Ugi Ugwuomo is the lead global creative strategist for TikTok. The app has been one of the fastest-growing platforms in the past few years, and Ugwuomo is responsible for creating experiences that help engage audiences at immersive and disruptive levels.
Ugwuomo spoke with rolling out at Black Tech Week about his role and how TikTok intersects with the tech world today.
What is your role?
We are the creative lab for brands, creative companies and agencies, and we help bring good things to life. We bring inspiration for brands looking to either introduce themselves on the platform and launch on the platform from other advertising, or change their campaigns on TV or other platforms. We also help with some of their ad campaigns and find ways to make them more TikTok-friendly. It [involves] a lot of trend hunting, creative conception, creative ideation, creative inspiration, workshopping, and education consultation, which kind of runs the gamut of placing brands and creative companies in the best positions to win.
How does TikTok intersect with the tech world?
We’re in a lot of conversations in the tech world over the last couple of years. In my specific position, where we’re talking to a lot of brands, a lot of it has been education and workshops, and making sure you’re getting in front of the right rooms for a lot of these marketers, agencies, and CMOs, and making sure that they understand the platform and understand all that it has to offer. You have to understand all of the benefits there are not just with us, but specifically, our community and audiences that are on the platform and the creativity and joy that they’re bringing every day to the platform, and see that they understand there’s a place for them on this platform. That’s the best way to be able to bring ourselves into the tech conversation is by including ourselves there and making sure that companies and brands feel that they can be able to include themselves in the conversations that are happening on the platform.
How can small businesses benefit from TikTok?
One thing I would direct small businesses to is the tools that are already readily available to anybody on TikTok for business sites. There are a lot of different resources on there such as TikTok Academy, where small-business owners can go and look at a full range of educational resources and videos to level up themselves into understanding independently, and I think that’s a tremendous resource.
