"Spotlight" on TikTok: How Constantin Film Advertises to Gen Z

Does a generation that can access the entire entertainment universe on their smartphones at any time still go to the movies? If you ask Linda Fiolka and Eric Lehmann, the answer is a resounding yes. Since 2022, the two have been co-heads of marketing for national and international cinema, TV, and streaming productions at Constantin Film in Munich. However, what young people want to see in the cinema continues to surprise entertainment professionals. Take 2023’s “Sonne und Beton” (Sun and Concrete), the film adaptation of Felix Lobrecht’s coming-of-age novel of the same name: “It was a title that no one really had on their radar,” recalls Eric Lehmann, who is responsible for digital marketing and the Munich-based production company’s digital presence. “And then the cinemas were full of young people – a target group that supposedly no longer goes to the cinema.”

New marketing avenues on TikTok

 

This success shows that young viewers are there. You just have to reach them on the right channels and with the right content. To reach this target group, Constantin Film is increasingly turning to TikTok. The platform has been available in Germany since 2017, and the proportion of users aged 14 to 29 is now 55 percent. “We have been in talks with TikTok since the platform launched in Germany,” says Linda Fiolka. “Our contacts there are incredibly interested, open, and super creative. That fits with Constantin Film, but also with our industry in general. TikTok recognized early on that content from the film and entertainment sector interests its users.” One result of this long-standing exchange is that Constantin Film has been testing the in-app advertising solution TikTok Spotlight since June 2025, making it the first German production company to do so. Campaigns for the movies “Mädchen Mädchen” and “Das Kanu des Manitu” were launched at the start.

For the marketing experts at Constantin Film, the Spotlight tool not only provides a new creative playground, but also an opportunity to get closer to the predominantly young target group on TikTok. Fiolka finds the link between the campaign and what the target group makes of it particularly exciting. “We can learn a lot from this and create added value for our campaign – and, accordingly, for the people who go to the cinema.” Fiolka and Lehmann’s team invested a lot of preparation time in creating the content for the first campaign for “Mädchen Mädchen.” “We thought about what we could provide in addition to the classic content,” explains Lehmann. “For example, trailers or behind-the-scenes material. We built filters that users can apply to fuel user-generated content. But we also created a lot of meme content, i.e., platform-friendly content, to offer the target audience something they can reuse in their own videos.” The initial experience has been consistently positive, as Lehmann reports. “We are now seeing content that we haven’t seen before. The technical link to our film makes it possible to collect user-generated content that we previously overlooked. And that’s an incredible amount of content! In one campaign alone, that’s hundreds of videos and many millions of views that we couldn’t see before.”

Community content instead of advertising partnerships

 

However, the user-generated content visible in Spotlight is not always appropriate. In some cases, the advertising tool automatically links user posts that have nothing to do with the film and have to be sorted out manually. On the other hand, the marketing team uses particularly creative posts in its own film campaigns, giving the community content additional reach. “In addition to the materials we produce ourselves, this is a new way of approaching target groups: by using the tool to discover creators from the community and giving them a stage without entering into traditional collaborations with influencers. This offers us many additional opportunities,” summarizes Eric Lehmann.

Although Constantin Film also works with major creators, it selects them very individually and deliberately. “It’s not always about whether the creators have a particularly large reach,” explains Linda Fiolka. “Sometimes it makes sense for the person to have a smaller following but be authentic in what they say.” It is therefore crucial to take a close look at who fits in with Constantin Film.

Rediscovering old productions

 

It is particularly exciting for the marketing team to see that it is not only brand-new blockbusters or productions specifically designed for a young audience, such as “Mädchen Mädchen,” that work in the TikTok community. Older films such as “Fack ju Göhte” or “Der Schuh des Manitu” are also popular with a very young target group who did not see these productions in the cinema at the time. “We see that content from our library also works well. We take advantage of that. With ”Das Kanu des Manitu,“ we were able to build up a nice hype with ”Der Schuh des Manitu“ content. We then channel the attention we gain into the campaign for the current film,” explains Fiolka.

Listening as the key to authenticity

 

In addition to having a good sense of what titles will interest young people, timing is crucial. “If you want to reach young target groups on TikTok, you have to think early on about what might be relevant at the time of publication. Or at least what won’t seem ‘old’ when you come around the corner,” says Lehmann. “It’s a fine line, but I think the risk is worth it.” In Linda Fiolka’s view, two things are needed above all else to attract the younger generation to the cinema on TikTok: relevance and authenticity. “Both sound like empty buzzwords, but you realize that if we address topics that young people are interested in, that they interact with and that touch on their everyday lives, then we can create relevance. Then we’re actually offering something they want to incorporate into their everyday lives, something that makes them want to go to the cinema and talk about afterwards.“ The key to this is social listening – via TikTok, but also via other channels such as Instagram or Snapchat: ”If we listen carefully and see what’s happening, we notice that there’s a lot of interaction with our content.”