How YouScan’s Social Listening Helped Dentsu Creative Turn a Viral TikTok Moment into a Major Win

What happens when your content suddenly goes viral, but you’re not sure why or to what degree? That’s exactly the situation the Dentsu Creative’s client, Nutter Butter (Mondelez) – a brand of American peanut butter sandwich cookies, faced when they found themselves at the center of TikTok attention. 🥜

During our recent webinar with Dentsu Creative, Alexandre Dor, ex-Lead Social Analyst, shared how the team used YouScan’s real-time social listening to understand the moment as it unfolded in real-time and guided their next steps with confidence.

Setting the Scene

Nutter Butter had been leaning into a deep-fried, slightly surreal TikTok aesthetic for well over a year – think playful storylines that leave more questions than it answers, and the kind of absurdist humor that makes people stop scrolling due to wondering “what did I just watch”. Fans began creating their own brand lore in the comments, and creators were starting to reference the brand’s personality in their own content.

The Challenge

September 13, 2024. YouScan’s engagement-based alert caught a TikTok post by creator Cassie Fitzwater, who raised a provocative question, “Nutter Butter, are you good?” 

Thanks to YouScan’s functionality, the Dentsu Creative team flagged the post right away to the Mondelez Consumer Experience Team and recognized its potential to go viral. And it did. 

By September 17th, 2024, a viral “crisis chat” went nuts. Cassie's post kept snowballing. Offshoes had been spraying up, and leadership began discussing whether to pull the content altogether. That’s when the team behind Dentsu Creative faced a problem. 👇

The internal social monitoring tools Mondelez was using only covered X (Twitter) and Reddit, missing the full TikTok picture. Without proper context, the spike in conversation looked like a backlash. 

Thanks to CX and other savvy, internal, social-first champions, Dentsu Creative was able to negotiate and ask just for a little time to show that doing so (pulling the content) would be a colossal mistake. Luckily, they had YouScan to prove it. 

The Turning Point 

If Dentsu Creative hadn’t had the depth of data YouScan offers on its fingertips, that terrible decision may have occurred. 

Armed with YouScan’s TikTok insights, the team quickly demonstrated that the viral post wasn’t solely negative. 

In fact, 99% of views and 92% of engagement were positive, proving it was a viral success, not a backlash.

Thanks to YouScan’s extensive coverage – including comment-level insight and real-time alerts – Dentsu Creative built a compelling, data-backed case to keep the campaign running.

Even better, influencer mentions, including one from pop star Joe Jonas, showed how far and fast the trend was spreading.

The Numbers 🤯

Partnering up with YouScan and using our AI social listening agent, Insights Copilot, has made it super fast and easy to pull up TikTok data for Dentsu Creative and Nutter Butter. 

"With Insights Copilot, we were able to do a quick vibe check: 'Hey, this is what we think is happening—does it actually match what's going on?’ — Alex Dor, ex-Lead Social Analyst at Dentsu Creative.

During September 15-17, Nutter Butter took over TikTok’s FYP (For You Page), winning the following metrics (all compared to the previous 10 days): 

👀 26.3M of earned views (+2,276%)

🙌 1.9M of earned engagements (+1,464%)

👍 2.4K of earned mentions (+142%)

🥰 83.6% of Net Positive Sentiment (+26 points)

By leaning into authentic fan energy, Nutter Butter became a viral favorite, doubling Super Bowl-level TikTok viewership and boosting sales.

The Takeaway

This eye-opening story proves that real-time social listening can really turn what’s supposed to be a negative burst into a creative win. 

Thanks to YouScan’s advanced AI and nuanced insight analytics by Insights Copilot, Dentsu Creative turned panic into a positive performance. 

This moment worked because the teams had strong expertise, creative momentum, and the right data at the right time.

YouScan made it possible to: 

• Detect the trend early through engagement alerts

• Access the full TikTok conversation, not just fragments

• Bring together comment-level insight, creator reactions, and sentiment

• Provide leadership with a grounded view of audience response

• Turn real-time activity into strategic clarity 

Real-time social listening allowed the Dentsu Creative and Nutter Butter teams to run “vibe checks,” generate summaries, and analyze sentiment clusters before jumping into heat-of-the-moment decisions

Instead of pulling content, they pulled insight, turning what seemed like a risky moment into Nutter Butter’s most celebrated creative win in the brand’s 56-year history.