In the midst of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, Black creators found their voices and content reportedly suppressed on social media platforms, where algorithms downplayed content associated with seemingly controversial content.

At the forefront of the controversy was TikTok where many Black creators accused the app of taking down, muting, and hiding their videos. They claimed the app manipulated view counts on videos tagged with #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd, effectively forcing creators to choose between speaking their minds or getting seen (and thus paid for their creativity). While TikTok’s teen user base is famously multicultural, its top influencers are almost all white, preventing Black creators from benefiting from their influence in driving U.S. culture.

Instead of pulling our spend off TikTok, we used the power of media investment, our brand voice and the energy of our consumers to be a part of the solution for equality, providing a platform for representation for Black creators, and a platform for change for young voices nationwide.

We noticed teens were getting creative about how to show their support. Lacking disposable income to directly support causes they care about, they repeatedly watched videos about causes they cared about, knowing their viewership would increase ad revenue to those causes and voices.

Young Black voices create and shape the culture we live in today. The #BlackVoicesCreate program is aimed at elevating voices on the platform where they’d been allegedly suppressed, ensuring their voices can be heard. And through a partnership with the NAACP Youth & College Division, we ensured those voices had a stage to affect change for the future.

Gushers has advertised regularly on TikTok and has a great partnership with the platform, thanks to a mutual belief in creativity and self-expression which has allowed us to connect with teens authentically and at scale. And yet, in the midst of this controversy – and at a time when teens were feeling exhausted and downtrodden by the rising tide of social injustice in the US – we questioned whether TikTok was appropriate for our brand or our consumers.

We needed to do more than talk; we needed to prove how we cared about and were willing to support their expression, and to give them an avenue to lend their support as well. It needed to find a way to take a stand for the things they believed in. And through our research we knew Black Lives Matter was the #1 cause that Gen Z teens cared about.

#BlackVoicesCreate elevated young Black creatives on TikTok. We specifically picked a range of Black micro- and macro-influencers to support and turned their content into tools for change, effectively balancing TikTok’s algorithm by challenging our consumers to support and like their videos.

We established a partnership with the NAACP Youth and College Division, offering a base donation of $200k to support this generation of change-makers.

We then communicated our initial donation and commitment to celebrating young Black voices across our owned media channels.

We elevated 4 young Black creatives on TikTok (Taylor Cassidy, Zira B, Jailyn is Feliz, Jonathan Bynoe) by turning their videos into fundraisers to match our original donation to the NAACP, and encourage sharing of other young Black voices.

Lastly, with our $400k total donation, we’re investing with the NAACP to co-create resources to empower teens through a virtual advocacy training series and sponsored memberships.

We earned teens’ attention and engagement:

• Our creators exceeded their like-for-donation goal by 5X or greater, delivering an engagement rate twice as high as the benchmark

• Teens were intrigued to learn more about #BlackVoicesCreate, with click-through to find out more exceeding benchmark by 3X (leading to a 16.3% engagement rate)

We ensured Black voices were heard:

• Black voices claimed TikTok’s algorithm was broken; #BlackVoicesCreate broke that broken algorithm, bringing over 8 million views, allowing each creator to achieve their donation goal (via 50,000 likes) within 36 hours of the campaign going live

We made a positive impact on culture for generations to come:

• The campaign drove over 1 million likes to sponsored Black creators, garnering $200,000 for the NAACP, successfully empowering teens to make their voices heard and to make an impact in upcoming elections.