A page,not a post.
Value created for the team
Made the content system easier to continue after my internship: repeatable formats with success measures, not a list of one-off posts.
Achievement
Designed the TikTok brief as a repeatable content system rather than a collection of posts.
In Week 4 I was asked to develop the TikTok page for Chicco. The brief could have been read as 'post more videos'. What the account actually needed was a system somebody else could keep running after I left.
What the account already had, and what it did not
Chicco had strong food visuals. What it lacked was repeatability — every post was a separate idea, so nothing accumulated. A viewer had no reason to expect anything from the page, which means no reason to follow it. The strategy moved from individual posts towards recurring series, storytelling and continuous learning from what performed.
Reading the performance honestly
Reviewing what had been posted, human-led content drew the strongest engagement and instructional food content was useful for reach, while plain dish showcases and static graphics performed weakest. That was uncomfortable, because the dish showcases were the most polished things on the account. Production quality and performance were not the same axis.
Two platforms, one shoot
Suits polished visuals, ambience and brand reinforcement — reaching people who already have some relationship with the restaurant.
Needs a fast hook, human context and a clear reason to comment, save or follow — reaching people who have never heard of Chicco.
Sharing footage across both is efficient; sharing the same edit is not. The same clips need a different opening, pacing and purpose per platform, which is a filming decision as much as an editing one.
The goal was never one viral video.
A single spike proves nothing repeatable. A format that can be produced weekly and recognised by viewers is what actually builds an audience for a restaurant.
What I recommended measuring instead of views
- Profile visits
- Saves
- Comments
- New followers
- Whether a format can realistically be repeated each week
Evidence from the internship
The specific moments this case study is built on.
I analysed which content types were working on the account before proposing anything new.
I expected the best-produced videos to be the best-performing ones.
Human-led content outperformed polished dish showcases. Viewers respond to a person, a situation or a reason behind the food — so 'make it look better' was the wrong instinct and 'give it a reason to exist' was the right one.
I looked at TikTok as a search surface, not only a feed — people actively look for food recommendations, dinner ideas and Italian restaurants.
I had been treating captions as a creative writing exercise.
Captions and on-screen text can answer a search. But the demand has to be matched to what Chicco genuinely is; chasing popular terms the restaurant cannot deliver on brings the wrong viewers and the same positioning risk I had seen in the SEO work.
I revised the whole Chicco TikTok growth strategy after receiving feedback on the first version.
I read the feedback initially as a list of corrections to work that had gone wrong.
The feedback clarified what the company was actually trying to achieve, which my first version had partly assumed. I started treating feedback as information that makes the next version stronger rather than as a verdict on the last one.
I filmed reenactments of the storyboard concepts and produced final videos.
The storyboards looked sound on paper, so I expected the shoot to confirm them.
Some concepts did not survive being filmed — pacing and angles that read fine as frames did not work as motion. Testing an idea cheaply before committing is the difference between a concept and a plan.
The trade-off
What pulled against what
Brand polish against platform-native rawness; search-driven topics against Chicco's actual positioning; ambition of the storyboards against what could realistically be produced every week.
Why the obvious answer was not enough
The best-produced content was performing worst, and one-off posts do not compound. The account needed formats, not volume.
Why I chose this approach
Recurring recognisable series, people as the entry point, a strong hook in the first seconds, search-aware captions kept within the brand's real offer, and success judged on profile visits, saves, comments and follows.
Going deeper
Why a repeatable format matters more than a good idea
A restaurant marketing team has limited time every week. A concept that needs a perfect setup will be produced once and quietly abandoned. Designing for what can be filmed during a normal service is a strategic constraint, not a creative compromise.
What I would challenge in my own strategy
I recommended human-led content partly on the strength of past performance on a small account. That is a thin evidence base, and it may reflect which videos happened to be made rather than which format is genuinely stronger.
The problem as it was handed to me
Post more, and post better-looking, food videos.
The trade-off underneath it
The best-produced content was performing worst, and one-off posts do not compound. The account needed formats, not volume.
My responseProposed next test
I would run one series for six to eight weeks and compare it against non-series posts on saves and follows, so the format recommendation rests on a test rather than on pattern-spotting.
What I contributed
Made the content system easier to continue after my internship: repeatable formats with success measures, not a list of one-off posts.
I developed and then revised the Chicco TikTok growth strategy — a shift from one-off posts to recurring series, hook-led openings and search-aware captions — reviewed what was performing to ground it, and produced storyboard reenactments and original footage so the concepts existed as filmed examples rather than slides.
Decision rules I would carry forward
Strategy structure and one storyboard are presented before any complete version is built.
Pitch the next series as a single tested episode and only build the remaining formats after direction is confirmed.
A format only enters the plan if it can be filmed during a normal service, and the proposal says so.
Run each proposed series through one real service as a dry run and drop any format that needs the kitchen to stop.
Each format names the metric it exists to move before it is produced.
Assign one metric per series — saves, watch-through, search impressions — and review after four weeks, retiring formats that move nothing.
Treat a social account as a product with formats and a feedback loop, not as a publishing schedule — and validate the format with a run of posts before scaling it.