Turning Brand Worlds Into Content Playgrounds

It's well established that creator campaigns can be highly effective for your brand. While a 2023 Mintel study reports 55% of younger millennials who follow/frequently view social media personalities purchased something promoted by an influencer in the three months to October 2022, only 27% think their most favoured influencer believes in the products/services they promote. And here lies a big opportunity for brands to bridge that gap of mistrust between themselves and the creator communities to truly win on TikTok.

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Authenticity rules

No matter how you sugarcoat it - effectiveness when working with creators always boils down to one word: authenticity. Overused? Yes. Predictable? Certainly. TikTok’s research, conducted by Flamingo Group and GroupM, found that authentic content left 73% of users feeling positive and emotionally uplifted afterwards. It remains the one vital ingredient creators need to engage with their communities meaningfully.

But how can creators deliver ‘authentic’ content when their interactions come with a price tag, a contract and strict guidelines of what their reactions should be? Anyone here guilty of treating creators as ‘performers’? 

What if there was an approach where creators could be immersed in a world so deeply they lose themselves entirely? An approach where their experience of your brand is so uplifting that it positively transfers to their communities' love of your brand. An approach that guarantees authenticity every time. 

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The conduit to authenticity is a four letter word. Play.

One of the first things we ever learn to do is play. We’re experts at it. Or at least we were once. It’s inherent in us, and it’s something that’s tapped into less and less as we get older. We’re here to change that, to rediscover play, and to use it to deliver results.

Creatives, actors, designers, makers, teachers and creators use it all the time: play turns performance into a real exploration of emotions. It is the heart of entertainment, it has therapeutic potential. It is the very essence of how fun, interaction, joy and sharing enter our lives. In fact, even social media itself is a form of play. As Charlie Brooker pointed out in his How Video Games Changed The World: what  is social media if not the most immersive, large-scale video game of all time? Perform actions, increase numbers, gain success. We’re always playing…just not always in the right way.

When we start designing creator marketing campaigns with experiences that can offer play at the heart - then the creator has a golden ticket to an effortless well of authenticity, of primal, human reactions that translate universally—all thanks to an immersive surrounding designed to draw them out. 

At Swamp, we call these experiences Content Playgrounds. 

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So, what actually is a Content Playground?

In simple terms, it’s a mash-up of a live event and a content shoot. Properly crafted, it’s a bespoke immersive experience, written for a very specific audience - the content creators - and designed for broadcast on TikTok, or Twitch, Meta, YouTube and Snapchat as online experiences that audiences can enjoy in their millions. Like  from Prime Video that reached an audience of 1.2 million on Twitch for the launch of The Boys Season 3. 

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“Being able to genuinely step into the world of the TV show….makes the content so much more relatable. [My followers] thought we were on the actual show set for The Boys!” 

Jennings Brower, 3.5million TikTok followers

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It is a camera-rigged immersive show that offers a plethora of things for the creators to see and do, stories to unpick, secrets and easter eggs to uncover, adventures to be had. It is a treasure trove of experiences - all waiting to be discovered and documented by a genuinely awestruck creator - much like the content playground we‍ designed for Knorr’s global ‘Dare to Try’ Tik Tok campaign.

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“The entire set-up was like we walked into a movie studio. It felt way beyond “a set”, transporting us to be in a different mindset for creating and capturing the content. ” 

W2sixpackchef, 1.9million TikTok followers

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Creators at play will deliver more

The proof? 100% of the creators we’ve worked with have over delivered on their contracted content.

At SWAMP, we’re immersive theatre makers. We’ve flourished in the brand world because we know how to expand a brand story, deliver a thrilling narrative, offer moments of unforgettable drama and - crucially - show our audiences a really good time. We’ve seen it in both our award-winning  and our critically-acclaimed . 

We know how to create experiences that squeeze as much potential from our guests, creators, and influencers as possible. We’ve been making everyday people play for years, packing in moments that bring joy, panic, wonder and excitement. We know how to make it emotive, in whatever way is most appropriate. Think of all those shrieks, screams, howls of laughter and awe-struck ‘woah!’s in the final, incredible cut. 

The more space for play that we give them, the more the creators are able to take away. 

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Make your brand the hero

This approach is all about building a meaningful connection with the creators’ audiences. If a brand facilitates a creator having a great time, then that creator’s audience will associate that positivity with the brand. Your brand is the hero that makes this happen.

So bring your creators and their audiences meaningfully into your brand world. Give them a Content Playground. Let them play. Let them have a genuinely great time, let them forget about their work and their job, and you’ll find yourself with stacks of engaging content that champions your brand’s spirit and delivers - you guessed it - total authenticity. 

So let us turn your brand world into a Content Playground.