Tacofing TikTok

Overview

Santa Maria’s TikTok launch built relevance with a new generation by treating tacos as culture, not product. By participating in #foodtok on the target audience’s terms, a TikTok identity with strong engagement was built. The result: 40M views, increased audience retention, and massive engagement.

Challenge

Santa Maria wanted to find a way to reach 18-35 year olds whose connection to the brand and “taco Friday” was no longer obvious. The target group uses TikTok, but ads made for other channels don’t work there. They created neither viewing time, engagement nor relationship. TikTok doesn’t reward brands that interrupt; but those that make an effort and participate in the conversation.

Santa Maria needed to create the right material on the target group’s terms. The ambition was to earn more time with the audience, and engage through relevant content and lively comment fields.

Solution

A content strategy was developed with the starting point “What do tacos mean to us Swedes?” TexMex as a culture was highlighted – friendship, tradition and love. The objective: To tacoify Sweden; not just on Fridays, but every day!

With the help of recurring, relatable and repeatable concepts, the @santamariasverige account could be established as an obvious place for everything related to tacos.

From interviews in the city – where people rank the most important ingredients and the comment fields get heated (“can you have banana and coriander in tacos?”) – to dating shows where singles’ choices of taco ingredients say more than their Tinder bio. Through scrollstoppers that flirted with classic traditions (tacofied herring!), the products were put in new contexts; with respect, but with an unexpected and fun twist.

Instead of just creating recipes, Santa Maria treated tacos and the products that go with them as culture; as a topic of discussion, a playground and a theme to challenge.

Starting a new channel and building a relationship with a new target group where the products are not always the main focus and are sometimes even chosen over in favor of other components is not only brave – it is also innovative. Santa Maria becomes a genuine enabler of discussion, relationship and playfulness for the target group. But most importantly: it gives credibility when the communication takes place on the target group’s terms; not as ads that sell a product.

Results

In 6 months, the content resulted in over 40.8 million video views, 65,000 likes and over 9,000 saved posts. Compared to the previous reach ads that ran on TikTok, the platform-adapted material managed to earn the viewers’ time; +256% increase in audience retention and +204% increase in quality video views (>6 seconds watch time) in advertising.

Santa Maria didn’t just launch a new TikTok account. A completely new TikTok identity was established, with a clear tone, clear formats – and a relevant role in the platform’s community and discourse.

Does your brand also want to be more successful on platforms like Tiktok? Talk to Lina!