Across the country, many young people are facing mental health challenges, yet often do not receive the support they need. The Ad Council’s Sound It Out Adolescent Mental Health campaign empowers parents and caregivers as they support their teens' emotional well-being, and provides them with tools to have these meaningful conversations.
To amplify this mission, the Ad Council and TikTok joined forces to bring critical resources to the adolescent caregiver community on TikTok. The campaign featured eight carefully selected creators, with help from Whalar who supported creator engagement, who authentically spoke to the topic of caring for a teen and their mental health. These creators captured TikTok-first content that would resonate with their respective communities on the platform, and drive caregivers to the resources they need to support conversations with their teens about mental health.
What made this partnership most impactful was the combination of the Sound It Out campaign’s resources and tools, which are vetted by a panel of experts and advisors with clinical expertise, and the involvement of individual creators who represent communities that are often under-resourced in terms of mental health support, and most in need of these messages.
Through the Ad Council’s partnership with TikTok, and with Whalar’s support, we collaborated with guardians of adolescents who represent both English- and Spanish-speaking communities. Their TikToks paired our research-based campaign resources with stories of their own personal experiences as guardians, which helped bring the materials to life and connect with followers in an authentic way that helped their audiences relate and further engage.
We then amplified their posts through a 10-week campaign on TikTok, which targeted the communities we hoped to reach with these resources including parents, grandparents, and individuals providing parental guidance to maximize our impact.
The campaign achieved remarkable success, reaching over 14 million TikTok users and generating more than 60 million impressions. This impressive reach translated into over 750,000 clicks to resources, providing parents and caregivers with essential tools such as conversation guides and tips for better supporting the young people in their lives. The significant engagement underscores the campaign's impact in raising awareness and equipping caregivers with the knowledge they need to make a positive difference by meeting them where they are – on TikTok!
Collaborating with Spanish-speaking TikTok creators, specifically, emerged as one of our most impactful strategies for audience engagement. The organic post performance metrics were particularly telling: Spanish-language content achieved comment and share rates that were 8.5 times and 10.7 times higher, respectively, compared to English-language posts. These impressive metrics underscore the critical importance of reaching Spanish-speaking communities on TikTok.
The high engagement clearly demonstrates that when we connect with communities through the right messengers, the mental health resources we provide are not only getting being seen by key audiences, but actively saved and shared.
