How to tell whether a creator video worked

A laundry-sheet brand posted its first creator video on TikTok three days ago. The sheets are meant to replace the plastic jug of detergent people are used to hauling home.

The video is up on the creator's account. There's a number under it. Then somebody asks whether it worked, and the room goes quiet, because that number is the only thing anyone has to answer with.

The answer is in your own notes, or it doesn't exist.

What this guide covers

• Why doesn't the number under the video settle it?
• So what did you hire it to do?
• What would you have seen if that were true?
• Which of those can you actually see?
• What does the comment section tell you that the count doesn't?
• Is it the video that missed, or the job nobody wrote?
• What goes into the next brief?
• Frequently asked questions

Why doesn't the number under the video settle it?

Because it's counting something else.

That number counts how many people the video got in front of. It's a fact about the video's audience. What you want to know is whether something happened to those people, and the count was never keeping track of that.

You don't need a theory about how the app decides who sees what. The problem shows up without one. Take two videos sitting at the same number. One left people understanding that a sheet replaces the jug they're buying now. The other left them laughing at somebody falling into a washing machine. The number is identical and it settles nothing between them.

The count doesn't know what you hired the video to do. Either that was written down before the video posted or it wasn't, and when a room can't answer the question, the missing sentence is the first place to look.

So what did you hire it to do?

One sentence about the viewer, in a form you already use: after seeing this, the viewer should …

We've made that case for choosing a content format. A goal like "build awareness" doesn't tell anyone what to make, so it gets translated into what the viewer should walk away understanding and what has to be shown rather than told. That sentence is what you pick a format against. It's also what a posted video gets checked against later, through the list you write from it.

For the laundry sheets: after seeing this, the viewer should understand that one sheet replaces the jug they're buying now, and see it disappear in the drum.

Two parts: something to understand, something to see.

The rest of what you bought sits outside that sentence. Where the video posts decides the shape of what you're buying, and it's the one the creator builds the shoot around. The others are terms on that purchase: usage rights decide whether you can run the video as paid media at all, whitelisting is the separate permission for running those ads through the creator's handle, the length of the reuse sets how long you can keep doing either, and the number of rounds sets what you can send back before the video is finished. None of them decides what the video has to land.

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What would you have seen if that were true?

Write that down before it posts, in the same sitting as the sentence.

If someone understood the substitution, what would that look like from outside their head? If they saw the thing dissolve, what follows? List what would show if the sentence came true, and what each one would tell you.

For the laundry sheets, four things went on the list before the video went out:

• Someone asking in the comments what happens in a cold wash, or with a load of towels. That question starts from the substitution instead of doubting it.
• People telling each other how many sheets a big load takes. Whether the sheets replace the jug isn't what's in question there.
• The brand name showing up in search that week where it hadn't the week before. Somebody typed it on purpose.
• Someone in the comments saying they'd ordered it. The closest thing to a purchase that's visible from outside.

Write this list after the video posts and you'll write it around what you already saw.

Which of those can you actually see?

Sort the list into three piles, then go looking.

On the video's page. The count and every comment under it, public, in the words the viewer chose. You don't need anyone's permission to read them.

In your own records only. People typing your name into search, and orders. Neither one shows up on the video's page, and what they tell you is whether anything moved on your side that week, which is a smaller statement than it looks.

What nobody can settle. Whether the person who ordered on Tuesday ordered because of the video. Nothing on the screen and nothing in your records answers that, and no arrangement of the first two piles turns into that answer.

Write the third pile down anyway, so that what nobody can settle has somewhere to sit. Then the two piles above are only answering for themselves.

For the laundry sheets: three of the four are on the video's page, since the cold-wash question, the how-many-sheets correction and anyone saying they'd ordered it would all arrive as comments. The name in search is in your records. Whether the video is why any single order happened isn't on the list at all, and that's the third pile.

All four are checkable this week, which tells you what kind of verdict is available: once you've read them you can say whether the substitution landed and whether anything moved on your side, and you still won't be able to say what the video sold. Say both out loud.

What does the comment section tell you that the count doesn't?

It tells you what people think they watched.

The count is about people who saw the video. The comments are where some of them say what they took away, in their own words, right under it. Two things make that readable on TikTok in a way a report never is. The comments are public, so you read them yourself rather than receiving a summary of them. And the video sits on the creator's account among everything else they post, so a comment can be about the creator rather than about your sentence, which is itself a reading.

Three kinds of comment, each with something to do about it:

• Questions about using the product. For the people asking, the substitution held long enough that they've moved on to their own laundry. Those questions are material for the next brief.
• Descriptions of the product that get it wrong. They watched, and the substitution didn't survive the watching. Check the video against your sentence before you blame the viewer.
• Comments about the creator and nothing else. It read as one of their posts, and your sentence never reached them. Go back and check whether the brief ever asked for it.

For the laundry sheets: the cold-wash question came back again and again, and people argued about how many sheets a big load takes. Both are questions about using the product. Nobody described the sheets in their own words as a replacement for the jug, and nobody described them as anything else either.

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Is it the video that missed, or the job nobody wrote?

From the outside these look the same. Both end in a room that can't say whether the video worked. What separates them is what you do next.

The sentence existed, the list existed, and some or none of it showed up. Then you can say which parts landed and which didn't, and that split is the version you take into the next brief.

There was no sentence. Then nothing missed. You bought a video without a job, and no amount of staring at the count will produce one after the fact. The next action isn't about this video at all. It's writing the sentence for the next one, and you can do that today.

There's a third case worth naming because it looks like a video that missed. The sentence existed in your head and never made it into the brief. Then the brief never carried it, and the brief is the one the video was made from. Notes on a draft get checked against what the brief fixed, and the same document answers this question too. Nothing on the video tells you which case you're in. Only the brief does.

For the laundry sheets: the sentence was written and it was in the brief, and part of the list showed up. The questions arrived, the name never appeared in search, and nobody said they'd ordered it. That's the case where the sentence was there, and it's the useful one, because you can name both what landed and what didn't.

What goes into the next brief?

The things this video taught you that you couldn't have known before it existed.

The cold-wash question is the clearest one. It went on the list as a sign the substitution had landed, and what nobody could have written down beforehand is that it would keep coming back, which turns it from a box you tick into a question the next video can answer. It can go straight into the next sentence: after seeing this, the viewer should understand that one sheet is enough in a cold wash.

For the laundry sheets: one line changes. Same creator, same format, a sentence that now answers the question the last video started.

Frequently asked questions

The video got in front of far more people than anything else we've posted. Isn't that the answer?

Pull up your list. A big count tells you the video got in front of a lot of people; whether anything on your list showed up is a separate question, and the size of the count doesn't answer it either way.

If the next question is whether to run the video as paid media, whether you're allowed to at all was settled before the shoot, in the usage rights you bought. This judgment doesn't add that permission or take it away.

Does the list of what you're checking go in the brief?

The sentence does. The list doesn't.

The creator needs to know what the video has to land, and what belongs in a brief is that, plus the facts they have no way to reach, plus the boundaries you'd ask for a change over. Your list is what you'll go looking for afterwards, and part of it lives in records the creator can't see.

One exception. If an item on your list needs the creator to do something, like answering the questions that pile up under the video, then it belongs in the brief and in what you're paying for, because you're asking them to do it.

See what this looks like for your brand

Got a video up and no way to say whether it worked? We'll go through it with you.

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