At the 2025 Cannes Lions Festival, Kim Farrel, TikTok’s Global Head of Creators, shared three powerful traits that define today’s most successful creators: they stay true to their unique voice, deeply understand their audience, and leverage data with precision.

In this post, we’ll break down these three pillars of creator success and explore how you can apply them to grow your own influence with intention and impact.

3 Keys to Success as a Creator

“Creators that are really doing well on platforms, especially on TikTok, I think that they have three things that come to mind.”

Authenticity

“One is they never lose their authenticity. So no matter how many brands they’re working with or how much they’re evolving as a creator, they are maintaining that authenticity. So finding a way to always maintain that authenticity, I think, is key because they have a unique point of view.”

Deeply knowing their community

“I think the second is deeply knowing their community. So really looking into the comments, the DMs, the engagements, the sharing, so they’re really understanding, you know, what is my community really looking to me for? What questions are they asking me? What products are they using?

I see a lot of creators actually see what their audience is using and reach out to a brand and say, you know, I’d love to work with you because I know that my audience, you know, is interested in what you do.”

Data

“And then the third is data. I think creators that we see really using like TikTok Studio and going deep into their analytics and looking at the, you know, viewership second by second and the engagement rate, they’re using greater search insights and inspiration for their next video. They are living and breathing the data. I think that that really helps them not only to continue to grow their own, you know, their own profile and their own account, but also helps them to really speak with brands effectively because they can bring kind of real examples and data to the table.

So yeah, staying authentic, really deeply knowing their community and then, you know, getting into that data and tools.”

Find more ideas for Creators on my Pinterest Marketing blog!