist Mindshare x GroupM Nexus

"We are dedicated to serving black and mixed-race women and are fond of this TikTok strategy as it allows us to inspire & educate about curls & coils; by explaining our expert ranges that tap into the needs and regime of textured hair. Giving our consumers the knowledge to navigate this often difficult to understand & overwhelming landscape on TikTok’." - Loraine Frimpong | Brand Manager SheaMoisture x Unilever

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