Inside the 2025 TikTok Ad Awards: What defined a winning campaign in France – Fortune

How We Are Social associate director Jean-Baptiste Bourgeois sees cultural legitimacy on TikTok.
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.
Jean-Baptiste Bourgeois is associate director at We Are Social, where he leads the agency’s strategy and influence teams in Paris. A three-time judge of the TikTok Ad Awards, he helps clients navigate the fast-evolving landscape of social creativity. Here, he explains what makes a campaign the right fit for TikTok, the importance of legitimacy within cultural conversations, and why brands on the platform shouldn’t worry too much about getting things wrong.
What makes advertising on TikTok different?
Two things: brand personality and the demand level of users. Users are open to receiving ads on TikTok, but they are demanding. If it does not look enough like their ‘for you page,’ they will reject the message. If, on the contrary, it feels like proper TikTok content, they will be the first drivers of virality. So, a brand has to behave like a user, like a creator. “Don’t make ads, make TikToks” isn’t the official line anymore, but it’s still true.
What strategies ensure a brand’s content will drive strong performance on TikTok?
Beyond having the right audience insight—which can simply be a need for entertainment—strong performance depends on how accurately the ad format is built around the content. Then come the key questions: What industry are you in? What are the category codes? What cultural moment are you speaking to? How is the message brought to life? Those factors determine whether you should boost a high-potential post with Spark Ads or invest in a TopView placement during something like Fashion Week—the goal is always to choose the format that best amplifies the idea.
What kind of storytelling works best on the platform?
Most of the time, people on TikTok are looking for something they need. That’s why brands should build storytelling that’s helpful first. We make sure our campaigns are useful and that they answer a usage need on the platform or a conversation already happening on it. For example, behind the funniest TikTok from ALDI France, there is as much purpose and helpfulness as behind the most educational and premium TikTok from Air France.
Is humor the only path to virality?
No, not necessarily. The first quest is to identify the need and be sure the brand can participate. There’s a belief that TikTok is only for killing time with hysteric, funny content—that’s not true. Our process is to define the right audience—specific audiences exposed to shared cultural references—then build for organic virality and pair it with the right ad format.
Is there a universal strategy you can apply to different trends, sectors, or brands?
Yes, I think there’s a kind of recipe we have at We Are Social, but it’s really the recipe of TikTok. It’s a platform built for reactiveness, for staying in the cultural zeitgeist of the moment. As advertisers and brand leaders, the first thing we need to do is identify the conversation topic that exists beyond the trend itself.
Then we need to ask whether we’re legitimate to join that conversation. If you are, you won’t be seen as a brand forcing its way in—you’ll be naturally invited to participate. From there, you can approve, validate, or contribute to the discussion in a way that feels right for your brand.
How central are creators to landing the right message?
Very. Most of the time, we’re collaborating with TikTok-endemic creators, the people who created new formats or conversations and have become famous opinion leaders on the platform. They often have something that belongs only to them, a specific format or tone that cannot be found elsewhere.
We brief them, they pitch, and we validate together, on a fast track, to respect the trust their audiences have in them. That’s best practice.
How do you make sure a campaign feels culturally relevant in different markets?
For me the true goal is when a TikTok campaign becomes a phenomenon, and people do not even remember that it started on TikTok. A great example is NYX’s “True ID Card” campaign, which won the top prize at last year’s TikTok Ad Awards in France. The brand tackled issues of representation and equality using something uniquely French—the national ID card—and partnered with local creators who cared about those topics.
It felt global but also deeply local because it spoke the same cultural language as its audience. That’s what TikTok allows: global ideas expressed through local codes, creators, and styles that make a brand feel legitimate in each market. That is the power of the platform. Even if everyone expresses themselves in their own ways, the demonstration mechanics and societal impact work the same everywhere.
What made you want to join the TikTok Ad Awards jury?
At first, my main interest was the challenge of judging ideas that are really endemic to a platform and specific to TikTok. We judge ideas for their impact, their success, and their originality—but always with TikTok criteria in mind, with TikTok ways of measuring impact first on the platform. In every category, that’s the main rule we follow: Is it TikTok-endemic? Assessing an idea for its impact, originality, and success because it exists first on TikTok and can truly be measured only on this platform.
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