How Platypus launched NUS’s first TikTok campaign

We worked with NUS to run the My Present, Our Future campaign. The aim of the campaign was to call for the government to develop a tailored cost of living support package for students.

The National Union of Students (NUS) is a confederation of over 600 student bodies across the United Kingdom. NUS is a part of daily life to any young person studying in the UK.

NUS’s audience is overwhelmingly young people, so they needed a campaign that would reach and truly connect with them.

They needed a digital element to the campaign to:

raise awareness of the campaign
raise awareness of NUS as an organisation that can support students with a range of issues
get people to sign to the My Present, Our Future petition

Planning complementary TikTok and Meta campaigns

We have a very collaborative approach to our campaigns. So after a good chat, we agreed to run the campaign on TikTok and Meta.

TikTok is a great channel to reach and engage with younger audiences, so it was the perfect choice.

As well as the awareness and petition signing goals above, testing and establishing benchmarks for a TikTok (a new online marketing channel for NUS) became a secondary aim for the campaign.

We also:

planned a warm up campaign to generate awareness of NUS in the lead up to a vital vote on membership of NUS
Created an audience strategy covering people who are students now, had university-related interests, or had been students previously
created age ranges for the audiences to meet NUS’s specific audience goals.

A blend of ad creative

Next, we set up the awareness and lead generation ads on Meta and TikTok.

On Meta, we used a mixture of static and dynamic ad creative across the channels.

Finally, we launched the campaign and optimised it every day for the campaign period. This made sure NUS got the most results they could for their budget.

Reaching millions of new people

The campaign’s success exceeded NUS’s expectations:

We reached 2.7 million people across the UK in the Meta and TikTok campaigns, massively increasing brand awareness
We generated leads at a CPL that was 11% under target, which meant NUS’s budget stretched further
We delivered strategic recommendations for future NUS campaigns on TikTok. Our suggestions on audiences, content formats and creative processes will all amplify the value of NUS’s future digital marketing campaigns.

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