TikTok 101: A primer for brands

How manufacturers like Chipotle and E.Lf. Are advertising on TikTok in 2020.
Ou don’t have to set up the app to experience TikTok. If you’re studying this, odds are you’ve already stumbled upon a TikTok-emblazoned clip of a person carrying bread on their toes or feverishly appearing a choreographed dance. None of it makes sense and that’s the point. It’s meme culture at its finest.

Teens see TikTok as a domestic for natural, unfiltered entertainment. Brands, on the opposite hand, are watching it like a sparkly new penny. The platform recognized for hosting fun video challenges inspired through the ephemeral (and regularly satirical) nature of Gen Z is now beginning to become a part of the advertising equation.

“Being there early allows brands to authentically tap into the ‘it-crowd’ so long as they could adapt their message to the fun and informal tone,” defined Fred Schonenberg, founding father of New York advertising and marketing organization VentureFuel. But that informal tone, he explained, is TikTok’s entire value. “Brands who display up with fashionable company messaging will alienate the target market as quick as they are looking for to be embraced.”

So, what's TikTok?
Boasting extra than 500 million active users, TikTok is a cell video-sharing app that stepped on the scene in 2018. Users can create and post short, looping motion pictures set to song or sound bites – often with humor as the focal point. Like the alternative social platforms, TikTok functions a personalized find out page, a domestic feed, user profiles, and a integrated suite of video editing equipment. Because TikTok posts have a max length of 60 seconds, the cease end result is commonly a quirky, surprisingly concentrated form of leisure that’s identical elements difficult and captivating.

Background. To apprehend TikTok, you have to look at it in the context of its forerunners, Musical.Ly and Vine. Vine, the viral short-form video-sharing app released in 2013, can be thought of as the originator of snack-sized viral video content. Vine placed the wheels in movement for short films to take off as a widespread video layout where creators may want to leverage the vertical orientation local to smartphones. (Snapchat and Instagram trailed this version with their own investments in video.)

In 2014, Musical.Ly launched as a follow-up to the fulfillment of Vine, which Twitter received alas shuttered in 2016. Users should create short motion pictures with the introduced layer of lip-syncing. This approach, coupled with low production requirements, made it easy for simply about everybody to create attractive content.

Fast ahead to 2017, while Chinese tech large ByteDance saw possibility in Musical.Ly’s content model. ByteDance obtained Musical.Ly in 2017, and in 2018 rolled out to the international marketplace with the call TikTok. By October 2018, TikTok was the maximum downloaded app inside the U.S. And reached a document 1.5 billion downloads globally at the quit of 2019.

What can you do on TikTok?
TikTok developments flow fast. Blink and you may pass over them. The platform doesn’t have the visible aesthetic of a curated Instagram grid – nor is it the area for critical issues (although a few have tried). Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg concept he hit the mark in evaluating TikTok to Instagram’s Explore page (consistent with leaked audio from an all-arms meeting). PSA: Instagram and TikTok are in reality now not the same.

TikTok has controlled to create a specific social experience that values spontaneity, humor, and relatability notably else. It’s grew to become social media into pure social leisure.

Here’s how users are getting the most out of the app:

Video editing. TikTok has provided an entire era of customers with a crash course in video enhancing. The platform’s smooth-to-use gear add a unique creative effect that doesn’t require the getting to know curve of an advanced video modifying platform. Creators can choose from dozens of overlays, transition effects, filters, playback speeds, text options, and sounds. It gives simply about each person the capability to create an attractive video with only some taps.

Playing with sound. The platform’s editing gear and superior filters allow creativity via default, but a completely unique aspect is the potential to add sound from a large library of each certified track and consumer-created recordings. After a video is posted, any user can rip the audio, re-create the parody, and throw it returned into the TikTok ecosystem until the shaggy dog story is dead. Similar to the way hashtags work to discover content, users can look for a song or sound to peer the original content material and all other films it appears in. Sound on the platform conjures up tune video spoofs, humorous lip-dubs, dance routines, and extra.

Hashtag challenges. Viral tendencies start within the hashtags on TikTok. Hashtag challenges inspire customers to try and percentage their own specific takes on challenges posed with the aid of one of a kind creators or brands – like Guess’s #InMyDenim venture or Jimmy Fallon’s #tumbleweedchallenge. Challenge have confirmed to be an engaging manner for customers to effortlessly create appealing content, at the same time as brands can use it as an possibility to build attention with consumers.

React motion pictures. Users on TikTok have taken the concept of a reaction to a hilarious new level. With the ‘React’ function, customers can document their own reactions (with audio and video) to an current TikTok video. The response video can seem facet-through-aspect with the unique.

Cringe-worthy content material. Like a educate spoil you can’t look away from, cringe films characteristic awkward performances aimed toward getting a laugh. It’s a layout made well-known on YouTube, and TikTok-ers are gambling it on their own phrases with injections of children statement and social satire. Still confused? Here are some examples.