Last night I played TikTok Trivia (along with the 245k live players who answered Q1).

It was a disaster 🤪

I built and led the creative team at HQ Trivia and have some thoughts on how TikTok Trivia can improve their experience ⬇️

1️⃣ Ensure Proper Casting

I can guarantee you that TikTok did not run a casting call.

Nothing against the host personally, but it’s important to work with talent who thrive in this environment and not just look at follower count when determining if they’re the right fit.

2️⃣ Get Your Host In Early

Begin casting alongside product development so that when you're ready to test, your host is ready to get to work.

For PleasrHouse, we cast @aliweiss 3 months before the show went live and ran dozens of rehearsals with her as the eng team built out the tech.

When the show launch came around, Ali was prepared – especially in the event there were technical difficulties with the show.

3️⃣Write A Strong Script & Keep It Moving

The show took 9 minutes to ask the first question – nearly double the amount of time we would allot for HQ to get started.

While this slows things down, it isn’t inherently bad so long as the content is compelling enough to keep people engaged.

That being said, the content fell flat – the host kept speaking in circles about instructions, rules and power-ups.

Another thing at HQ, during rehearsals we would identify tricky pronunciations then provide phonetic spellings in the host's teleprompter to prevent stumbling, especially when they’re within a question or answer.

4️⃣ Take Video Framing Into Consideration

When you’re watching a 20 min stream of vertical video on your phone, nobody needs to see a crotch hiding behind the live chat.

Plus, TikTok's UI – especially for gifting and questions – muddies up the entire experience.

5️⃣ Always Look Directly Into The Camera

The HQ hosts always looked straight down the barrel. We built out a custom teleprompter that gave them everything they need to put on a successful show.

Whenever a host turns away from the camera to read the chat, users are taken out of the live experience and engagement feels separate when it should be embedded directly into the product.

It’s really great to see such a large cultural force like TikTok explore creating a live interactive experience, excited to see where the team goes from here.

If want to create a mind blowing live immersive experience, we have a studio in DUMBO and my team at @loooponline can handle it all soup to nuts from production to marketing – my DMs are open.

Play your cards right, you may even get a free Super Bowl ad out of it 😜