We’re speaking with Oli Hills, CEO of Nonsensical, the agency that helps clients win on TikTok. Having taken over Updates Media Ltd in 2017 after a career in investment management, he evolved it into Nonsensical just as the pandemic hit and TikTok rocketed. In this episode we talk about how to get the right strategic approach for the platform to better engage youth audiences, how to avoid doing it badly and who’s doing it really well. It’s packed full of tips and advice!

You can find out about Nonsensical here and connect with Oli on LinkedIn here and Twitter (X) here plus the Nonsensical blog which is worth a read.

Things we talk about

Approach to organic strategy and having multiple accounts for different audiences

• Gymshark men and women accounts on TikTok
• Duolingo region specific accounts UK and France for example
• The Works on books and Oli discussses how they could split this out to books and parents

Paid ads approach and finding the right kind of content your audience might be engaging with

• Mukbangs
• Restaurant reviews and tours

Other accounts we mention

• Urban Tandoor Bristol – the restaurant who have amassed over 10m likes through their parody songs
• Duolingo and Ryanair may not need TikTok but they are brands who land their tone of voice well
• Sheer Luxe; digital fashion and lifestyle publication whose team operate as influencers within the content
• Luxe Collective: luxury fashion buying second hand. Interviews with owners, provides a depth of content as well as the shopping option
• RSPB: and how their Bird of the Week is a fun, platform relevant way to engage Gen Z with bird info.

Attribution and it’s challenges with TikTok

• Attribution tools like Fospha
• Post purchase/engagement surveys

Three top tips for winning on TikTok

• Organic: define your biggest audience that has something in common and focus on creating content on just that audience.
• Creative: really thing about being native, authentic, genuine and looks/feels like TikTok
• Repeatable, scalable style of content that you can repeat

Recommendations

• TikTok for Business on LinkedIn
• Disney’s Creativity Inc book

We’re talking about connecting your brand to Gen Z with Alex Haider and Izzy Hall, Senior Content Executives from Pion, an agency that helps brand specialise in student and Gen Z audiences.

Pion is formerly known as Student Beans, Beans ID and Voxburner, before launching as Pion earlier this year. They also run the successful global event, Youth Marketing Strategy (YMS).

We talk about some of the insights from Pion’s recent Youth Trend Report, in particular unhelpful assumptions, tone of voice, aesthetics and pop culture and subcultures and whether cancel culture is done. Along with top tips from Alex and Izzy on how to better connect your marketing efforts with Gen Z we talk trends, insights and a ton of examples.

Follow Izzy and Alex on LinkedIn

Things we talk about;

• Brat Summer and aesthetics (a blog from Alex)
• Monzo experiential campaign in the Trafford Centre, Flatmate Fortunes
• Surreal on LinkedIn
• RSPB on TikTok
• BBC Sport and the Olympics
• Tala on TikTok
• Glossier on TikTok
• Oatly and their OOH
• Ryanair on TikTok
• DuoLingo on TikTok and Make It Go Viral newsletter from Zaria Parvez
• 93% club on LinkedIn
• Word Tonic on LinkedIn and their website https://www.wordtoniccommunity.com/

We’re starting Season 5 off with a conversation on the future of news media, with Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at Reuters Institute, University of Oxford.

A journalist and digital strategist, Nic played a key role in shaping the BBC’s internet services for over a decade and was a founding member of the BBC News Website. He led international coverage as World Editor and as Head of Product Development for BBC News helped introduce innovations such as blogs, podcasting and on-demand video. More recently he’s led digital teams, developing websites, mobile and interactive TV applications for news, sport, weather and local. Nic played an important part in the development of social media strategies and guidelines for the wider BBC.

At Reuters, he shares a breadth of research that unpacks the trends in news media consumption, evolving technology including AI, the impact of social-first and what this means for a younger news audience as we look ahead.

Follow Nic:

@nicnewman on X and on LinkedIn

Reuters Institute research we mention:

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024

The kaleidoscope: tracking young people’s relationships with new

AI and the future of news

How publishers are learning to create and distribute news on TikTok

7 ways to create a newsroom Gen Z will want to stay in

Other things we mention;

What does news media mean to Gen Z?: An investigation into the media habits of Gen Z in the UK (Feb 2024)

FT Strategies. Unlocking the potential of younger audiences: securing tomorrow’s readers

People vs Algorithms Podcast