In South Korea, TikTok's mainstream user base was initially shaped by its younger age group, as its challenge culture, including dance challenges, appealed strongly to its target audience in their teens and early 20s. Since then, there has been a prolonged period of negative public opinion through various media outlets due to concerns about the lack of filtering of content that could be harmful to teenagers.

This has led to a polarization of opinion in South Korea between those who empathize with and enthusiastically engage with TikTok's content and those who have a prejudiced view that ‘TikTok isn't for me’. This prompted TikTok to plan a campaign to improve the negative perception of the medium among non-users and bring them into the fold.

TikTok is a global platform that is easy for anyone to connect with people from all over the world. Anyone can produce content without spending a lot of time filming or editing because its content format is short. This means that anyone can become an influencer with a global following and easily spread their content around the world.

Based on this factor, we focused on the recent global interest in Korean culture. Korea has many influencers who are gaining popularity around the world, and TikTok has played a big role in the recent global spread of K-culture. We thought that if we talked about the positive effects and phenomena of the TikTok platform through real-life examples, it would be convincing enough to change perceptions.

With the recent Hallyu culture craze, Koreans take great pride in their culture. There are many creators on TikTok who are introducing Korean culture and creating new trends through it, such as Cha Dabin, who covers K-pop in multiple languages, Lee Hyochul, a high school student who became an influencer with 200 million followers overnight with his Slickback challenge video, and Nura Ezzatie, a Malaysian creator that makes spreading everyday Korean easy and fun through content.

If TikTok non-users who have a negative perception of TikTok can feel proud of the K-culture creators represented on TikTok and realize how powerful TikTok has been in spreading the K-wave through their stories, they will want to be a part of it.

Sarah Ahn simply created and uploaded a video of herself microwaving and tasting frozen kimbap from Trader Joe’s with her mother, and the video garnered 12 million views on TikTok, sparking a frozen kimbap craze in the United States. To bring this amazing story to life in a commercial, we flew her and her mother to Korea. We recreated the relaxed, natural atmosphere of the kitchen in her TikTok video, and told the story of how a simple video went viral worldwide, with fast-paced editing that made the process easy and concise.

Since the commercial went live, her story has been turned into a variety of secondary content, including lectures, interview videos, and display banners, which have gone viral online and offline, creating a fun phenomenon that has led to the reintroduction and popularity of frozen kimbap, which had been neglected in Korea.

Key Brand Metrics (Cross Media Research)

- Trust: 9.5% (Goal: 3.9%)

- Relevance: 10.7% (Goal: 1.2%)

- Usefulness: 9.2% (Goal: 1.7%)

Earned Reach Metrics

- Social media : Garnered 205.8K impression and 4.4K engagement organically

- Social sentiment (Brandwatch/Naver): Campaign period vs before campaign

> Brand positive sentiment: +5.5%p (+4.0% than planned)

> Brand negative sentiment: -2.5%p (-0.5% than planned)

Paid Media Performance:

- Impression: 237M (+17.3% than planned)

- Click: 2,735K (+99.5% than planned)

- View: 36M (+30.4% than planned)

- CTR: +70% more achieved than planned