For Ari Pine, a dance and language science student at the University of California (United States), downloading and using TikTok was just an outing to practice dance during the quarantine. But a couple of months later, he inadvertently launched a viral meme and developed his first endorsement.
“I’ve been dancing in my room through Zoom for months,” Pine told Insider. “Making videos on TikTok before class was just another way to interact with people.”
In january Pine gained more than 50,000 followers in 72 hours, after choreographing a video that transformed the audio from Grammarly’s YouTube ad into a dance, a trend that quickly took hold, generating 50,000 new videos in days and more than 100,000 to date.
made a dance for whenever this ad comes up for you guys! Enjoy! I better not see any spelling errors in the comments! ???? #fyp #fy #dance
While it wasn’t the first time Pine created a dance for publicity, it was the first time a company tune really took off on TikTok, in part because Grammarly took responsibility for the trend itself.
Though Grammarly had been mostly inactive on TikTok, Senka Hadzimuratovic, the company’s chief marketing officer, said that the trend caused interest in the brand to rise as its followers increased by 481%.
“One of our office associates saw the trend on Twitter and we knew we had to do something,” Hadzimuratovic explained to Insider. “There was no time to deliberate. We knew we had to show that we are not that serious and that we can be part of this culture.”
After Grammarly released its own video response to Pine, Hadzimuratovic said the trend changed the way the company approached the app. It helped Grammarly realize the potential of advertising on TikTok, leading the company writing assistant to generate more ad plans for the app, including the decision to sponsor Pine as a Grammarly influencer in February.
For many brands, TikTok is an untapped platform
Kendall Fargo, president of marketing for GrowMojo, detailed to Insider that even the brands that advertise on the platform are still learning how to cater to the TikTok audience.
“TikTok is not like other social media platforms. It is not Instagram,” Fargo told Insider. “It sets a much higher bar. You need to know where people are and make them feel part of the community. If it looks like a polished marketing video, they will just skip it.”
The best TikTok virals of 2020
For newer brands, the app can act as a starting point for marketing. Sophia Edelstein, co-founder and CEO of Pair Eyewear, a startup that got the support of Shark Tank in 2018, said that the company can count on at least 10% of its sales coming from TikTok every month.
The app even approached Pair Eyewear as beta marketers, an update the app released last year. The eyewear startup operates as an e-commerce company and allows users to customize and change frames at will for new styles.
Edelstein told Insider what much of the company’s sales from the site come from free advertising, including Pair’s ‘Refer a Friend’ program.
“It happened organically,” Edelstein confirmed to Insider. “People wanted to connect with other people and share their appearance. Quickly, we saw the glasses go viral.”
I’m obsessed. #glasses #obsessed #dork #GroupChat #WinterFashion #paireyewear #love #fyp #foryoupage #foryou
While Pair’s TikTok account hasn’t taken off, it’s not necessary either, because millions of people have posted videos checking glasses on TikTok. Edelstein said the company has faced influencers, but has seen most of its success through organic posts, which have generated more than € 330,000 in sales in a month.
Paid ads on the platform generally cost between € 40,000 and € 100,000, according to the social media analytics site. Iconsquare, but unsponsored user posts can be a brand’s greatest asset, as Fargo assured Insider. In February, the app had more than 1 billion monthly active users, a number that continues to grow, according to Sensor Tower.
Perceived authenticity is a key ingredient for TikTok’s viral trends
Fargo explained that Authenticity or perceived trustworthiness of the app plays an important role in successful advertising on TikTok. It’s easier to disguise an ad on TikTok than on other social media platforms.
“Brands can make a social publication without necessarily being an advertisement,” he added. “TikTok also allows you to see a part of a video before it tells you it is an ad.”
While some brands like Coca-Cola and Mentos have generated viral trends on their own by creating challenges, many brands like Grammarly have simply stumbled upon a trend.
“It’s about being in the right place at the right time,” Pine told Insider. “It’s hit or miss. I didn’t expect the Grammarly video to work as well as it did but it’s part of the game. The algorithm is like a beast that you can’t tame.”
Spotify and Ocean Spray have had similar success. In 2020, the album cover trend of Spotify generated more than 2.2 billion views and a video, showing Ocean Spray’s Cran-Raspberry juice, generated 12.6 million likes on the app as celebrities and everyday TikTok users were quick to imitate the videos.
Ocean Spray CEO Tom Hayes even hopped on his own scooter to imitate the video. of Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac. The company followed the meme by handing the creator of the video a brand new truck, filled with bottles of the juice.
Fargo explained that TikTok trends allow brands to have a more personal connection with potential customers.
“It is important that brands not only generate followers on social networks, but also invest in converting those followers into customers,” he said. “It is one thing to generate awareness, but it is another completely to generate customers, and many brands make that mistake.”
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