TikTok Creativity Summit
The Event
The TikTok Creativity Summit was an opportunity for TikTok to bring together creators and publishers, and publishers and media professionals to share innovations and to set the stage for the next wave of content creation.While TikTok has held similar summits globally, this was the first time they had delivered it in the UK. The influencers and the publishers groups had two separate tracks of content, but joined together for catering and for the final session of the day.
As well as practical sessions with talks delivered by speakers from brands such as Netflix, Sky and BBC, and activations set up for the influencers to inspire content on the day, it offered both creators and publishers networking opportunities to learn how they can best put the platform to use for ad purposes. The day rounded off with a party featuring DJ Storm Mollison. Host for the day was Sarel, an actor, presenter and high-profile content creator, and she guided everyone through the talks and activations. Influencers in attendance included Shits and Gigs, Team GB Olympian Lena Nielsen and Max Balegde.
To add a further TikTok dimension to the event, our in-house catering team, Tobacco Dock Food, collaborated with low-waste creator The Spicy Mustache who curated a vegan menu for the attendees to enjoy.
What We Loved
Networking Opportunities
Tobacco Dock's large communal spaces and walkways, provided maximum opportunities for delegates to meet and network.
Flexibility of spaces
Rooms were divided for to provide different areas but then seamlessly turned into one larger space when needed.
Creative Scope
The large glass windows for each breakout room made creative branding and injections of colours very easy, at low cost.
Why Tobacco Dock?
This was an event with a swift turnaround from brief to delivery. The layout of the Little Gallery and East Mall with its central communal East Mall Square space lent itself perfectly to the format of having two separate demographics who could engage with content both separately and together.
Having this set-up as an existing layout made the planning more straightforward for TikTok and their chosen brand experience agency, Seen Presents. Little Gallery and the East Mall spaces feature large windows, which add to the sense of movement and atmosphere. These windows also offered large-scale and impactful branding opportunities, and they worked with Moss, our in-house branding partner, to install eye-catching vinyls over the glass.
The flexibility of the spaces themselves was another draw. Their audience was divided into two sections, the creators and the publishers.
The publishers’ talks and workshops took place in East Mall 1, while the creators’ were delivered in Little Gallery. Drapes were used to size the space down to fit their audience perfectly. Later in the day, both groups joined together for a final talk in Little Gallery and the drape was pulled back to increase the space and accommodate the larger group.
The End Result
This was a vibrant day, crammed with talks, workshops, activations and networking.
Attendees arrived through the Pennington Street East entrance and registered as they entered the building. Creators were on the pink track and publishers on the blue. This colour theme continued throughout the day. As well as the Little Gallery and East Mall serving as plenary space for the creators and publishers respectively, East Mall 2 and 4 were used as bar and mingling space for the networking party at the end of the day.
East Mall Square was a central area used for catering for both cohorts and also the location of the DJ booth in the evening. An activation area was set up in East Mall 3, with two activation pods to inspire content creation from the influencers in attendance.
A questionnaire at the entrance helped to sort which experience would best fit each creator. ‘Lucid Horizons’ was a serene sensory experience featuring an ethereal ‘shower thoughts’ content capture moment that was designed to unveil TikTok’s new Creator Search Insights tool.
‘Dazzlespehere’ was a bright, colour-filled space showcasing CapCut’s powerful capabilities for top-tier content creation. 3D and 2D designers worked together on the set design with clever use of shapes, bringing to life a stunning backdrop for the speakers and for the content creation parts of the day.
Tobacco Dock is beautiful. The team were great to work with and ensured all our needs were taken care of from the very start until after final delivery.
