TikTok's 2021 Culture Drivers showcased 14 trailblazing partnerships in a series of "Vanity Fair"-style portraits taken by celebrity photographer Carlos “Kaito” Araujo. The images featured brand executives alongside the TikTok creators they partnered with, collected in a high-end coffee table book and digital microsite. We chose Kaito as the photographer because he's made a career of capturing icons, and that's how we saw these creators and partnerships—iconic. They are pioneering a new world of marketing and reinvigorating media with joy and creativity.

TikTok is still a relatively new platform. Our audience is split between brands and marketers who quickly adapted to this new method of marketing and those who wanted to learn how to do it. Culture Drivers was created to celebrate amazing collaborations between brands and creators as well as to educate and inspire marketers, advertisers, and agencies who want to participate in similarly creative ways. (63)

Our key insight was that many marketers feel like they don't know how best to show up on the platform, even though they understand that they need to. Marketing on TikTok looks different, and we work with marketers, advertisers, and agencies to create best-in-class examples of innovative campaigns. Here we put the success of these groundbreaking campaigns on a larger stage. We selected the final Culture Drivers by identifying unique or unusual partnerships between creators and brands that exemplify diversity, bravery, and joy. This demonstrated that as long as creator authenticity is centered, there's no wrong way to show up.

Between July and November 2021, this initiative was created, pitched, and executed by TikTok's North America Business Marketing team. We first identified the stand-out creator and brand partnerships that helped to drive marketing and culture forward and invited the top 14 brand teams and 14 creator teams to a 3-day photoshoot at Pier59 Studios in NYC. Talent came from as far away as California and Canada to shoot editorial and behind-the-scenes footage. We then used these brand stories and photographs to produce a digital microsite featuring summaries and candid marketer Q&As for each campaign, spreads in both Fast Company and The New York Times, and an elegant coffee table book. The physical book was a crucial component; as this was executed in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to share something beautiful, tangible, and visceral with our participants and audience.

Culture Drivers was featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Adweek, Media Post, and Social Media Today. The website itself saw 250,000 views the day it was published, and more than 1.2 million global visitors within the first two weeks. In the first seven days of social posts, we generated 74.1K impressions, 1.3K engagements, and 782 clicks to the Culture Drivers microsite.