THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

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Venom: The Last Dance - TikTok Takeover

Finalist in TikTok Presence

Objective

Our main objective for the Venom: The Last Dance TikTok campaign was to boost awareness of the movie's release, particularly to a younger audience. Knowing superhero fatigue has been strong, it was important for us to reinforce the love people have for Venom to energize our dedicated fans. By highlighting the film's action and fun we were able to create content that captured the essence of the character, remaining bold and unhinged throughout the campaign.

 

Strategy

Launching a new TikTok account for the final film of the Venom franchise allowed us to craft a unique strategy and bring Venom to a new audience. We analyzed the existing conversation surrounding #Venom on TikTok and leveraged that excitement throughout our campaign. Our aim was to make Venom everyone’s favorite creator by tapping into social trends and interacting with our fanbase from the beginning. We created a first to market  TikTok program that catapulted our campaign to new heights -  unlocking exclusive features on the platform that expanded our reach and garnered over 6.8M new followers by the end of the campaign. 

 

Record-Breaking Global TikTok Spotlight 

We partnered with TikTok to create a Global Spotlight Program for Venom: The Last Dance. Through spotlight we unlocked a plethora of custom features including a show anchor, IP Detail Page, Search Hub, Search Easter Eggs, Custom Frames, Venom Text-to-Speech, and Comment Easter Eggs. By utilizing these exclusive features we were able to drive significant awareness for the film and even break a world record. 

 

The Comment Easter Eggs captivated fans by revealing custom Venom animations when users posted hidden keywords like "Venom," "Symbiote," and "Tickets." This groundbreaking execution generated over 21 billion total views and millions of comments. Four posts broke world records, each surpassing 20 million comments, shattering the previous record of 13 million.

 

Our unique features allowed users to become advocates for the movie through creating their own content. Our Venom Text-to-Speech voice was the only custom voice added to TikTok’s platform in 2024, that resulted in 568M total views from user generated posts using the feature. We encouraged fans to create their own content for the movie with incentives such as exclusive profile frames, which allowed for impactful word of mouth.   

 

Trending with Trends 

Our strategy was to be hyper-organic to TikTok and to establish Venom as a popular creator. We crafted long-lead content that tapped heavily into the zeitgeist to build early buzz for the movie that continued to skyrocket throughout the entirety of the campaign. By jumping on trends such as “Subtle Foreshadowing,” “Lethal Facecard,” and “Hear Me Out” while also leveraging TikTok’s native features such as audios, duets, stitches, and comment responses, we successfully captured the audience’s attention. 

 

Talent Takeover

Not only was Venom a popular creator on our page but our cast played a crucial role in honing in on existing fan bases and bringing a personal touch to our account. Participating in trends, replying to fans and sharing excitement helped drive millions of engagements. 

 

Symbiotic Community Management

Our engagement on the platform extended beyond just creating content. Interacting with fans in the comment section of our posts and inserting ourselves into the conversation of popular creators helped eventize the film and made it more culturally relevant.  

 

Activating Global Influencers 

Across the U.S. and 24 international markets, we engaged 155 influencers with an incredible social reach of over 550M followers to support the release of VENOM: THE LAST DANCE. To date, content from our global creator program has garnered over 343M views.

 

Results

Results by the numbers: 

4 posts which reached world record number of comments on a single TikTok post

43 billion total views for Venom-related posts

Grew the Venom Movie TikTok handle to 7M followers

12M total page views across 12 markets 

 

Results by reactions: 

Beyond the impressive metrics mentioned, our primary goal was to ensure that the content we shared genuinely resonated with our fans and contributed to ticket sales. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with thousands of comments commending the account admins and the quality of the posts. TikTok helped lead the charge to a successful global box office of more than $450M. 

 

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Sony Pictures Entertainment

Links

Entry Credits