Interesting at the speed of culture (with Nick Tran)
Apr 21, 2025
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Nick Tran, former Global Head of Marketing at TikTok, shares insights from his dynamic career in branding and marketing. He explores how TikTok's unique platform is reshaping brand strategies and highlights the importance of aligning marketing with cultural trends. Tran discusses his innovative 'Project Cheetah,' which sped up campaign development, and emphasizes the creativity that constraints can spark. He advocates for in-house creative teams and the need for brands to embrace adaptability and risk-taking to thrive in a post-TikTok world.
Nick Tran highlights that understanding fundamental human motivations like sex, power, money, and death can significantly enhance marketing strategies.
The evolution of media consumption necessitates brands to prioritize creativity and innovation to stand out in a post-TikTok world.
Project Cheetah demonstrates that reducing campaign development time fosters agility and relevance, enabling brands to respond effectively to cultural shifts.
Deep dives
Four Key Motivations
The discussion centers around four fundamental human motivations: sex, power, money, and death, which provide a lens through which marketing strategies can be developed. These motivations serve as the 'spirit of the depths,' contrasted with the 'spirit of the times,' which informs how audiences engage with brands. Marketers are encouraged to harness these key motivators to create compelling narratives that resonate with their audience's inherent desires. This framework helps brands connect on a deeper emotional level, making their messaging more impactful.
Transformation in Marketing at TikTok
Nick Tran, the global head of marketing for TikTok, shares how his experience there transformed his marketing approach. He recognized the rapid changes in media consumption patterns and understood that traditional marketing playbooks were becoming obsolete. Instead of relying on established strategies, he focused on innovation and adaptation, realizing that brands must evolve to thrive in a post-TikTok landscape. This shift emphasizes agility and creativity, suggesting that brands must be more interesting and relevant to be noticed.
The Evolving Role of Creativity
Creativity has become increasingly critical in marketing, particularly due to TikTok's algorithm, which favors engaging content. Nick argues that without creativity, content risks becoming invisible as the algorithm will not promote it. He notes that the competitive landscape now demands brands create unique, interesting content rather than following trends or mimicking competitors. The message is clear: to get seen, brands must break out of the 'sea of sameness' and offer something distinct.
Project Cheetah's Fast-Track Campaign Development
Nick initiated Project Cheetah at TikTok to drastically reduce campaign development time from ten weeks to just a few days. This was achieved by stripping away unnecessary processes and focusing on core campaign essentials while gaining early buy-in from legal and creative teams. The campaign aimed to reflect TikTok's responsiveness to culture, demonstrating that brands can deliver timely and relevant content. This radical approach showcases how embracing speed and simplification can enhance marketing effectiveness.
Engaging Constraints to Drive Innovation
Nick advocates for the use of constraints as a catalyst for creativity within brands, arguing that they encourage out-of-the-box thinking and innovative solutions. By eliminating substantial media budgets, brands can focus on organic engagement and creative content that resonates with audiences. This approach emphasizes maximizing impact with limited resources, fostering a culture of resourcefulness rather than dependence on paid advertisement strategies. He believes that creativity flourishes when teams are compelled to rethink their methods and strive for excellence under pressure.
Is TikTok the most interesting platform in the world? What’s at the heart of its success – and what does it mean to be more interesting in a post TikTok world, when the audience on TikTok is “10x bigger every day than the Super Bowl”?
In this week’s episode, Adam meets Nick Tran, former Global Head of Marketing at TikTok and advisor to a new generation of Challengers, including tech company Nothing. Nick brings his experience as a marketer, advisor and investor to discuss:
How TikTok has changed the playing field for a new generation of brands
How he led ‘Project Cheetah’ to reduce TikTok’s campaign development cycle from 10 weeks to a few days.
The creativity that financial and time constraints force you to develop
Why he always looks for win-win-win partnerships
Learning how to create a ’must-see’ piece of creative work
Why he believes in moving creative in-house to speed up social
The need for a balanced diet of marketing measurement beyond KPIs and ROI
