If nothing else, this is a TikTok Shop ad unlike any you’ve seen before.
There’s nothing predictable about the absurdity of this 1:47 second spot and it leaves viewers a tad unsure of what they’ve just watched.
The campaign marks TikTok Shop's 6.6 Birthday Sale in Vietnam. Created by independent creative agency The Friday, it's designed to draw attention to one of the platform’s most valuable yet underutilised features, the Shop button.
Built around the idea 'Touch Shop, Fall in Love With Deals', the campaign aims to elevate the visibility of the Shop button as a gateway to promotions, product discovery and limited-time offers during one of TikTok Shop’s biggest sales moments.
The hero film brings this idea to life through an unusual metaphor. The Shop button is personified as a man hosting a birthday party, where guests greet him not with gifts, but with kisses. Each kiss leaves behind a fingerprint rather than a lipstick mark. It’s strange from the outset, and only gets stranger.
From a couple getting out of bed, to a woman mid-toothbrush, to a man on the toilet, each guest kisses the man on the face, adding to the growing collection of fingerprints. Then the penny drops. The fingerprints are a stand-in for the taps users make on the Shop button while browsing deals. In return, the guests are rewarded with discounts, vouchers and offers, bringing the metaphor full circle.
The aim of the campaign, while not immediately clear, is to draw attention to a functional feature by making it emotionally and visually memorable.
“The Shop button is incredibly useful, but usefulness alone rarely earns attention,” said Khoa Pham, creative director at The Friday. “We didn’t want to explain the feature—we wanted people to feel drawn to it. By turning a simple tap into an absurd visual metaphor, we transformed a functional interaction into something more memorable.”
Campaign’s take: It’s weird and properly weird. But in a feed full of safe, samey performance ads, this strangeness might cut through. Southeast Asia is known for absurd marketing and you might not immediately connect all the dots, but you’ll probably remember it, and that’s half the battle. Whether that translates into sales is another question. But as a way of dragging attention towards a small, easily ignored button, it’s hard to accuse it of playing it safe.
