Inside the 2025 TikTok Ad Awards: What defined a winning campaign in the U.K. – Fortune

How e.l.f. Beauty vice president of marketing Hannah Roberts sees transparency shaping TikTok beauty.
For brands with bold ideas and creative ambition, TikTok has proven to be a powerful outlet for inspiring audiences and deepening engagement. Through short-form video, the platform has transformed how people consume content, connect with brands, and make purchasing decisions.
Now in its fourth year, the TikTok Ad Awards celebrate the brands and agencies that dare to think differently with campaigns that have entertained communities, sparked imagination, and delivered measurable impact.
Fortune Brand Studio spoke with the industry leaders who judged this year’s contenders for TikTok’s top honors. Here’s what they revealed about what makes a campaign truly stand out on TikTok.
Hannah Roberts is vice president of marketing at e.l.f. Beauty. Based in the U.K., she’s helped e.l.f. build cultural relevance at speed, with her background in product development and brand strategy. Here, she reflects on her first year judging the TikTok Ad Awards, how the platform has redefined creativity in beauty, and why the most successful brands embrace transparency.
Tell us about your current role and career journey.
I lead international marketing for e.l.f. Beauty, which really means imagining how this bold, unapologetic brand shows up with a kind heart around the world. My role lives at the intersection of culture, creativity, and commerce and has given me the freedom to reimagine what global beauty marketing can be: faster, funnier, more emotionally fluent, and radically inclusive.
This is your first year judging the TikTok Ad Awards. What made you want to join the panel?
TikTok is where brand storytelling is being rewritten in real time. You see more creative evolution in six seconds on TikTok than in six months on other platforms. Judging the awards feels like a front-row seat to culture in motion, and a reminder that the future of advertising doesn’t look like advertising at all.
How does TikTok fit into e.l.f.’s marketing strategy?
TikTok isn’t a channel for us; it’s a cultural engine. It’s where we test, learn, and listen before we scale. We don’t use TikTok to advertise; we use it to participate. Our strategy is to move at the speed of culture, and TikTok is the only platform built for that velocity. It’s where we turn brand energy into cultural currency.
What makes beauty brand content stand out on TikTok?
When it stops looking like beauty content. The best TikToks in our space are cinematic, comedic, sometimes chaotic, but never cosmetic in the traditional sense. Innovation happens when a brand breaks its own aesthetic and invites audiences to be cocreators, not consumers. It’s about valuing what people feel before they even process what they’ve seen.
How do you balance global strategy with local relevance?
The answer is humility. Global doesn’t mean “copy-paste.” It means being context-aware. TikTok lets us see culture refracted through a thousand local lenses: beauty rituals, humor, slang, soundscapes. Our job is to listen, not dictate. The best-performing campaigns flex to local nuance but still ladder up to a global heartbeat.
Beyond e.l.f., which brands or creators do you admire on TikTok?
I love creators who treat TikTok like an improv open mic, not a showroom. That unapologetic, self-aware tone that some creators or brands have that makes you love the brand because they don’t take themselves too seriously.
How do you define truly creative content on TikTok?
Traditional advertising is a monologue; TikTok is a group chat. Creativity here isn’t just what you make; it’s what people do with it. The magic happens when a sound, a phrase, or a visual cue becomes memetic and your audience starts finishing your sentences. That’s cocreation at scale.
What advice would you give to brands looking to make an impact?
Stop chasing viral. Start chasing vital. Make content that adds value, whether that’s a laugh, a look, or a lesson. Don’t talk at the algorithm; talk to the audience. And measure relevance the same way you measure return on investment, because on TikTok, the two are inseparable.
What does the future of TikTok look like to you?
The next chapter will be about trust and transparency. Audiences will reward brands that show up consistently as themselves, as truth-tellers not trend-chasers. Authenticity will be the algorithm.
What trends stood out to you while judging this year’s awards?
The most exciting trend is what I call “creative collisions,” brands mixing genres, tones, and creators in ways that shouldn’t work but do. There’s also a return to play and a shift toward purpose that feels personal. The big takeaway is clear: Creativity that moves culture always outperforms creativity that merely markets.
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