Oct
TikTok has revealed the shortlist for its 2025 Nordic Ad Awards, highlighting the top campaigns, creative teams and agencies from the region who have excelled in driving branding, performance and impact on the platform. This annual ceremony celebrates TikTok-first ideas — and for creators, marketers and brands it offers valuable lessons in what it takes to stand out in 2025.
What the Awards Are and Why They Matter
Now in its fourth year, the Nordic edition of the TikTok Ad Awards recognizes five major categories: Greatest Branding, Greatest Performance, Greatest Creative, Greatest Impact and the overall “Greatest TikTok”.
- Greatest Branding — campaigns that combine bold, TikTok-native creative with brand awareness goals.
- Greatest Performance — campaigns optimized for conversion or real-world results using the platform’s ad tools.
- Greatest Creative — campaigns that stand out purely for creativity, production and originality.
- Greatest Impact — new this year, focusing on campaigns that drove positive social or community outcomes.
- Greatest TikTok — the top prize across the above categories.
As TikTok pushes more toward creator-led ad formats and platform-native storytelling, understanding what these nominees are doing well can help shape your content strategy for 2026 and beyond.
Key Takeaways for Creators & Marketers
1. Embrace Platform-First Storytelling
The nominated campaigns don’t simply repurpose TV or YouTube ads. They lean into TikTok’s unique language: fast pacing, vertical format, creator collaborations, branded audio, interactive hooks. For creators aiming to elevate their work, studying these winners is a masterclass.
If you’re managing multiple test accounts to experiment with creative styles, the Buy Bulk TikTok Accounts Guide offers a structured path to run parallel tests, track what works and refine your approach before scaling on your main brand handle.
2. Performance Meets Creativity
Performance campaigns on TikTok aren’t just budget and targeting—they’re creative. The winners in “Greatest Performance” show that conversion-led campaigns must still be culturally relevant and visually engaging. Metrics improved when brands treated creative iteration as seriously as media spend.
3. Social Impact Has Been Lifted
The introduction of the “Greatest Impact” category signals a shift: campaigns with meaningful purpose now gain as much recognition as pure branding or performance. Doing good isn’t side-project — it’s part of the creative mandate. If you build for long-term brand value, purpose drives both social buzz and business results.
4. Testing & Scale Strategy
Many of the nominees achieved success by running multiple creative variants, leveraging creator networks, localizing content and iterating fast. Brands working across niches or markets can use techniques like managing multiple accounts to test angles across geographies or user segments. The Buy Bulk TikTok Accounts category can support this multi-account growth strategy — allowing you to isolate experiments without endangering your flagship account.
5. Study Case Studies, Not Just Winners
Don’t just pick the gold medal campaigns—look at finalists too. What creative hooks did they use? Which format? Where did they appear (In-Feed, TopView, Spark ads)? Many useful lessons lie in campaigns that didn’t win but nearly did.
How to Apply This to Your Strategy
- Audit your creative pipeline: Ensure you’re producing content that’s TikTok-native—not repurposed from other platforms. Prioritize vertical format, rapid hook (<3 seconds), audio that loops cleanly.
- Map your goals to product choice: If your goal is awareness, focus on categories like Branding or Creative. If you want conversions, look at Performance and integrate UGC + creator effects.
- Embed social purpose when relevant: Whether your brand sells apparel, SaaS, or services—find a meaningful angle. Could be community support, sustainability, or education.
- Run multi-account tests: Launch small scale tests across segments or geographies. Use secondary handles to test tone, format and creator collaborations, then scale winners on your main account.
- Review peer campaigns: Use the shortlist as a study deck—subscribe to the nominees’ channels, see their pacing, transitions, hooks and ad placements.
- Plan for 2026 now: The awards ceremony is scheduled for November 19, 2025. The insights from winners will shape what TikTok values next year. Build your roadmap early.
Potential Pitfalls & Things to Avoid
- Treating TikTok like other platforms: If you apply old social tactics (static images, broad targeting) you’ll under-perform.
- Ignoring localization: Nordic campaigns often succeed by being culturally tuned. One size does not fit all.
- Under-estimating creator operations: Scaling on TikTok often means managing multiple creator flows, rights, briefs, analytics. Ensure you have that infrastructure.
- Forgetting data / measurement: The awards heavily weigh performance metrics. Ensure you’re tracking both creative engagement and business impact.
The Bigger Picture: What This Signals for TikTok
By elevating regional awards like the Nordics, TikTok signals it is doubling down on creative excellence, local relevance and business outcomes. The “platform-first” lens is clearer than ever — vertical format, creator partnerships, cultural resonance.
For creators, brands and agencies, this means the competition is getting tougher—and more creative. But it also means the opportunities are richer. If you produce thoughtful, trend-aware, high-impact content, the platform rewards are real.
Final Thoughts
The 2025 Nordic Ad Awards shortlist is more than a list of nominees—it’s a creative playbook for anyone working on TikTok. From creativity and performance to social impact and platform fluency, the elements of success are laid out.
Whether you’re an individual creator, brand stunt team or full agency, studying these campaigns, building platform-native assets and scaling intelligently via multi-account experimentation can give you an edge.
Next step? Dive into the nominees, extract their best practices, launch your experiments and refine what works. If you manage tests across segments, don’t forget to leverage a multi-account strategy (as per Buy Bulk TikTok Accounts Guide and Buy Bulk TikTok Accounts) to protect your core presence while you innovate.
Creativity is the new currency. Ready your content, scale smart—and let your next campaign join the shortlist.
